By Maria Padhila
Who needs the NSA when you’ve got one ticked-off person with a cell phone?
Last week, a woman on a train arguably exposed a lot more personal information to a lot more people than the government has done through the PRISM project when she got tired of listening to a married guy brag with his friends about how he was screwing around on his wife.
She snapped his photo and posted it to Facebook with the note: “If this is your husband, I have endured a 2 hour train ride from Philadelphia listening to this loser and his friends brag about their multiple affairs and how their wives are too stupid to catch on. Oh please repost…”
Most of the people who I saw flashing the repost and commenting were at least full of snickers and at most actively applauding. But I find these kinds of individual exposures of “that cheatin’ pig” type to be at least tiresome and at most destructive. I don’t give a hoot when a politician Tweets his wang to a lady, nor do I when a citizen does so. It’s not my business; I don’t know the whole story.
Yeah, the guy was a jerk, and listening to him in a closed space is why they invented headphones (which, by the way, I don’t and can’t use because of hearing problems). But how would I know that he wasn’t lying, didn’t have an arrangement with his wife, wasn’t actually gay and trying to represent so he could be one of the boys… and, ultimately, it’s not my business.
Several commentators looked at this with more of an eye to its implications. Katy Waldman was one of the most cogent: