If the NSA wanted to rule the world, they could. Maybe they do, I dunno.
The first link seems to be broken. Also I'm not really sure what " stuff like telephone logs and financial transaction records will create huge political instabilities" means. Their mere existence will? Access to them by spy agencies and/or corporations will?
Imagine if running for high elected office under a certain political persuasion was basically a guarantee that your most embarrassing phone calls, texts, purchases, and browsing habits would be leaked to Fox News...
I sincerely hope some prominent politicians get royally reamed by the fact that companies can violate their own privacy policies with impunity. It's the only way we'll get serious privacy protection into law.
Imagine if running for high elected office under a certain political persuasion was basically a guarantee that your most embarrassing phone calls, texts, purchases, and browsing habits would be leaked to Fox News...
That's a horrible thought, but surely if this game is going to be played, it will be played by both sides. Which I think is vastly less healthy than being played by neither side, as it will lead to further strengthening of the trend towards only abnormally circumspect and historyless individuals being "qualified" to run for office. But it's not clear that would have partisan implications one way or the other.
(Or, as have been hypothesized, maybe at some point soon the dam just breaks and in most cases having your most embarrassing phone calls, texts, purchases, and browsing habits leaked to the world becomes a total non-issue, politically, because everyone understands that everyone has those skeletons (although for many people that could still cause personal problems, sure).)
Imagine if running for high elected office under a certain political persuasion was basically a guarantee that your most embarrassing phone calls, texts, purchases, and browsing habits would be leaked to Fox News...
Well, in the UK, we're already in that position as you may have noticed. What I mean is, what's new? Politicians have been brought down by justified and unjustified invasions of privacy for decades.
Every Potential 2040 President Already Unelectable Due to Facebook
Or, as have been hypothesized, maybe at some point soon the dam just breaks and in most cases having your most embarrassing phone calls, texts, purchases, and browsing habits leaked to the world becomes a total non-issue,
This seems to be the actual trend of history. Ever since our first divorced president, I don't think there's been an election won by the candidate with the less scandalous personal history. (I'm counting GHW Bush and Dukakis as a wash.)
More seriously a school superintendent in Des Moines had to resign because she sent PG-13 emails to her boyfriend.
The emails were uncovered as a part of an unrelated investigation, which makes me think that they were just a pretext, and there was some other reason people wanted her out. Even so, if a public official is going to be driven out of office, the public should know the real reason, and not get told that writing "I would NEVER have done with anyone else what I did this morning" on your work computer is a offense that can get you fired.
That last link, as well as the observation that even if the firing was a pretext it still sucks, via AWB.
At least it looks like the Omaha World-Herald reporter was perfectly willing to exclude the personal emails. Not that it helps her at all, but I'm a former subscriber.
I'd like to put in a good word for invading politicians' privacy. Yes, Rupert Murdoch killed your dog cancelled that show you liked made Roger Ailes the jowly despot of Sixth Avenue is a bad, bad man, and I hate ever to sound like a bob, but men and women with pretensions to rule should be examined closely, their hypocrisies and petty chicaneries exposed, gaps in their stories exploited.
2. Their availability to many interested parties. I think there is something new under the sun-- in the past, someone either trusted or in the periphery of trust chose to betray. Now, even passively generated information (not like FB in my mind) can be a powerful resource.
The sentiment in 1. bothers most Americans IME (paranoia is for losers, basically), and is also unfalsifiable. I am interested in the boundary of actual political uses of passively generated information.
12 is the kind of thing I'm thinking of, except that work email is like FB, no expectation of privacy. Google interestingly enough does not actually promise in their TOS doc to refrain from reading email or shared google docs.
15 I disagree with. Financial transparency is more important than personal history IMO, but much much harder. In both of the cases I cited, phone history pointed to financial inquiries.
16.3: If that guy really was a Google subroutine, that would explain so much.
12 is the kind of thing I'm thinking of, except that work email is like FB, no expectation of privacy.
Especially government email. I don't think she should have been fired but godamn people are stupid. Everyone in that kind of job knows that your email is basically open to anyone who wants to fill out the forms for an info request. Every email from your job related govt. account should be written knowing that shit could be read aloud on the evening news.
It is really that easy? I might be fun to submit an info request for every city council email that contains the word "asshole" or something like that.
Go for it.
http://openrecords.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/open_records/4434
Was it Halford or Carp who had the brilliant discovery trick of searching a large body of produced emails for "Fuck" or "fuckup", on the grounds that those words are going to occur around interesting things?
The Boston story didn't say how they got the phone records. Leak from phone company, or records request for phone bills being paid by the Housing Authority are pretty different things.
I've worked for (and against) a number of housing authorities over the years. Conclusive refutation, imo, of the Republican maxim that local government is generally/always/somehow less corrupt/more responsive than the feds.
21 -- Not I, but it's a neat idea.
Maybe searching for Cartman quotes. Anybody a little too into Cartman shouldn't be trusted with too much power.
A mailbox search company using a big batch of the Enron e-mails as a demonstration of their product brought home to me that the e-mail thing is not necessarily limited to government jobs (there were other search tools put in front of it as well). As I recall they offered a few prizes such as PDAs for a few categories like "most embarrassing", "most likely to get you fired", etc.
21: I take credit. It just worked again.
On the OP, theere's an interesting history of the way the political market treats certian kinds of violations. When someone comes up with an new kind of schandalous behavior, there are headlines and a few people lose their jobs or confirmations or whatever Then it becomes apparent that the malfeasance was universal, so everyone in both parties ignores any evidence for it. Think of Douglas Ginsberg losing a Supreme Court position because he smoked marijuana. Also the several women who lost Clinton administration appoiontments because they hadn't withheld taxes from their nannies' paychecks.
This will happen, maybe already has happened, with embarrassing tweets and facebook posts.
21 would work for some personalities. For others, emails containing the single sentence "I need to talk to you."
The google thing where web history is browseable has potential in the same direction. 26.nanny is another good example.
25: I searched that corpus as part of my job*. I will say that if you're the kind of asshole who sends off-color jokes to large distributions from your work e-mail, consider that even if your e-mail account might never be made public, the same might not be true for your brother-in-law or old college buddy or the 25 other people you copy. But if you are that kind of asshole, you probably don't think about that**.
*And then I went home and searched with a more eclectic set of search terms--somewhat voyeuristic and creepy, but fascinating.
**Unlike someone careful who partakes in the foolproof cover of posting under pseudonyms on blogs ...
25: It really is brilliant -- unfortunately, I haven't had occasion to use it since you mentioned it.
Speaking of Facebook, is it even worth voting on their proposed privacy policies?
Sort of topically, I just walked past the Google Street View car. I couldn't come up with anything interesting do to but maybe everybody looking at Forbes in Oakland will see me carrying fastfood down the sidewalk.
It wasn't original to me. The firm lore is that a paralegal was experimenting with ways of wasting time in databases, and was surprised to find useful stuff.
I get the intuitive desire to turn loose the human flesh search engine, as they say in China, on candidates for office, but I think it's a worse idea when you actually think about it. The person to ask is teraz.
Different Central European countries took different lines on what to do with the secret police files after 1989 - Germany went with "release, to the people named in the files or bona fide scholars", Hungary went with "let sleeping dogs lie", Poland sort of compromised between the two and repeatedly changed policy.
The upshot, though, with the countries that didn't release them, or worse, made them available to the government but not to the general public, was that there were constant scandals involving leaks of what purported to be files from the archive, but which could in fact be absolutely anything (selective quoting, the truth, part of the truth, genuine but altered documents, outright fakes) as there was no practical way to check. It was always possible, even if someone volunteered their information, to allege that there was more in the real secret archive. People with access to the files would release stuff (genuine, fake, or cherry-picked) to smear or boost political candidates. People with no access to the files would pretend to have secret files. Think Birthers and TXANG on crack and steroids. Obviously, worse in the Ukraine or Russia.
I don't think anyone actually went the whole way with "least said, soonest mended" and shredded the lot, but the problem would be that it is very difficult to prove that everything was indeed destroyed and no true copies exist.
So you need either no records, as in the world before CALEA or RIPA III, or else total release. But total release is like the unregulated free market - there is no such thing, and the Germans certainly needed to legislate and build institutions to make that option work.
32: Might be doing the area. I passed one on Rt. 28 last week. I am curious as to how many they have in the field. Did not find with a very quick search, but here is a description of a chat with a driver.
35: I'll see if I can see me at Forbe and McKee. I assume it takes a few days to get put on the web.
Give me the keys to a major telco billing system and, well, I'll give you plenty of trouble. Those things are stuffed with personal data. (It is possibly telling that so many companies in the field seem to be based in Israel.)
Le Monde did a great article not so long ago about mining call-detail records (CDRs, or fadettes in French from facture détailée téléphonique) after they were targeted for illegal telecoms surveillance. Killer detail: they didn't find out where the dog went to school, but they did find out where the daughter went to ride her pony.
The piece is on this URI but its availability comes and goes weirdly, presumably based on who's suing this week.
See also. This was also the substance of the Cheney-era NSA operation codenamed STELLAR WIND, which either started after 9/11, or if you believe the imprisoned CEO of Qwest, as soon as they got into the White House.
Every email from your job related govt. account should be written knowing that shit could be read aloud on the evening news.
+1. Get a smartphone and write this stuff on your own personal email.
On a smart phone, only google or apple know about your sexy times.
Unimaginative, that's great. The only problem is that for some people I sue/represent, that would pick up like every third email on every subject.
In the land of ubiquitous embarrassing youthful disclosures on social media, the bland and the luddites are king.
In the land of ubiquitous embarrassing youthful disclosures on social media, the bland and the luddites are king.
38 and 39 are great.
Here's a working link to a fadette scandal, I had not known that word:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2012/01/18/97001-20120118FILWWW00411-fadettemarseille-plainte-du-monde.php
I don't think anyone actually went the whole way with "least said, soonest mended" and shredded the lot, but the problem would be that it is very difficult to prove that everything was indeed destroyed and no true copies exist.
