Spying on strangers in public is not accountability

I fear that our world is turning into a giant Neighbourhood Watch Association, ruled over by a cadre of puritanical gossips and curtain-twitching busybodies, who patrol the streets with their cameras at the ready and pounce at the first sign of moral impropriety. 

In the latest instance of an emerging trend, a woman on TikTok yesterday (June 25) posted a video of a man on a plane: after eavesdropping on his conversation, she accused him of cheating, listed a number of identifying details, and urged her followers to help track down his wife to break the news. This bid for help was successful; both the man and his wife were quickly identified, and their names were posted online, along with photos of their family. The post went wildly viral, and the response was split down the middle. For some, the post was a disturbing act of spying, bordering on harassment; for others, it was “accountability reporting” – effectively a form of activism. 

This kind of digital surveillance isn’t new (I’ve written about it before), but what makes this iteration different is the posture of moral crusade – it’s digital vigilantism; the TikTok equivalent of a citizen’s arrest. There have always been cases where it’s permissible, or even in the public good, to share footage of someone acting badly in public (if you’re screaming racist abuse at someone, who cares about your right to privacy), but the category of behaviour that invites this response seems to be expanding all the time, to the point it includes intimate situations which don’t concern anyone but the people involved. The element of high-minded sanctimony makes this version of digital surveillance even more obnoxious than posting a video of someone dancing awkwardly at a club or shitting themselves on the tube – at least those people generally know they’re being mean; they’re not deluded enough to think they are advancing a cause or holding anyone accountable.

When the internet bands together to track down an accused love rat (or a mean girl) the people involved seem to truly believe they are acting as a force for good in the world. When the latest incident went viral, it was disturbing how many people defended it as a morally upstanding course of action; a blow against misogyny, or an uplifting example of women sticking together. Many people who dissented faced the accusation of being a cheater themselves – why else would they go to the bat to defend the right of some douchebag who (may) be having an affair?

There’s a strength of feeling around infidelity, but whether it’s OK to cheat or not is beside the point. Sacrificing real people on the altar of viral content is inevitably going to do more harm than good. If your partner was having an affair, you’d probably want to know, but you’d rather find out from a friend taking you aside and breaking the news gently, right? It’s hard to think of a worse way to discover something so painful than having thousands of internet-poisoned meddlers turning your private life into a public spectacle, posting your personal details and (if you have any) photos of your children, and ensuring that everyone you know hears about it as exactly the same time as you do. It’s hard to take seriously the idea that this is a feminist campaign when it involves destroying a woman’s life for sport. 

Whenever this kind of thing goes viral, no one actually cares about the injured party – the thrill of self-righteousness is far more important. If you really have to film people in public without their consent, please don’t pretend that it has anything to do with justice. If you don’t know someone, if you’re not in some kind of community with them, they are not accountable to you in any meaningful way. It doesn’t matter how much you disapprove of how they conduct themselves in their private life, you do not have the right to police them. We can all agree that cheating is bad, but people have been doxxed for far, far less (sometimes for completely harmless and innocuous behaviour.) Unless we want to spend our lives in fear of the TikTok secret police, it’s time to stand up to the snitches and bring back minding your own business.

@prettycritical

when i saw someone post a family photo, i knew y’all had lost the plot

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