Kristen Gyles | Social media and ‘people business’

A few weeks ago, one TikTok user who was flying in an airplane, secretly recorded and posted a video of a fellow passenger – a man – who was seated beside a woman and captioned the video with the following message:

“If this man is your husband flying on United Airlines flight 2140, from Houston to New York, he’s probably going to be staying with Katy tonight. Him and Katy met at the airport bar and haven’t left each other’s side since then. He convinced her to change her seat so she could sit next to him and they could drink. I don’t know his name but know hers because he keeps saying it. He’s also said his eight-year-old daughter danced for the Astros opening tonight. He’s from Ft Worth, says he’s a surfer and just got a new surfboard. (He’s) supposedly president of the company he works for and flying to NYC for business. I wouldn’t have known he was married if he hadn’t been wearing his wedding ring. Excuse me rubbing my eye, I didn’t know what else to do to self-record. Do your thing TikTok. #findthewife”.

The woman who posted the video was seated across from the man and woman and overheard their entire conversation. She pretended something was in her eye and pretended to be using her phone’s front camera to look into her eye. In reality, she was actually recording the interaction between the man and the woman. Having posted the video, she encouraged TikTok users to help locate the man’s wife and bring her attention to the video.

Is this woman a hero or a villain? Perhaps the man’s answer will differ from his wife’s.

On one hand, the woman who made the post has volunteered herself to perform the role of chief justice for the airplane. She sees a man on her flight wearing a wedding ring and yet clearly engaging flirtatiously with another woman. She knows he must be brought to justice, and she wants to save the day by bringing the wife’s attention to her cheating husband.

But she can’t do that without putting him on blast. She identifies him as being from Ft. Worth, as being the father of an eight-year-old girl, as being the president of the company he works for, and as flying to NYC for business. Whereas these details are the only information she has that can be used to identify the man to his supposedly ignorant wife, the same details, along with the blurry video, identify him to others as well. If all this information is true, she would have exposed some of the worst details of his personal life in front of work or business associates and other acquaintances.

INTENTION

Was that the intention?

Who knows? ‘Katy’, who was also identified in the narrative, may also get some flak for her involvement in the situation. Commenting on the video and referring to Katy, one person said, “That’s my neighbour and she’s married too!” Oh boy!

Some actions will neither be clearly right nor clearly wrong, given the vast number of issues at play, but with the current cancel culture still alive and active, it is hard to be certain what an individual’s intentions are when they post pictures and videos of random people and accuse them of things, regardless of how apparent these ‘things’ are.

The other thing to consider is that onlookers never do have the full picture. In this case, the woman who took the liberty of recording the video is using the mere fact that the man in question is wearing a ring on his ring finger as evidence that he is married and cheating on his wife. What if she is wrong?

Is that a risk she should take? You know, in the name of justice for #poorwife?

CANCEL CULTURE

Cancel culture is a relatively modern phenomenon in which people who speak or act in socially unacceptable ways are ostracised and shunned. This ostracism could be as mild as being shamed online or could be as severe as job loss or eviction. It might not necessarily have been the intention of the woman to embarrass the man or have him ‘cancelled’, but simply to open the eyes of his wife. Nonetheless, it seems she ended up doing both, and some viewers who have taken the issue to heart have gone as far as to search for the man on social media to harass him about his behaviour.

In any case, not too many people will have much pity for a two-timing cheater caught red-handed. But the story should raise a few questions about the way we use social media. People nowadays don’t only post pictures and videos of ‘bad’ guys. It has become socially acceptable to snap pictures of random people and post them online for the most trivial of reasons, without any thought about the impact doing so could have on the individual.

It is also becoming more and more common to see people posting pictures of others to make fun of them. One may see a severely overweight woman sitting in a fast-food restaurant and think it is okay to snap a picture of her and post it online, with a critique on what she is eating and why it is not a healthy meal. Whatever deep and profound point one believes they are making when posting online, it shouldn’t come at the expense of another person’s dignity. Not everyone wants to be made into a public spectacle, and unless there is some clear benefit to posting people’s business online, perhaps it should remain as people’s business, and not ours.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.