Indeed. Isn't that what happened with Hoover? He said the FBI had got rid of the dirt files but it hadn't.
Unimaginative, that's great. The only problem is that for some people I sue/represent, that would pick up like every third email on every subject.
Yeah, I don't know what disclosure law is like in the US, but I'm pretty sure in England a half competent barrister would be able to rebuff that request as too broad.
Oh, I don't think you could phrase a document request that asked for 'Fuck', but once you've got your 30K emails and you're searching them, it could be fruitful. It'd have to be tailored to local swearing patterns, I guess -- to catch whatever would be likely to come out to mark a momentous event but not otherwise.
46.last: I believe they are talking on how to efficiently search a large body of e-mails already produced using other criteria.
47: Aren't you busy herding sheep or worrying about a phone call from earlier in the day or something. Sheesh.
Should be, shouldn't I? Actually, I really should be. Most of the flock are very self-maintaining: I only really have one scary sheep.
On a somewhat related note, I doubt most of you have been following E3 quite as closely as I have. So I'll catch you up. Nintendo surprised a lot of people with a presentation on their upcoming new hardware that seemed to suggest they were shedding their infamous control-freakery and fear of the internet and allowing people to do relatively innovative social type stuff. But it turns out that, no, Nintendo are still utter control freaks and plan to have not just parental controls and swear filters, but actual human monitoring of messages before they are delivered.
Eh, don't worry. Nothing I wouldn't expect from a public sector worker.
Every email from your job related govt. account should be written knowing that shit could be read aloud on the evening news.
You should include explanatory directions to the newsreader so you show to better advantage. [This is a double entendre. Pause briefly and wink at the camera,]
Are there any big public-sector email disclosure databases? I've never engaged in this kind of search and am not as interested in Enron etc.
It'd have to be tailored to local swearing patterns, I guess -- to catch whatever would be likely to come out to mark a momentous event but not otherwise.
In my field and geography, I can't imagine what the boundary would be. Maybe a Richard Mottram level outburst, but the individual bits of swearing aren't particularly out of the ordinary. It's the concatenation.
54. Somewhere there's the Complete Works of Julian Assange, but don't ask me how you find it.
Model Live-Tweets Married Actor Trying To Hook Up With Her On A Plane. Via Tedra.
I suppose if I post every example relevant to this thread as it happens I won't get anything else done.
Never heard of Stetten till now but tempted to follow her if she pulls that kind of thing a lot.
Model Live-Tweets Married Actor Trying To Hook Up With Her On A Plane. Via Tedra.
Model uses mobile phone on a plane.
51: That's a "No" on GTA V for Nintendo, then?
Well they did do GTA: Chinatown Wars on the DS.
54: Palin's emails here, but the search doesn't seem to work anymore.
I sincerely hope some prominent
politicians get royally reamed by the
fact that companies can violate their
own privacy policies with impunity. It's
the only way we'll get serious privacy
protection into law.
Note, for example, the fact that video rental records, of all things, enjoy strong federal privacy protection. After the Senate judiciary committee subpoenaed Robert Bork's records from his neighborhood video store* (they didn't find anything interesting), members of Congress saw the obvious risk to themselves and acted with unusual dispatch to pass a law.
*Youngsters, video rental places used to be a thing, back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
The video rental place by me is now a food pantry. Pirates impoverished all the movie producers, so I assume that is who gets food there.
65
... After the Senate judiciary committee subpoenaed Robert Bork's records from his neighborhood video store* ...
Actually they were given to a reporter. See here .
... When I arrived that day I told the assistant manager I was thinking of writing about Judge Bork's video tastes.
"Cool," the assistant manager said. "I'll look."
The food pantry is run by Jewish Children and Family Services. At the bottom of the sign, it says: "Single and in need. Try a Lutheran and leave us the fuck alone."
67.last: "Bork, eh? Hmm, some guy named Clarence Thomas, ... Clarence Thomas, ... Clarence Thomas, Clarence Thomas, .... Nothing for a Robert Bork, though."
40
+1. Get a smartphone and write this stuff on your own personal email.
Some peoples' offices don't have cell phone reception. I have to go outside if I have to make a personal phone call. Also, some phones, even some smartphones, are inconvenient to write on.
I think I'm pretty good about the use of my work e-mail account. Personal e-mail from that account is brief, anodyne, to the point, and usually related to things I couldn't do after work or from home. Technically even that is misuse of government resources, but I really, really can't imagine that would get me in trouble.
I worry about all the other stuff more. I see co-workers with seniority over me reading blogs sometimes, so I know there's some leeway, but how much? I'm sure something in this building tracks URLs I've gone to, but can my bosses see the record or just the IT department? Can they only see URLs or also screenshots or even keystrokes? Is someone here reading this?
Web sites I used to read are no longer visitable from my office because they have been added to my office's filter. My bosses have made remarks that make me wonder how much they know about my habits. Just today I accidentally used my "personal" e-mail signature in a reply to someone in the office. When things like that happen I get paranoid for a few days afterwards.
In the end, two things reassure me. First, their filters are pretty dumb. Every single day I get the "blocked by your filter" image on multiple Web sites, because it affects tons of widgets and stuff. All YouTube is blocked by default and lots of other domains. The filters probably get so many false positives that blogs get lost in the noise. (Knock on wood...)
And second, I'm not that important. This is a quiet office and I have a quiet role in it. In theory I work on important stuff, but at such a far remove that no one would care if I keep my nose clean like they'd care about a politician or school superintendent.
Is there an established problem checking your personal account, like a google account, on a work computer? Or is the smartphone advice just being extra-cautious?
71: In my case, it's one of those blocked domains. I could check other popular mail services to see if any of them aren't blocked, but starting a new e-mail account just for that seems like more trouble than it's worth. And, again, I'm not sure if that would solve any problems because I'm not sure how much stuff is monitored in addition to e-mail.
57 -- No one seems to be saying this, but someone linked to this on facebook and I got pretty pissed off at that model. A close reading of the tweets about the allegedly gross hitting-on reveals plenty of ambiguity, and it's totally likely/possible that she ruined that dude's life through exaggeration.
Or, he just got a ton of extra publicity and it was a boon to his douche-bag career. I'm having trouble feeling sorry for him.
73: I don't think there is much of a charitable reading available there.
Brian has a wedding ring. I ask him how his wife is, and he says he just wears the ring because he likes it. Right Brian
Denying you are married is douche-y. Using such an implausible lie is double douche-y.
After thinking about it, I'm now assuming that 73 is just trolling.
75: Yeah, the line that Gary Bell (Major League baseball player) would use* when asked if he was married was better: "Yeah, but I'm not a fanatic about it."
*According to Jim Bouton in Ball Four.
I thought the model and the actor seemed like terrible people.
She doesn't seem terrible, clever and an OK writer, not much sympathy for other people and plenty of self regard. The price paid for being good-looking and young.
Well, but you hav to assume that the model is also dramatizing the incident to generate a successful narrative for her tweets. The wedding ring thing is the only line that's close to a direct come on, and even that's ambiguous -- he could have just been saying he lost his wedding ring. The rest or it sounds like it could have come from some annoyingly earnest religious rude but isn't criminal.
I mean that he "likes" his ring. Or likes being married. Or whatever -- once you stop trusting the narrative of the tweets, the whole attack falls apart, and she certainly seems like someone trying to generate a story.
You can't mention both Kurt Russell and Matt McConaughey without being clearly in the wrong.
It's hard to argue with the claim that "If she made everything up, then that'd be pretty awful of her." Not clear why you think that she made up the ring response though.
Not that she made everything up, just that she's portraying an annoying but not harmful guy in the worst possible light -- ie, he wasn't actually hitting on her.
There's two separate parts (the wedding ring part and the engagement part) where in her version he's obviously trying to get her to think that he's not married. Do you really think he wasn't trying to give the impression that wasn't married? He name-dropped two actors, but never mentioned his wife or kid?
I mean something like this shouldn't ruin someone's life, because it's just not that bad of behavior. But that's why people shouldn't be conservative christians.
I mean, the headline everyone walks away with is "Model Live-Tweets Married Actor Trying To Hook Up With Her On A Plane." And even the tweets she's sending don't support that. And the one-sided narrative of someone's twitter feed (actually it seems she's a chronic twitterer with tons of followers) aren't exactly a reliable transcript of a conversation.
Yeah, the headline's wrong. There's no reason to assume he was trying to hook up with her, only that he was flirting. But unless she's straight up lying, I just don't see how you get to him not hitting on her.
Maybe he was just practicing hitting on women in case he ever joined the CIA and had to have sex with a hot Russian to save the world.
79: I know at least two non-terrible actors.
Do you really think he wasn't trying to give the impression that wasn't married?
Who knows? I don't think you can tell in any kind of reliable way from these tweets. I mean, if you instantly assume the impression that she wants to present of the guy, sure.
Does "flirting" = "hitting on"? Even assuming the worst about the guy from the tweets the worst thing he does is be misleading in a stupidly obvious way about whether or not he's married. He never propositions her, even indirectly, even in her telling.
The thing is, she was there, she knows what happened. She's clearly giving the impression he was hitting on her. If he wasn't, she's slandering him and it's really lousy of her. If he wasn't hitting on her and she defended herself by saying "I didn't say he was hitting on me, I just repeated what he said," that would be no excuse -- she would have done just as bad a thing whether or not she quite lied.
But you can't tell what's going on from a close-reading of ambiguity in her tweets. The straightforward reading of her tweets is that he was hitting on her -- they do, in fact support that, in that everyone reading them believes that's what she's asserting. If it's true, she's not doing anything wrong by telling the world. If it's false, and she's giving a false impression of the conversation to get attention, she's a terrible person. From where you're sitting, you haven't got any way of telling which is the case other than by picking a side which seems more plausible to you.
90: If they are good at acting, how can you tell they aren't just pretending to be not terrible.
93 crossed with 88 et seq. I suppose if you think "It'd be okay to embarrass a married man if he'd actually unambiguously proposed intercourse, but not for merely flirting and denying that he's married, if the conversation didn't get to the point of discussing particular sex acts and whether they were going to happen," then you might think she was doing something wrong by tweeting the conversation -- you're right that there's nothing that suggests he got to the point of a literal proposition. But that seems like a weird place to draw the line: flirting with denial that he's married seems quite bad enough behavior to me.
The straightforward reading of her tweets is that he was hitting on her -- they do, in fact support that, in that everyone reading them believes that's what she's asserting.
I disagree, see 92, though -- accepting the tweets at face value -- that probably requires a difference between "mild flirting" and "hitting on."
Also, while I agree that we don't know what happened, I disagree that she necessarily "knows what happened." It's perfectly plausible that she (honestly, but incorrectly) assumed for whatever reason that a guy making friendly but stupid conversation was hitting on her, and so she overdramatized it in her tweets. Anyhow, it's shitty to take this kind of thing as strong evidence about this guy.
In fact, where your argument breaks down is that you're saying, essentially, that you can tell from her tweets that he didn't do anything all that bad. If that's the case, then what's the problem with the world knowing about everything he said? She didn't sign up to keep secrets for him.
If it's true, she's not doing anything wrong by telling the world.
I stridently disagree. If she kept the narrative to "some dude next to me on the plane", it would be fine. But publicly identifying him by name was lousy. Unless he was being a real creep, in which case he maybe deserved it. But her stream of tweets gives no indication of creepiness, even though she wants to present it that way. The extent of his creepiness seems to be mildly hitting on her.
It seems pretty clear that she's ruined his career. Not sure if she's ruined his marriage. Other details, not clear.
That's not my argument. I'm saying that you can't trust the obvious implication that she (and headline writers) are making about this conversation, and so it's (at least very possibly) a shitty thing that everyone is jumping to conclusions about this guy based on these tweets. I mean, I dunno, maybe the guy is a total lecher. I just don't think it's cool to do what she did, or for people on the internet to rely on it in making judgments about the guy.
But publicly identifying him by name was lousy. Unless he was being a real creep, in which case he maybe deserved it.
Stipulating her truthfulness arguendo, which I don't actually have an opinion about one way or the other, bullshit. You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it, unless I've made you some kind of promise not to.
99: Why would you think his career was ruined? Actors who hit on models don't get hired? That seems implausible. I'd worry much more about his personal life.
I mean, did she even say "leave me alone"? Or, "I'm not interested"? Or "If you keep it up, I'm going to start publicly tweeting all this for amusement value"? Because if she said any of that, then sure, all's fair. But my sense from reading the tweets is that she was getting a kick out of tweeting all this publicly, so probably engaging in a bit of friendly bantor with him. His comments certainly seem to suggest that. They don't seem pushy or aggressive.
As I said, lousy.
98, 100: I'm mostly aligned with the Halford-urple Trans-Dinosaurian Alliance on this one.
If he weren't a conservative christian this wouldn't even be a story, right? "Married celebrity flirts with attractive young woman" happens probably thousands of times a day. If he didn't make a pass it's hardly even bad behavior. (Not letting on that you're married isn't good behavior, but it's a very minor infraction on its own.)
I think posting this is not good behavior either. People deserve a little privacy, and that includes behaving slightly badly. On the other hand, it'd probably be good for the world if more powerful men think twice before hitting on young women. So again, pretty minor infraction.
I reiterate that I don't actually have an opinion as to which of them is telling the truth. I also do not claim that it's impossible for her to have been mistaken about his intent.
Nonetheless, the two of you seem to be claiming that it's generally a shitty thing to do for a woman to make it publicly known that a stranger was flirting with her, because she's got a responsibility to keep his behavior secret in case she was misinterpreting it and her possible misinterpretation damaged his reputation. I'm not seeing that.
You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it, unless I've made you some kind of promise not to.
I don't think you believe this. I'm sure you would think it's lousy of someone to collect things you've said here, and post them publicly under your real name. I'm sure you thought it was lousy of ___/___ to post Labs' IP address. He didn't promise not to. Why is in-person communication different?
A string of similar tweets from someone about a married celebrity hitting on them would definitely be a story, even if it wasn't a conservative Christian. Indeed, depending on the actor, the level of detail, and the corroboration, you could get between $5000 and $25,000 for that story for a lot of non-conservative Christian married actors.
In 81/82 and 91 Halford is clearly preparing his entry for the Grice United Fund's award for outstanding achievement in charitable interpretation.
Ok, the live-tweeting thing makes it a better story, and there's lots and lots of stupid stories written about celebrities. Still, most bits of celebrity "news" doesn't cross my radar. I do think it's the hypocrisy that makes it the story it is.
107: In terms of outing me? Not particularly -- that is, I can't think of anyone who'd care much if I were unmasked. (I'm out at work. Not to my parents, but that's about it.)
You're right that the Labs thing seems different -- I think I'm distinguishing it on the basis that he didn't intend to communicate his IP address to Mr. Nicely Bouncy. Brian intended to communicate everything he said to a strange woman on a plane.
So wait, the middle-aged guys are lining up for sympathy for the dude?
Based on her other writing, she seems like a clever narcissist, but not vicious. The guy chose to identify himself by name to her. If 108 is true, then he's an imbecile. Where's the evidence that she acted interested in order to mock him? Rather the opposite-- "How's your spouse" is the way that married adults are told to back off, I think.
There are degrees of bad behavior and degrees of how public the revealing can and should be. I don't think anyone would have a problem if she told this same story in exactly the same over drinks with friends. Or, on the other hand, if he aggressively groped her, I don't think most people would have a problem if she told 10,000,000 people through Twitter. But, here, the "flirting" is kind of inherently an ambiguous activity, subject to misinterpretation, and the disclosure was extremely public, primed for dramatic impact for her twitter feed, and damaging. I think it's shitty behavior on her part.
111: Okay, let me rephrase: I would think it's lousy of someone to collect things I've said here, and post it all publicly on facebook, identifying me. And I'd think that was lousy even though none of you have promised me you won't do that. And I think people generally think of in-person communications as private affairs. Sure, they could be repeated, but they won't be publicized, unless they're somehow newsworthy. And they certainly won't be publicized just for malicious enjoyment. Or, rather, they could be (everyone's got smartphones these days), but doing that would be lousy.
And I still don't think you really believe your own standard. It wouldn't be lousy of a co-worker to repeat to the boss some grumbling you did about the boss in front of the co-worker? Even if the co-worker is doing it for no reason other than malicious amusement?
106, maybe it's just the fact that it developed in such an amusing way, but this series of tweets looks to me like the sort of thing that would make sense as a calculated act of personal vengeance against someone who had wronged or embarrassed her in the past. The fact that it was just done casually against someone who was a stranger and whose only offense was being annoying and boring does seem "shitty" to me.
Rather the opposite-- "How's your spouse" is the way that married adults are told to back off, I think.
Well, yes.
Thinking about it, the idea that it's fair game to reveal anything about anyone in a broad public forum unless you've explicitly agreed on confidentiality in advance, is crazy. If I had a perfectly innocuous conversation with a stranger on a plane about politics, and then he retweeted his version of it to his 10,000 twitter followers without telling me, I would be extremely angry, and I think with good reason.
So wait, the middle-aged guys are lining up for sympathy for the dude?
What a shock.
I don't have any particular opinion on this, although I'm generally inclined to sympathize with her rather than him. I will note, however, that the linked post includes only a selection of her tweets, and looking at the actual feed gives a fuller sense of the sequence and timing. Not sure this makes any actual difference to the positions being taken here, though.
112.1: Yes, that appears to be the case.
I am well-prepared to believe the guy was an ass. His side of the story, BTW. Overly colored in his favor as well I suspect.
"How's your spouse" is the way that married adults are told to back off, I think.
"How's your spouse" is just as often testing-the-waters. Will the answer be "She's wonderful--we're as in love as the day we married!", or "Let's talk about something else right now."?
114.2: The degree of lousiness would depend completely on the level of personal relationship I had with the coworker. There are people here who I wouldn't say anything to that I wouldn't want repeated up the chain -- I wouldn't feel betrayed if someone in that category ratted me out, because they don't owe me any loyalty. Strange woman you're bothering on an airplane? Doesn't owe you any loyalty.
114.1: Unmasking someone who's actively trying to be anonymous seems like a very different sort of thing. Like, I know your real name, I know you don't want Unfogged associated with it, and I know you wouldn't have told me your real name unless you believed I wouldn't out you. So if I outed you, I'd be doing something shitty. I took myself out of that category because I've spilled enough details here that Joe Random Reader could out me without much effort.
But ActorMan was bragging about his real life, not trying to be anonymous.
By LB's standard, she could sleep with him and live-tweet all his sexual preferences to his parents without offending any standards of decent behavior.
117: DAMN STRAIGHT. I'M NEVER PICKING UP THAT FRIEDMAN BASTARD AGAIN.
118.2: looking at the actual feed gives a fuller sense of the sequence and timing
Looking through the feed, the tweet about the ring appears to have been deleted (and I see that is noted in at least one followup story).
122: I find it hard to picture a plausible one-night stand that didn't include an implicit agreement not to do that sort of thing. Sitting next to someone on a plane doesn't give rise to the same sort of implicit agreement.
Further to 124, there apparently was another tweet since deleted (and not part of the selection linked in 57), 'Holy shit Brian came back from the bathroom WITHOUT his wedding ring on! Watch out Virgin America, you've got a real charmer on board.'
I confess that I committed to memory a sentence from what the guy next to me on my last flight was writing, since he seemed to be a professional writer with insane libertarian tendencies and I was hoping he would do something stupid. But he didn't do anything stupid and the sentence I memorized has not yet been published in googleable form.
124: I did notice that -- I saw one tweet about the ring, that she asked about his wife and he deflected, but not the tweet saying he'd removed it in the bathroom. That might push me toward thinking she was untruthful, which would make me think she was being shitty. But I'm not clear enough on it to have an opinion about truthfulness one way or the other.
They both seem unpleasant, I shouldn't have enjoyed reading about the whole thing. Like being into Cintra Wilson.
LB is completely right. I have no sympathy for a douchy lech and I can't imagine this will hurt his career.
Plus, he's an actor - he's trying his best to ascend into a career that makes all your actions public territory, automatically.
128: Although I would not be surprised if the deletions could have been the result of some hot my-lawyer-to-your-lawyer action. So not necessarily wrong, but not worth keeping up. I will say, that if the wedding ring off in the bathroom one was true, it erodes my sympathies for the guy.
Seriously, I lose any sympathy at a response to "How's your wife" other than "She's great, want to see pictures of the kids?" Or, that is, depending on the circumstances I can sympathize with someone who's cheating or trying to cheat, but any response that deflects admitting the existence of a spouse seems to me to be very clearly contemplating cheating as a possibility.
I think the secret fear of Halford/Urple/others here is "I would definitely strike up a conversation with a pretty model, if we were sitting next to each other on the plane, because hey, she's gorgeous. How horrifying would it be to know she live-tweeted our conversation and made me look like an ass?"
To which I say, she's a model, so the above scenario happens to her constantly. She can discern a douchy-hit-on attempt from a clumsy excited middle-aged dad.
I like her blog. I'm not sure I'd like her so much but her blog's fun to read.
133: If you don't have kids, you need to lie?
This is my last comment on this, but I'm not sure where LB's "You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it, unless I've made you some kind of promise not to" is coming from. If that's a statement about the law, it's wrong -- at least three of the privacy torts, intrusion on seclusion, publication of private facts, and false light -- can apply so long to the publication of even true facts as long as the information is sensitive and there is some reasonable expectation of privacy in the communication. That might include a personal conversation about, for example, your ex-fiancees' reason for breaking up with you. In fact, I expect that the actor would have at least a decent shot at a false light case in this scenario.
As a matter of ethics or practical morality, it's even more crazy. If you are an acquaintance or even a stranger and I tell you something remotely sensitive in personal conversation, even if it's not particularly confidential or I don't know you particularly well, it's pretty shitty to disclose that information to the entire world in a public forum without telling me that you plan to do so.
"How's your wife"
"Still secretary of state, but that makes me think of the horrors happening in Syria and I don't want to do that sitting next to someone as nice as you."
If you don't have kids, you need to lie?
No, when they say "yes" you respond with "Ha! Joke's on you, we don't have any kids." That'll shut them up so that you can go back to enjoying your flight in peace and quiet.
LB, can you identify any plausible motivation for her actions that isn't lousy? That's what I don't understand. Was she thinking it would be funny to humiliate him? That's lousy. I can't read this exchange and think she was really trying to strike a blow for justice.
As a matter of ethics or practical morality, it's even more crazy. If you are an acquaintance or even a stranger and I tell you something remotely sensitive in personal conversation, even if it's not particularly confidential or I don't know you particularly well, it's pretty shitty to disclose that information to the entire world in a public forum without telling me that you plan to do so.
Douchy hitting-on someone is a remotely sensitive conversation?!
Relatedly, I'm not very sympathetic in general to anyone who tries to strike up conversations with random strangers on airplanes.
there is some reasonable expectation of privacy in the communication
Which really doesn't apply to a conversation with a strange woman in a public place.
LB, can you identify any plausible motivation for her actions that isn't lousy? That's what I don't understand.
For attention and to make people laugh - the same reason models/actors/bloggers live and breathe.
I'll talk to women occasionally. I can usually tell who's interested in talking more and who isn't. There's ambiguity sometimes, but that's a reason to pay attention to what the other person says next, not to offer flattery and self-praise at a higher volume. He's an idiot and she seems unkind but witty.
134. Not always true, I think. Women can definitely take a completely innocent attempt at small talk the wrong way, though I think the model we're talking about was right this time.
Truly, the middle-aged white dude "Hitting on chicks is privileged!!!" convention is priceless.
I think teo's secret fear* is that a random stranger will try to strike up a conversation with him on a plane.
*His public fear as well, apparently.
it's linked at her twitter page (http://twitter.com/#!/MelissaStetten).
I always feel nervous linking blogs here because I worry I'd feel responsible and guiltridden if the person were to show up and read the thread. YOU link it, then it's not my problem. (it totally would still be my problem)
TYPING WITH ONE HAND IS SO SLOW. SAD FACE EMOTICON.
Well, if you guys are tailing off I hope they can finally iron this out on Fox and Friends.
I agree with all of 146. And 147. Why not, 148 too.
149 to 137, if that wasn't clear.
144 -- you don't have a very good understanding of privacy law. The recording of the conversation on twitter could be an independent privacy violation, even if there was no expectation of confidentiality in the conversation itself. The presentation of the true facts, if misleading, could give rise to a false light claim. Or, the details of the conversation itself could have reasonably been expected to have been provided in relative confidence (for example, the discussion of the reasons for the fiancee breaking up with him, if true). It's true that these are all borderline cases, but there's not some blanket immunity for the fact that the conversation took place on a plane.
141: Well, her first tweet is "No thanks". So as of the first tweet, at which point she hasn't said anything to identify or humiliate him, she's responding negatively to his advances. (Yes, if she's behaving seductively in person and then humiliating him by tweet, that'd be shitty. And it's possible, I just don't see any evidence, either from her story or his, that it happened.) And then he kept on with the annoying flirting for an extended period of time. He pissed her off by intruding on her time and attention, and she made fun of him publicly for it. Doesn't seem that bad to me.
153: All I can say is that I would be richly entertained if he sued.
OK ladies, I'm sitting next to you on a plane and you are a depressed person who starts annoying me by telling me private facts about your pregnancy and how unhappy you are with your boyfriend. All of a sudden I put up a twitter feed about the "crazy oversharer" who is sitting next to me which causes an internet sensation. Am I a jerk for publishing the information or, hey, sit next to me and everything is fair game for my twitter feed?
Yes, if she's behaving seductively in person and then humiliating him by tweet, that'd be shitty.
I bet she wasn't as cold as she might have been, if she truly wanted to shut him down out of the gate.
If there's no identifying information it's obviously fair game. If the person is identifiable from what you're overhearing then probably a sufficiently nice person wouldn't post it, but it's hard to blame you.
156: Fair game! Depressed pregnant women deserve national ridicule for their immoral ways.
Next up on Unfogged: who was in the right, Demi Moore or Ashton Kutcher?
Especially if she's a slut. Did you hypothetically ask her that?
I think it's mildly jerky, but let's stipulate that I include identifying information, and that you are well known enough for it to matter to your career.
I mean, it's mildly jerky even without including the identifying information.
I like websites of overheard conversations way to much for me to think it's jerky without identifying information.
I have more sympathy for depressed pregnant women than I do for fake-Christian-teetotalers who hit on models behind their wife's back.
Man, "In Passing" seems to have disappeared in a server crash. Stupid link rot.
OK, what if you reverse genders, and this time it's a momentarily depressed married woman mildly flirting (but not actually propositioning) a man on the plane? And you include identifying information that gets back to her? Fair game or no?
It depends. If he's so hot that he's practically asking for it, and her husband is a total nudge, then it's not fair game anymore.
I'm with teo. No talking with strangers.
Also, of course he's hitting on her. Middle aged guy and model. Even flirting is effectively hitting on. She had every right to humiliate him. He needs to act his age and marital status.
He's an idiot. She's a jerk.
On the point of whether it affects his career, I think that depends not just on the job description for actor, but on the image he, and the people who hire him, are hoping to project.
149.last was not as funny after I remembered your injury.
As I said above, I think it's very relevant that powerful men feel they have the right to hit on hot young women who aren't interested with no repercussions. I think that makes her behavior, which would otherwise be a little shitty, hard to fault. Nonetheless, we genders reversed it'd still only be a little shitty, and if it were funny enough then that might balance out its being a little shitty. Finally, if it was obvious that the person was depressed, then I think that would make the tweeting worse than it otherwise would be.
My question for you, if it was a politician instead of someone in the movie industry would you care?
I truly think the word "white" has no place in 147.
I would use hitting on and flirting differently. To me, hitting on connotes some real or at least imagined possibility of moving to another level. Flirting can include that, but can also just be an innocuous entertainment. (I suppose I do the latter quite often. I never engage in the former.)
173: In terms of general notions of entitlement, sure why not?
Hrm, to me the main difference between "hitting on" and "flirting" as I would use it, is that the former emphasizes directionality while the latter emphasizes mutuality.
I agree with 174. I also bet that if they got off the plane and she said "Want to go somewhere for a drink?", he would have said yes. That is to say, he was hitting on her.
172, and similar sentiments (147), seem basically right to me.
175, 173: Besides, a brutha would know how to talk to the laydeez.
Middle aged guy and model. Even flirting is effectively hitting on. She had every right to humiliate him. He needs to act his age
I don't really have a dog in this fight but everyone keeps saying this like he's some pudgy bald 45 year old. He's a young looking 34 and she's in her 20's. It would be very easy for him to believe he was talking to someone with less than a 10 year age difference.
I think it's very relevant that powerful men feel they have the right to hit on hot young women who aren't interested with no repercussions. I think that makes her behavior, which would otherwise be a little shitty, hard to fault.
I absolutely agree that this is the emotion that is driving a lot of people's responses, but in this case it's a little ridiculous. All the guy does is (at most, even accepting her story as 100% true) is mildly flirt with her when they're stuck on a plane together, and she decides to craft a narrative about it clearly designed to mock him for her 10,000 twitter followers.
I don't have a problem with one person striking up conversation with another, in hopes that it could go somewhere. Just keep in mind that you're on a plane with someone trapped next to you, and not at a bar. So start with completely innocuous conversation and then if the other person responds positively, you can match their level of interest. He didn't exactly follow those practices.
He's an idiot. She's a jerk.
That part seems right to me.
Without fear of mockery or stories getting back to our Gert, wouldn't you just hit on everyone all the time? It is all part of the wonderful balance of nature.
That is, the mockery is required to keep the hitting on at liveable levels.
Without fear of mockery or stories getting back to our Gert, wouldn't you just hit on everyone all the time?
Personally? No. But I'm sure you all knew that.
You just have to put on the ranger hat and wait, but it isn't so simple for everybody else.
183: Right. Comes the revolution they go up against the wall together.
I keep on getting stuck on Halford's characterization of the conversation as 'mild flirting'. The thing is, if it was mild flirting, there wouldn't be anything quotable to pull out and mock him with -- mild flirting is almost completely innocuous written down, it goes from chatting to flirting on eye contact and tone of voice. Once you're implausibly denying being married, you're into heavy flirting, at least, and what I'd call hitting on.
Next up on Unfogged: who was in the right, Demi Moore or Ashton Kutcher? a certain famous college basketball fan or a marble-headed blowhard blogger?
He's not *just* an idiot. His behavior was wrong, even if he hadn't been publicly called out on it. (Assuming that her original account, including his pretending not to be married, was accurate.)
These boundaries are not going to police themselves.
193: Welcome! Watch out for the bears.
I'm not defending the guy. He shouldn't be hitting on other women if he doesn't want his spouse to know about it. I'm just agog at LB's ridiculous suggestion that the woman did nothing lousy at all, because "You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it, unless I've made you some kind of promise not to."
Does he get a hat?
Not just like that. He has to earn it.
To keep myself from tempting married women seated next to me on plane flights, I do nothing but make puns from the time the cabin door closes until cell-phone-turn-on ding sounds at the end.
196: So am I, actually. I'm not sure whether LB is just conflating a legal right with what's morally right (or a matter of tastefulness or discretion).
This seems like a good place to share a recent thing that happened: out at a bar with my brother-in-law, one minute mild friendly flirting with an elderly woman who was there (there weren't many people there), then suddenly *boom* she's kissing me. Tongue everywhere. It was so unexpected, I was too traumatized to react quickly. I swear she must have been 70.
When I told her about it, my wife thought this was funny.
No, I'm saying that someone who feels put upon by a presumptuous and offensive stranger is under no obligation to protect his good name by keeping his misconduct secret. I'm a little puzzled why you'd think she has such an obligation, and where you think the limits of it are.
196: "You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it, unless I've made you some kind of promise not to."
What's surprising about this? It's been the basic rule of gossip from even before back fences were made from mammoth rib cages. You only get to control your half of the interaction.
He should have been more alert, seen what she was up to, killed her, and blamed it on anorexia.
202: I think we're reading the situation very differently.
201 -- what was her full name, address, name of her children, and workplace. I need to post this information immediately.
Yeah! Let's get that slut, but good!
I'm not "defending" the guy either (assuming that the tweets don't depict him in a false light, which we shouldn't assume at all, and which has certainly been called into question by her taking down the most accusatory ones). Obviously if the story is true as written/implied he shouldn't be going around pretending he's not married when he is.
But the idea that there's something particularly offensive that he did to the model by being a "presumptuous and offensive stranger" even granting her story as true is pretty silly. He, at worst, said some pretty stupid actory things and clumsily tried to hide that he was married. Then, he went to sleep. Identifying the guy by name to her legions of twitter followers for fun and giggles is, at a minimum, shitty behavior.
Wait. We definitely need to know first whether urple's ... friend ... was wearing a wedding ring.
204: Yeah, some of my negative reaction is a function of my personal distaste for gossip, but I realize that not everyone shares that distaste.
209: Either there's nothing particularly exceptionable about his behavior (assuming, arguendo, her presentation of the encounter is accurate, which I agree that we can't assess), or there is. If he didn't do anything wrong, then I can't see why her reporting on his behavior was shitty. If his behavior was wrong, clumsy or not, then I'm can't see how she's obliged to cooperate in covering it up.
To get to the idea that he didn't do anything wrong, but exposing him in public is going to humiliate him, you have to thread the needle and assume that he meant nothing and was just making light conversation, but accidentally hit upon a form of words (implausibly denying being married in response to a direct question) that would make the vast majority of people believe he was trying to cheat on his wife. Nothing's impossible, but it's not how I'd bet.
212 -- If his behavior was wrong, clumsy or not, then I'm can't see how she's obliged to cooperate in covering it up.
There's a pretty big difference between "cooperate in covering it up" and "affirmatively publicizing to thousands of people with identifying information." Should we post the full name and address of the woman who stuck her tongue in Urple's mouth?
I noticed a guy in a suit refuse to give money to a clearly suffering homeless guy on the street. As soon as I find out his full name and address, I am now going to create a website mocking him.
125
122: I find it hard to picture a plausible one-night stand that didn't include an implicit agreement not to do that sort of thing. Sitting next to someone on a plane doesn't give rise to the same sort of implicit agreement.
Sure it does. It just isn't as strong. If you secretly photograph someone while having an sexual encounter and then publish the photos this is obnoxious and illegal. If you don't take pictures but publish a detailed description this is obnoxious but not (pace Halford) illegal. If you repeat a private conversation for no good reason this is a lesser offense but still in my opinion obnoxious.
212: then I can't see why her reporting on his behavior was shitty
What would be your response if the model had phoned his wife to report his behavior on the plane? I'm just curious: is that better, worse, or the same as her tweeting about it?
If you don't take pictures but publish a detailed description this is obnoxious but not (pace Halford) illegal.
It's certainly not criminal but, unless you're sleeping with someone famous and it's newsworthy to be doing so, don't try this at home if you're wealthy and someone can sue you.
I agree that he probably got his feelings hurt. I just don't like him very much so I don't care.
212
Either there's nothing particularly exceptionable about his behavior (assuming, arguendo, her presentation of the encounter is accurate, which I agree that we can't assess), or there is. If he didn't do anything wrong, then I can't see why her reporting on his behavior was shitty. ...
This is silly. If I am dressed cheaply because I am poor I haven't done anything wrong but it would be obnoxious for someone to publically mock me for my bad taste. Or how about fat people, is it ok to publically ridicule fat people?
If she knew his wife? It's a reasonable thing to do depending on how she thinks the wife would feel about it -- whether she'd want to know. If she doesn't know the wife, I think phoning someone you don't know to have an unsolicited personal conversation is intrusive and rude.
218: If what made her tweets humiliating was something that it would be wrong to make fun of him for at all, like his weight or his poverty, I'd agree with you.
219: No, in this scenario she doesn't know the wife. She just says exactly what she said on twitter, but just to the wife.
If that's not okay, I'm not seeing how the tweeting is okay.
My friend the other night was unnecessarily rude to a waiter. Time to describe the conversation in detail on Twitter and identify him by name.
215
What would be your response if the model had phoned his wife to report his behavior on the plane? I'm just curious: is that better, ...
In a way it is better since it allows the actor and his wife to settle any issues arising privately.
Or if the phoning is a problem in some way, she emails the wife (after finding her email address somehow) and does it that way.
As I said, I think actively targeting an individual you don't know to have a personal conversation is intrusive and rude (it might be justified under some circumstances, but I can't see it here.) But the problem I see with it isn't revealing the information about Brian's conduct to the wife, it's that phoning her demands a response from her, that no one's entitled to.
Same with email. A one-on-one communication expects a response and presumes a relationship that makes the communication appropriate.
220
If what made her tweets humiliating was something that it would be wrong to make fun of him for at all, like his weight or his poverty, I'd agree with you.
So it's ok to make fun of people who are clumsy at social interaction?
Whereas hiring a sky-writer is less demanding.
Present company excepted, of course.
As Shearer says, it's really really strange to think that emailing his wife to handle the situation privately would be horribly intrusive, but publicizing it (and identifying him by name) on Twitter for thousands is fine.
Imposing any sort of obligation on the wife is weird. She didn't do anything, she has no responsibility to take any action in the situation as it is. Are you appealing to some idea that bad behavior by married men should be systematically concealed because it would hurt their wives to know they were trying to fuck around? As a married woman, I'm afraid I can't endorse that.
226
As I said, I think actively targeting an individual you don't know to have a personal conversation is intrusive and rude (it might be justified under some circumstances, but I can't see it here.) But the problem I see with it isn't revealing the information about Brian's conduct to the wife, it's that phoning her demands a response from her, that no one's entitled to.
If your husband did something mildly embarassing would you prefer to find out by being told privately or by reading about it on the front page of the NYT?
I'm actually sort of with the middle-aged guys on this. I was kind of skeptical of her story (only saw the excerpts linked here) and while I'm generally anti-sketchy dudes he didn't seem far enough over the line to warrant the public humiliation by name. I'm not sure what that line would be, but my kneejerk response was definitely no "You go, girl!"
There have also been many times someone's commented on my ring and I haven't told the whole truth because I don't always feel like outing myself a way of avoiding people hitting on me if I can take care of it in other ways. I suspect people would rank "not telling some drunk dude you're a lesbian" as less offensive than claiming to not be married and just liking a ring, but is it really all that different?
This just seems like something where people's intuitions are going clash in a way that they can't be argued out of. Either you think presumptively posting personally identifying information on the internet is wrong--and only to be done to avoid some public harm--or you don't. (Or maybe the argument is about whether clumsy leching rises to the level of a public harm.)
LB: I honestly have a hard time thinking you would have the same reaction in the exact same scenario but with the genders reversed. Married woman makes light, flirty, overtures towards picking up the hot young actor seated next to her on a flight (was she serious? maybe, maybe not, who knows), and he responds by mocking the entire conversation to his 10,000+ twitter followers, publicizing her real name in the process.
And nothing at all about that makes you think the guy was acting like a bit of a jerk?
It matters, IMO, that he's an actor. He's trying his damnedest to get into a profession that demolishes any semblance of privacy that he has. She's half-motivated to tweet it because he's talking her ear off about being an actor and what a big deal he is.
231: Indeed, if nothing else, it apparently protects the outer (the model) from any charge that she's actually done anything obnoxious or rude. What?! She was just tweeting stuff to her friends!! What's the problem?!
I honestly have a hard time thinking you would have the same reaction in the exact same scenario but with the genders reversed.
I suspect that if the genders were reversed, the aftermath for She-Brian would be brutal compared to the aftermath for He-Brian. Much more horrific internet trolling about her looks and actual repercussions for her career.
