Pardon?
This isn't a possible situation, and people would do well to internalize that. If someone said "being in public with no intention to be seen", it would be clear that it's unreasonable -- asking everyone to pretend you're invisible -- but change it to "seen and remembered with high fidelity" and people want to roll back to before constantly-filming cameras were common.
If you're in public, people may see you. If people can see you, they may preserve a memory of seeing you, internally or externally to their head.
I think (generally speaking) on the internet this is highly exacerbated by the dehumanization of others. For whatever reason, when we aren't face to face, we tend to not connect to the humanness of the people on the other end. This is easily observed when people get into cars and "observe" but don't connect with humans in the other cars who sometimes make suboptimal driving decisions that infringe on sensibilities ("that asshole cut me off! I'll drive recklessly around him to show him how angry I am"). Getting on the internet seems to make this even worse.
You have a choice to not write the article, and thereby not spread it.
In a Slack someone posted the statement from Astronomer, and I had no idea what the statement was referring to. Now I can’t get away from hearing about the story.
(Reference: everyone else, to a first approximation, ever highlighted by a kisscam.)
Ethical polygamists wouldn't have reacted that way. Friends with nothing to hide wouldn't have reacted that way.
If you have something to hide, being out in public and acting ashamed about it is terrible tradecraft.
I am not making a "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" dismissal; this is a "don't be stupid in public" dismissal.
> Someone posted the footage online. A pile-up ensued. And their lives were turned upside down.
No, they created a situation where their lives would inevitably be turned upside down, and one of many possible triggers was hit.
> any of us might, for any particular reason, become... flawed people in the wrong place at the wrong time
No, they are people who chose to break their word to their spouses, and to break the social contract.
> the viral potential of these kinds of stories is a warning sign that our culture is obsessed with shame, surveillance, and control.
Shame is how a society polices its members without violence. Shame is good because it leaves the parties healthier than the alternative. They deserved to be shamed.
> An obsession with other people’s private lives is a sickness.
No, it has been the normal state of humans for probably as long as humans have existed. Humans survive in groups.
> Group chats, dating apps, emails — or in Byron’s and Cabot’s case, simply being in public with no intention to be filmed — should not be subject to public judgement.
He's equating things where you should have an expectation of privacy with "simply" cheating on one's spouse in a public space.
And why does intention matter? People should have expectations of privacy in public spaces if they don't intend to be seen? Is that really the claim here?
One of the first things I told my daughter when I gave her her first cell phone is never text anything you don’t want someone to screenshot and send it to everyone you know.
Sure enough, literally yesterday she got a text from friend A asking if my daughter liked her more than friend B.
Friend B sent the message from friend A’s phone as a test.
The year is 2025 and sadly the only place I have an expectation of privacy anymore is inside my own house verbally speaking to my family. And even then I expect my location to be available to more people than I care to admit.
The real pro tip is not to be seen fondling her breasts on camera.
It raises the question of the woman sitting next to them who is there underling who apparently aided and abetted in the coverup of the inappropriate relationship ...
Uh, what? They did get fired. It doesn't matter what level of the company you occupy, it's going to be against company policy to have a relationship with another employee over whom you have any degree of control (i.e. for a CEO, literally anyone).
They will probably both have a hard time getting another job since they both breached a very core workplace policy. Their reaction was not even shame so much as a (somewhat misguided) attempt at self-preservation.
dkdcio•6mo ago