The sadist assault on the 'Coldplay couple'

If they hadn't thought that there was something shameful in what they were doing, they would not have reacted that way, and nobody would know who they are.

(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.

This isn’t just a private matter this was a work affair between the CEO and HR and that affects the work lives of everyone at the company. Not only is there an official corporate structure but there is now an unofficial power dynamic that complicates and tarnishes the working environment, especially when some employees know and others do not. Employees are powerless to do anything about this rather common set of circumstances and have jumped on their chance to add to the disapproval. I think that’s the factor that has given this story legs. I think two non-execs people working at different companies would not have become nearly as viral.

> Still, the viral potential of these kinds of stories is a warning sign that our culture is obsessed with shame, surveillance, and control. An obsession with other people’s private lives is a sickness.

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.

I'm reminded of this TED talk in these scenarios, by a journalist and author who interviewed many people who have been publicly shamed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI

> I wish I didn’t know who Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot are. As you no doubt know by now…

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.

I'm consistently reminded of Brin's The Transparent Society [0], which has some interesting arguments about this sort of thing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

Pro tip : Don’t be seen at a public event with someone that is not your spouse/partner

> being in public with no intention to be filmed

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.

Huge flaw in his reasoning:

> 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?

What an idiotic article.

> 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.

People are not owed prestige like being a CEO or fame. People are also never actually cancelled, but being cancelled has become a meme for many to aspire to. It is a shame when it happens to otherwise innocent people, but most everyone seems to mostly be talking about how HR is a scam now if they aren't talking about the memes.

I don't want to preach how things should be, but the way things are, it should help to pretend that any and every moment of your life outside of home or a hotel will legally end up on YouTube, so act accordingly. Mask your face or your behavior, maybe both.

I feel like HR is often perceived as such a frequent source of workplace pain there's an element of schadenfreude here.

This is a case of corporate-enforced, zero tolerance cancellation. The law should be changed so that companies need to show that real, actual harm was wrought by the relationship. It is akin to a CEO being caught on camera uttering the N-word.

> There might be a story here about the hypocrisy of a CEO and an HR officer having an in-house affair that might get lesser-ranking employees fired.

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.

>Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it

> True, the current culture on X and other social-media apps is perhaps less immediately destructive than it was during peak woke (circa 2017 to 2021).

Pardon?