Which is neither here nor there.
233: If it were mildly embarrassing, finding out on the front page of the NYT would be kind of a hoot.
234: is it really all that different?
Yes, it really is. You're not telling a drunk guy you're a lesbian because you don't feel like opening up about your personal life (either because you just don't feel like it, or because you think he may be unpleasant if you out yourself). He's lying about being married, to keep flirting under false pretenses with a woman he's hitting on. The two seem very very different to me.
If you told some guy on a plane you were straight-married to deflect attention, and you got busted by his twitter followers, no one who wasn't homophobic would think any the less of you -- getting 'exposed' wouldn't be humiliating at all except in the eyes of people who were evil about your orientation. This guy is humiliated because he was trying to do something wrong.
237: She's motivated to tweet it because she's a model with a blog and a twitter following. They're both in the self-promotion business.
236: It's hard to come up with the exact same scenario with the genders reversed -- that is, anything plausible I'd expect the hypothetical woman to be a bit less of an ass about it. But with the same dialog, bragging about what a big shot she is and denying being married in response to a direct question, I don't think I'd react any differently.
Based on what I know, I suspect it's pretty likely that this guy's career is, if not ruined, pretty severely impacted, given who he is and where his career is at.
I still am flabbergasted by "emailing his wife would be wrong, but posting his name on Twitter is totally OK."
244.1: Sort of incautious of him to be trying to pick up strange women on an airplane, if his career is in that sort of place.
244: I thought all publicity was good publicity. Now he's at least a face that flickrs recognition across people's minds.
I can't believe I misspelled flicker like that.
245: Dead serious. Some strange woman calling or emailing me about her interactions with Buck, as if she expected me to do something about it? Threatening and disturbing because she's treating it as something that I'm responsible for, and as though she has a right to a response or action from me. Someone publishing the details of an encounter with Buck in the Wall Street Journal? If it's true, it's her experience that she's entitled to disseminate however she feels like -- the substance might or might not be a problem between me and Buck, but if it were true, and I felt injured, I'd feel injured by his actions, not her publicity.
I'm pretty sure 235 gets this one exactly right.
223: It's different with a friend. You're expected to keep a certain confidences there.
Oh. No, I'm pretty seriously not invested in chivalry.
Respect for someone you're in a relationship with, whatever the limited nature of the relationship may be? Sure. Politeness to strangers who haven't imposed on you? Absolutely. But if someone's annoying you and making an ass of themselves, you don't need to make sure they have a dick before making fun of them.
249: as if she expected me to do something about it?
I'm about done on this topic, but I don't see any reason to think that an email would need to project the sense that the writer expected the reader to do something about it. It could just as easily be a "Just thought I'd let you know the following: [...] Do with it what you will. Signed, me, a model."
I'm not sure what my position is, really. I was sort of baffled that so many people thought the story was compelling and share-worthy and that was the part that seemed weird, not that she tweeted it all in the first place.
I don't see any reason to think
And this is where we differ.
Anyway, according to IMDB this guy has been cast as the (human) lead in a movie about the dogsled run to get diphtheria serum to Nome, so that would be something to watch to see if this impacts his career.
I was sort of baffled that so many people thought the story was compelling and share-worthy and that was the part that seemed weird, not that she tweeted it all in the first place.
Ditto. I didn't think her tweets were even all that entertaining.
If someone is able to type a summary of your conversation on twitter while the conversation is happening (which seems to be what happened here) and you keep talking, what does that say? At the very least, you've ignored a clear "I'm going to do this over here by myself" signal.
At the very least, you've ignored a clear "I'm going to do this over here by myself" signal.
And it's even worse when that keeps on happening later in the relationship.
257: Now, I can't even tell if that's some sort of insult. 'night.
212: I'm mildly on the model's side here, but I'm not sure about the word "cover-up." It's not as though conversations on airplanes are normally broadcast via Twitter, and one has to enlist the help of one's seatmate to cover it up. (Sounds like a fun psych experiment.) So the question is rather whether it's okay for her to publicize a conversation with a limited, but real, expectation of privacy.
My sense is that anonymously, tweet away; if you're naming names, he has to be a giant dick. And that the confined space of the airplane matters to how much of a dick he could be.
249 is the kind of bizarro world logic that only shows up in blog fights, and frankly doesn't really seem worth engaging.
I guess 235 is right, but is there anyone here who thinks it is presumptively OK to publish personally identifying information on the internet? Like, if I sit next to you on an airplane, we have a totally normal conversation, and then I post your full name and address and excerpts of our conversation to my 10,000 followers on Twitter? That seems pretty horrible to me.
So the question is rather whether it's okay for her to publicize a conversation with a limited, but real, expectation of privacy.
Right. And I don't think that anything he's said as reported/dramatized by her comes close to justifying that publicity.
Partly twitter (and blogs, for that matter) are a bit of a weird boundary between public and private. If she had put all those tweets in that order on Facebook I think it'd obviously be ok, even if she has 1K friends and one of them is a journalist. Twitter is certainly a bit more questionable. If she had emailed the Enquirer afterwards that would have struck me as pretty low-life. But Twitter and blogs sit in an ambiguous space where anyone can read it, but only your friends usually do.
Teo, you're the same age I am. You must remember the 1995 movie about the dogsled run to get diphtheria serum to Nome.
267 -- It's true that if she had 4 twitter followers and all of them were her close friends I might feel a bit differently, or if it had been a Facebook post. The level of affirmative publicity (and the level of identification, of course) matters.
I haven't looked, but I bet your full name and your work address is right out there for anyone to see on your law firm's website -- your personal information's already out there on the Internet.
Teo, you're the same age I am. You must remember the 1995 movie about the dogsled run to get diphtheria serum to Nome.
That sounds vaguely familiar, but I think you're actually a couple of years older than me and may remember movies from that period better.
Right. If you know my name, you can look up my law firm address. But I still wouldn't want some stranger I met and had a brief conversation with, who has a popular twitter account, to recount a conversation we had, identifying me by name, without telling me that he was going to do so. That would feel like a really offensive intrusion of privacy to me. Wouldn't it to most of you?
269: Does it matter to you that he was only identifiable because he's mildly famous? He was using being a medium-level movie actor (is there a masculine form of starlet?) to try to pick up women, and it backfired on him. I mean, if this was George Clooney being an ass on an airplane, I don't think you'd be judging her for tweeting it, and if it was you, the level of information she provided wouldn't have identified you.
This guy is semi-famous, he wants to take advantage of it socially, and he doesn't want to deal with the repercussions.
Like, if I sit next to you on an airplane, we have a totally normal conversation, and then I post your full name and address and excerpts of our conversation to my 10,000 followers on Twitter?
The bolded part strikes me as very much in question if you're implying that this description is relevant to the original interaction.
Does it matter to you that he was only identifiable because he's mildly famous?
Note in this connection (although I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes) that she initially only referred to him as "Brian" and it was one of her Twitter followers who pieced together his full identity from the scraps of information he had given and she had tweeted.
I just want to pipe up because I'm not a married dude but like Thorn, I agree with them, and I really hate outing. I thought it was funny, but I still felt a lot of sympathy for the guy. I feel that sympathy even though I thought he was actively trying to sleep with her. I think the bar for outing of any kind should be incredibly high, and douchey attempted adulterer comes nowhere near it. No one has an expectation that their private conversations are going to be revealed to the world and attached to their name. Many douchey attached or married men have tried to sleep with me over the years I had a blog, and sometimes I wrote about it, but I never would have dreamed of doing anything to compromise their anonymity. It's not for me to dole out consequences. You can write about your funny and annoying interactions while keeping people's identity carefully veiled.
201 is a worthwhile thread all on its own.
274 -- I was trying to get people's intuitions out about when it's OK to massively publicize private conversations without a person's consent. In the context of the original story, I don't think anything he is reported to have done (even by her) rises close to the level where it is totally OK to engage in massivel public shaming, identifying the guy by name.
273 seems basically to me like some kind of weird anti-actor animus. He was annoying and talked about being and actor, and, if you believe the tweets that she subsequently took down, clumsily lied about his wedding ring. I'm not really clear why his being an actor gets her off the hook for being a jerk about publicizing the incident to her super popular twitter account.
201 is a worthwhile thread all on its own.
Indeed, I'm surprised it's garnered so little discussion.
How do you feel about autobiographies and memoirs that name identifiable people who haven't consented? This seems obviously not wrong to me in the absence of some special circumstance, but maybe you disagree. If you don't disagree, what's the difference?
If you're an asshole to someone, then it's fair for them to blog or tweet about it. Using full names is rude (because it'll come up on google), but if in the course of recounting the assholery there's enough identifying details that someone can work it out, that's unfortunate but not the worst thing ever.
To the extent you use a memoir to reveal personal embarrassing information about people who reasonably expected you to keep that information private and never would have expected you to publicize that information, I think you are being something of an asshole. What the information was and how deep the expectation of privacy was matter.
It's often mitigated in the case of memoirs by the fact that the people are dead or the events took place long enough ago so that they don't seem like a big deal anymore, and, in some cases, by newsworthiness value.
Obviously, it would have been more ethical if she'd killed him first. But you can't bring weapons on a plane these days.
Indeed, I'm surprised it's garnered so little discussion.
I wonder if he told her that he had invented an entirely new human sex act, and then she kissed him before he could explain enough to send her away screaming.
I think people are leaving 201 alone because it's Urple, and so we're all afraid of what the unexpected twist in the story is going to be. I know I am.
I love essear, but not in a tweetably harassing way.
[Don't say I never did nothing for you. LB.]
Oh God I just realized that 287 was even more horribly offensive than I'd intended and not funny. I would be really happy to strike that one.
I wonder if he told her that he had invented an entirely new human sex act, and then she kissed him before he could explain enough to send her away screaming.
I was thinking she tongued him after he told her the act. He just wasn't expecting her to be so into it.
