While watching the Twilight Zone marathon over the last two days–a series, for its 60-year-old age, is eerily spry today in its furrowing of human behavior and the corruption of money and  power—I had the opportunity to watch the new Tina Fey Allstate commercial nearly 56 times.

Syfy was running the 30-second advertisement, in which the “30 Rock” star is paired with Allstate’s popular “Mayhem” character (played by Dean Gerard Winters), during every episode, so I was able to get well acquainted with all of its nuances and micro-messages. But it only took the third viewing to see that beyond all of the goofy comedic volleying, Fey’s desire to rack up good driver points resembled something I’d read about before. Like China’s social credit system.

Laugh if you want but a consumer’s desire to “earn” credits based on “good behavior” in return for a monetary “reward” and entirely transacted on a mobile phone “app” sounds an awful like the credit systems now piloted throughout mainland China. The main difference is that Tina Fey won’t be punished for her bad driving like her Chinese counterparts are today—not yet. And participating in Allstate’s little game is voluntary, unlike Bejing’s system. So far.

I wrote about the horrifying nexus between China’s total surveillance state and social credit for the July/August issue’s salute to the 70th anniversary of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.  Like the fictional Oceania, the Chinese Communist Party is using technology to track the behavior of its citizens and then forcing them to “buy in” through these social credit systems. Racking up points through good deeds, positive buying and driving habits, results in rewards like better spots in long lines at the hospital, or not having to put a deposit down on a rental car. Conversely, a lack of credits could mean being locked out of public services and air travel. Corporations are also being tracked and ranked. The entire system, according to the latest reports, will shift out of the pilot stage and go “fully operational” in 2020.

But Mayhem in Tina Fey’s car is the least of our problems. People who are watching this progression more than I had predicted long ago that the social credit system would be so attractive to governments and corporations—and even consumers—that it would not take long to shift to western society. Well, public universities are both businesses and government, and young students desperate to learn, conform, and achieve are the best guinea pigs, so why not start on American college campuses?

That is exactly what is happening according to a Washington Post report published just before Christmas. A handful of schools are now using the SpotterEDU app to track students’ movements on campus and giving them “points” for good attendance. All of this info is gathered through bluetooth technology and monitored by school officials. 

“They want those points,” Syracuse University Professor Jeff Rubin, who teaches Introduction to Information Technologies, told The Washington Post. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

Meanwhile, the paper reported that a new start-up called Degree Analytics, “uses WiFi check-ins to track roughly 200,000 students across 19 state universities” and will even alert officials of “anomalies”— students who go off their normal routines.

Not all students are impressed, however:

“We’re adults. Do we really need to be tracked?” Robby Pfeifer, a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, told the paper. “Is it just going to keep progressing until we’re micromanaged every second of the day?”

Unfortunately, if the slow surrender of our individual rights over the last 20 years is any indication, students like Pfeifer will soon be in the minority, especially as the “rewards” begin to outweigh the outrage at being watched 24-7 by Big Brother. 

It turns out that social credit is a perfect fit for a society that infantilizes their adult children, and furthermore, is so easily convinced that “minding” by government, or “rewards” by a massive faceless corporations is exactly what we all need. This is how many Chinese have reacted to the system there—they like getting the perks, and are quoted time and again saying it leads to more honest and law-abiding behavior.

That is, if you don’t like it, there must be something wrong with you.

So it starts with goody-two-shoes drivers looking to save a buck and students wallowing under tens of thousands of dollars of debt desperate to graduate and get a job to pay it off. Mayhem indeed.