A couple of months ago, I was on a train from NY to DC and the woman sitting behind me had several extremely loud phone conversations in which she berated her subordinates and swore at them. It was obnoxious to the point that everyone sitting around me was rolling their eyes. Between the details revealed about what she did for a living and the fact that she was going to DC to go to a state dinner with "Chuck" I was able to figure out that she was Chuck Schumer's wife. I didn't tweet this, but I certainly told people about it. And if I was the type of person who updated my facebook status regularly, I can imagine that I would have posted a running commentary on it. And I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Am I an asshole?
Clearly that should be moved to the front page as an ATM.
You could send an email to Schumer saying "It's a shande far di goyim." This works much better if your last name isn't Smith or something.
I should live-tweet the way my current-boss/soon-to-be-senior-colleague treats her secretary sometime. I can't believe the poor man doesn't burst into tears on a regular basis. As I'm told most of her previous secretaries did.
In my opinion that'd totally be fair game. At also seems to me not terribly newsworthy. "High powered executive is an asshole to her subordinates" also strikes me as not very newsworthy just like "Married celebrity sometimes hits on models."
To me, 290 seems fine for discussion among friends, probably even on Facebook, and even here. Unless you really had excellent knowledge about what was being said and why I think it would be uncool to publish it to 10,000 Twitter followers, although perhaps more excusable (since you weren't actually a participant in the conversation, and I think the privacy expectation is lower) than our friend the model.
295 is pretty much word-for-word what I'd have said. And the degree to which I'm sad I missed the original 287 shows I have no moral high ground when it comes to gossip.
There's no way to write this that isn't humblebraggy, but it cracks me up that all of Lee's coworkers who've been accused or even found guilty of sexual harassment have taken time in defending themselves to her to point out that they approve of her taste in girlfriends. And I would probably say that on twitter, because fuck them.
The ones who don't harass don't like you or they have manners enough to be discrete when they meet people.
Your intuition should be the same for the comments here and a multi-thousand follower twitter account. Not that we have that many readers, but we have enough that something amusing could get further amplified pretty easily. I think you have to think Mrs Roosevelt's a jerk, now that she's brought it up here. I think she's fine, of course.
Your intuition should be the same for the comments here and a multi-thousand follower twitter account.
My intuition isn't the same but I can't come up with a logical argument for why it shouldn't be. I guess it's that comments here feel directed-- they're part of a conversation among a relatively well-defined number of people-- whereas twitter is sort of shouting into the void. But I'm not sure there's any case to be made that this should alter the behavior.
I feel like an offhand nondescript anonymous comment deep in a thread just isn't that publicizing. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd think a front page post that was purporting to live blog the overheard conversation was sketchy.
280
How do you feel about autobiographies and memoirs that name identifiable people who haven't consented? This seems obviously not wrong to me in the absence of some special circumstance, but maybe you disagree. ...
I think you should make a reasonable effort to be discreet about matters generally considered private. Both out of consideration for any other people involved and because you might come to regret being too explicit. Although as Halford noted things that happened long ago are generally considered less sensitive.
I thought Katha Pollit would have done better by telling less about her relationship breakup and it appears I am not the only one .
268: Teo, you're the same age I am. You must remember the 1995 movie about the dogsled run to get diphtheria serum to Nome.
I would not necessarily expect teo to remember a stupid freaking movie like Balto. but sometimes it is like he hasn't even read the archives.
299
Your intuition should be the same for the comments here and a multi-thousand follower twitter account. Not that we have that many readers, but we have enough that something amusing could get further amplified pretty easily. I think you have to think Mrs Roosevelt's a jerk, now that she's brought it up here. I think she's fine, of course.
No you don't. By telling such stories you are potentially harming the subject. Whether this is jerky depends on how likely, serious and justified the harm is. It is certainly possible to draw a line so that Eleanor is on one side and the model is on the other.
I don't think there'd be anything wrong with saying `I was on a train with X and they were the biggest arsehole ever, based on the things they was shouting on the phone'. It's a thing that happened in a public place and there's no way they can have a justifiable expectation of privacy there, or expect you to keep their confidences for them.
(One intuition I have is that it is maybe justifiable because any of the people reading the tweet/on facebook/wevs could have been there to hear it themselves, but that is probably dodgy.)
I disagree that your intuitions have to be the same for here and Twitter. Fora matter, and one of them is a comparatively quiet place, and the other is a very public one.
Not that I know anything about twitter, but I think it's a mistake to think of it as a single place any more than "blog" is a single place. Most of twitter is comparatively private.
259, 260: Wait, Togo? Who was Togo?
The lead dog* on an earlier, longer portion of the run it turns out! "Togo: The Sled-Dog Overlooked by History"
Meanwhile, Nome's best musher, Leonhard Seppala would travel eastward behind a string of his 20 Siberian Huskies, with Togo in the lead, to meet Wild Bill Shannon and the serum. Balto and a few other dogs were left behind at an outpost called Bluff to provide Seppala with fresh pullers on his return trip....
By the time they reached Bluff and the relief dogs, Seppala and Togo had covered an amazing two hundred and sixty miles. The second-longest stretch in the relay effort was the final 55 miles from Bluff to Nome by Kaasen and the borrowed Balto. Even this was not easy going.But Togo had the last laugh:
Togo's legacy continues to spread. Compared to Balto, his fame may be slight but his progeny are legion. Many modern trainers of Siberian Huskies trace the lineage of their dogs back to Togo. There are no progeny of Balto due to the fact that he was neutered as a puppy.
They always cut the balls off the good ones.
There's "Siberian Husky" which is a breed with all the stupid standards that goes along with it, and "Alaskan Husky" which means a dog that bred and trained to pull sleds. I watched a sheep dog contest recently, which was pretty cool and where there's an interesting fight between the people who think Border Collies should be working dogs vs. show dogs. There's competing organizations, and if you win a show dog competition you get kicked out of the working dog group (even if the dog passes the working tests).
Far more information on both of them, here.
311: But that is a relatively recent thing--early Siberian Huskies were the real deal.
Well, I guess the breed was recognized by the AKC in the early '30s.
This Balto/Togo thing is actually a pretty interesting story, with a lot of machinations after the fact as to who was to get the credit. This site is quite in-depth (warning, automatic music) with some great photos, including some of Frederick Roth (sculptor) with Balto. Through roundabout means, Balto and some of his team ended up at the Cleveland Zoo and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History apparently has his remains and his stuffed body is on display there. Togo's on display in Wasilla. LB, you should make a pilgrimage to Seward Park to see a more modern rendering of Balto.
All the more reason that the next major meetup should be held in Paris on the Cuyahoga.
Huh, I should check to see which dog the statue in front of the Rondy headquarters here is of. I thought I had a picture of the plaque but it looks like I don't.
328: I am pretty sure that is the one described on this page of the site I linked in 315. But it does not appear to be linked specifically to the Nome Serum Run.
Apparently there is a Balto Seppala Park in Anchorage and a statue in Palmer, Alaska.
I thought Katha Pollit would have done better by telling less about her relationship breakup and it appears I am not the only one .
It's not often I agree with you, James, but yeah, I thought so too. So embarrassing! just cringe-inducing.
And I agree with Halford on the case of the live-tweeting model. Yes, the actor was behaving badly and is apparently none too bright (a "collabo"? god.). But the punishment here (public humiliation in front of thousands [tens of thousands?]) seems disproportionate to the crime (being foolish and icky and a [drunken? slightly drunken?] jerk on an airplane). Dude is a dumb jerk, but the model seems (o callow youth!) callous and spiteful.
And if the new rule is, Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion (said court to be found in twitter feeds, fb postings, reality TV), then we can expect to see a further unraveling of the social fabric, imo. If striking up a conversation with someone on an airplane, or in line at the grocery, means tacitly agreeing to have one's name, rank, and serial number published to someone's twitter feed, better to not talk to anyone at all, surely.
319.1: Yep, that's the one. Interesting that it doesn't relate directly to the serum run, though not really surprising since it's tied closely to the Fur Rendezvous ("Rondy") which involves sled dog races but is otherwise a totally separate thing.
If striking up a conversation with someone on an airplane, or in line at the grocery, means tacitly agreeing to have one's name, rank, and serial number published to someone's twitter feed, better to not talk to anyone at all, surely.
Victory!
better to not talk to anyone at all, surely.
This would be my approach, generally. At least offline.
Apparently there is ... a statue in Palmer, Alaska.
Ah, so there is. I knew I had seen a Balto statue somewhere.
As I see it the problem is that minor assholery could have such a bad affect on his career. I still find it a bit implausible that this is going to wreck his career, but at any rate it shouldn't.
I have not been to Balto Seppala Park, and indeed just figured out where it was (which was surprisingly difficult), but it's not too far away from me. Maybe I should check it out.
Harming people for your own amusement is bad. I don't see this as controversial. That he deserves harm doesn't excuse her for selfishly inflicting it.
As far as him denying he was married?
He said he was engaged for 6 months but broke it off! RT @Pat_Healy: @MelissaStetten Ask him how his wife Erin and son Jackson are.
I don't think it's at all clear that she actually did ask about them by name. In fact, a lot of the tweets are pretty ambiguous about what actually happened, which obviously makes it pretty difficult (and frustrating) to interpret any of it.
A lot of that is just the nature of Twitter, of course.
As noted above, I don't actually care much about this specific case one way or the other. I do think it's potentially useful, however, to the extent that it creates or reinforces a strong norm against hitting on people on airplanes, which I feel strongly is a super-shitty thing to do. Beyond my general antipathy to airplane conversation, which I recognize is idiosyncratic, hitting on someone in that situation where they are more or less literally, physically trapped and cannot escape by any means indicates an approach toward interacting with people that I hope we can all agree is disconcerting, to put it mildly.
In a thread a while back we discussed the problems with hitting on someone on a subway or other public transit, which admittedly hadn't occurred to me before but seem obvious in retrospect. An airplane is a much more extreme case of that general type. Whether or not this Brian guy was actually hitting on Melissa Stetten, and whether or not her reaction to whatever he did was reasonable or ethical, I am very willing to throw him under the bus to make the point that the behavior he is accused of is very bad and no one should ever do it. I don't particularly care if his career suffers for this. I'm pretty sure he's not going to end up homeless and starving in any case.
It's probably harder to find tweets on search engines than it is to find threads here via search, once a few days have passed. But lots more people will see the tweets from a popular account when they're first posted and blogs that link to them will show up in search.
332: Are you seriously comparing what this guy is supposed to have done here, which is to have engaged in awkward conversation with his seat mate and clumsily having hid his wedding ring (before going to sleep on a red eye flight), with sexual harassment? Give me a break.
This whole thread reminded me that a twitter friend of mine has told the story of being hit on (in an undeniably clear-cut way) by an ostensibly straight celebrity while waiting for a plane. The whole event happened more than five years ago and the lecher is/was elderly and established rather than up-and-coming, but the dissonance made for a good story and I know outing is controversial but the rationale for telling the story made sense on those grounds. I also didn't assume I was getting the unvarnished truth and it hasn't changed the degree to which I don't care about the celebrity.
But I think the distinction for me is mostly about his having a juicy anecdote rather than live-tweeting and also that he'd never have faux-innocently joked about ruining the guy's life because none of us thought it would do the celebrity any harm and at most cause the other people who'd read the tweets to roll their eyes or laugh when they heard the celeb's name.
Just googled to confirm my thoughts on the story I told and twitter brings up nothing, google gets me one tweet that he was reminded of the time the celebrity tried to pick him up, but it doesn't even link directly to what had prompted that thought. Googling also tells me that the celebrity might have given another interview about being ex-gay and his calling to help young gay men leave the "lifestyle" right around then, in which case the story seems extra appropriate. And this is a celebrity who's shared his own sex life to the point where seriously no one cares about it career-wise because that ship sailed well before my friend and I were even born.
332
... creates or reinforces a strong norm against hitting on people on airplanes, which I feel strongly is a super-shitty thing to do ...
I don't agree with this as a general rule although it can be true in extreme cases of course. It seems similar to trying to talk to someone which only becomes wrong when discouraging indicators are ignored.
320
If striking up a conversation with someone on an airplane, or in line at the grocery, means tacitly agreeing to have one's name, rank, and serial number published to someone's twitter feed, better to not talk to anyone at all, surely.
I'm OK with that. Note also that Brian chose to give out his personal information. This would have been a random, not-at-all-newsworthy anecdote about an anonymous annoying guy if he hadn't been dropping names.
I'm on teo's and LB's side here, but I do agree with team "cover for adultery" that getting in touch with Brian's wife directly (as tactfully as possible under the circumstances, of course) would have been better than publicizing the story for improving the state of Brian's personal marriage and/or soul. There's still a good argument for setting an example of what happens to assholes, though.
Power matters. Male actors (generally) have more power than female models. Chuck Schu/mer's wife has more power than her husband's employees, and probably has more power than the person she's bothering with a loud conversation on a train. Powerful people have less of an expectation of privacy than regular people, and I'd say that's true in a moral sense in addition to the legal one.
Also, it's driving me nuts that my computer is broken. When I left work yesterday, 76 ("I'm now assuming that 73 is just trolling.") was the last word and I almost felt proud of myself for not piling on Halford. Then I missed the whole debate. I probably wouldn't have had too much to say from home anyways, but still, I can't wait until the part I need arrives and I can go back to keeping up with life on my own computer instead of my girlfriend's.
I don't agree with this as a general rule although it can be true in extreme cases of course. It seems similar to trying to talk to someone which only becomes wrong when discouraging indicators are ignored.
Discouraging indicators like them paying more attention to their mobile device than you and calling attention to your wedding ring, for example.
338: My impression from reading the exchange was that it was the model who was feeling very powerful. 10,000 adoring fans who are running background checks for her... she can complain about how a guy uses his airplane window and now they all hate him too...! He's older and clearly clueless about what she's using her phone for, what's a good way to talk to a model you're sitting next to, which things are caused directly by god -- everything! And she's power-high in her narcissistic bubble and is inclined to forget that other people are real people.
But basically I don't sympathize with either of them and prefer Team Shut Up on Airplanes.
I will point out that his talk about "divine interception" etc was pretty odd and I will present my alternative career-ruining interpretation: actor Brian was on mushrooms!
I can't believe this almost turned into a sled dog thread while I slept. It was just a couple weeks ago that I was meeting up with some dog people and walked in on a conversation at the punchline point -- "Balto was neutered as a puppy!" and I was like "No shit!", playing it cool.
340: Being on mushrooms in an airplane would probably be one of the worst things ever.
1. How did I miss the urple-y goodness in the center of this thread?
2. I am now remembering that I was hit on in an airplane by a mid-level "star." I was 17! (It was very mild and not a big deal. I was not interested./He was not interesting.)
I knew a guy whose little inspiring mantra to himself on the NordicTrak was "Gotta get the serum to the babies . . . Gotta get the serum to the babies . . .."
344 is hilarious. There's a little Walter Mitty in all of us.
344 I thought that sounded familiar.
I'd be curious where Fleur comes down in this debate. On the one hand, there is her well-known position on unwanted internet publicity. OTOH, she used to get hit on every time she got on an airplane, often by married men, including at least one B-list celebrity (literary division, not Hollywood), to her great annoyance.
The Rule, as I understand and observe, is that one engages in no unnecessary communication in steerage, but in first class, one is expected to be sociable.
Last month, I was flying from LA to SLC. I was in the last row of first class, and while I had a book and an iPod, and was looking forward to both, the other fellow wanted to talk. A car dealer from Orlando. Nice guy, and when he heard i had a couple hours to kill, insisted i join him in the lounge to continue the conversation. Around then, a woman in the first row of coach started interrupting to ask about the landmarks below: she was having a hard time accepting that Utah Lake is not the Great Salt Lake. We were both kind of annoyed, but engaged with her, for which she was overly, effusively grateful. Turns out she was on a last minute trip to Spokane, where her sister's only daughter had turned up suddenly dead (at 38), and wanted a distraction, any distraction. So we invited her to the lounge, and i kept getting her old fashioneds long after the car dealer left to catch his flight.
No titillation value, obviously, and no one hit on anyone. Just some adults thrown together, exercising the ancient tenets: first, do no harm, and second, do unto others. (Stolen from the Africans, no doubt).
This whole business with The Model, The Actor, His Wife And Her Twitter is rife with ambiguity. One thing that is certain is that aeroplane travel often seems to bring out the worst in people. I mean, I'd much rather be sitting next to this actor schmuck than to some drunk businessman who freaks out and has to be tied up with napkins or whatever.
That said, prominent members of the Xtian right who are hypocritical about their sexual proclivities get very, very little sympathy from me. Out all the assholes, that's my view.
Finally, yeah, in the great karmic horse-race of human behavior, I would handicap Ms. Stetten at at least 8 to 3 or so. I very much doubt that all of her actions in pursuing her career or in dealing with various people she meets in her travels would withstand a truly invasive level of scrutiny.
Gentleman are requested to refrain from riding ponies through the Steerage after 8:00 PM.
I concur with 350 re: member of the religious right = fuck him.
In other circumstances I'd be inclined to be more critical of the model (can't go along with LB's "no expectation that your interactions won't be broadcast to the world, full stop" position), but hitting on some one in a captive audience situation is especially obnoxious.
It's like people who, with no invitation, get all flirty with waitresses & other service people when they're on the job. That always struck me as especially jerkish behavior.
Melissa's latest tweet:
"I miss Brian..."
Note: Just FYI, not saying this has anything to do with anyone's position. However, it is clear she is having fun with it, and has done so with Twitter in general.
Hey you know what? I remembered this morning that long long long ago I went on a date with someone I met after a nice conversation on a plane. The date went nowhere but undoubtedly this is the basis for my position. I guess what I'm asking is, where should I register as a sex offender?
Also it turns out the model is the exgirlfriend of "Anthony" from the "Opie and Anthony" show and that she's publically accused him of being a pedophile. I feel like that should be relevant somehow but it's probably not.
If she actually went on a date with you afterwards then you probably weren't being an asshole to her. (You may or may not have been being an asshole to the other people nearby.) Unless you were married at the time.
I have a (female) friend who met and made out with a stranger on a long empty flight (back before all planes were full).
Team "tell his wife" is super bizarre to me. His behavior is bad mostly because he's being an asshole to the person he's hitting on, not because he's wronging his wife and she somehow has to know that he sometimes hits on models on planes.
355 is certainly relevant in considering the odds that she's lying. If she's lying then yes, she's history's greatest monster.
357: For the record, I at least wasn't arguing that the model should tell his wife; it was a permutation of the tweeting case in order to test LB's sense that "You interact with me, I am absolutely free to tell anyone in the world about it" (101).
355: As far as I can tell from a little poking, she never accused him of being a pedophile.
Unless you think that accusing someone of sleeping with a 17 year old is the same thing as accusing them of being a pedophile. To me it sounds pretty plausible that a 50-something man dating a 21 year old model would also have a thing for teenagers.
You guys are way behind the Daily Mail in questioning her reliability:
Brought to you as part of the "Femail" portion of their website.
Well, the Daily Mail says she's a lying slut because she admits lying about her age ("Can we trust ANYTHING [MS] says?!"). But they don't mention the pedophile thing.
355, 60, 61: Really, halford, is that where you're getting "accused him of being a pedophile"? Come on.
If the Daily Mail said the sky was blue I'd go outside to check.
I went on a date with somebody I met on a plane once. Outside of the "met on a plane" part, it had exactly zero overlap with this story.
The thing I saw about pedophile accused "Anthony" of pursuing some 14 yr old fan on the Internet. Which is probably pretty plausible. But I'm not saying any of that cuts one way or another, it's just weird.
Pursuing may be a bit strong (there's no indication they'd ever met or that he was trying to meet her), but indeed she accuses him of tweeting with a 14 year old fan because she's cute. It seems to me that a 50 year old sleeping with a 17 year old is worse than thinking a 14 year old is cute, but at any rate neither is an accusation of pedophilia.
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