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Strangers on a Plane: Viral Fame or Doxxing of Private Citizens?


kairparavel

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Using a Daily Mail link captures this whole thing perfectly. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5916313/Twitter-goes-crazy-womans-posts-revealing-two-strangers-flirting-plane.html
 

I read the original Twitter thread about a woman who asked someone to switch seats so she and her boyfriend could sit  together, leading them to concoct a burgeoning romance between strangers on a plane. Admittedly I thought it was kinda funny in the beginning and harmless. (How wrong I was. )Towards the end it was like, 'You've had your fun but leave them alone. This is a bit much taking photos of them leaving the gate together.'

The person tweeting from the plane blurred out the faces as she was taking photos of them. That was probably more than enough BUT NO she and her boyfriend did some Instagram snooping when they were home to find out who they were (the fuck) and posted a cropped out photo of the dude. And the internet, as it does, served up their identities almost immediately. Someone recognized his profile photo and of course because the live Tweeting revealed they followed each other on IG during the flight people found out who she was too. Luckily? the guy was ok with having himself outed to the world for simply being a nice guy on a plane and as it turns out a former pro soccer player with a more famous brother. But the woman in the equation hasn't agreed to be part of this viral news story not that it matters because her name has been posted all over the internet. 

Viral fame is mindboggling and the lure of internet mob sleuthing is great, apparently, to the detriment of people's privacy. Instead of being on The Today show should this Tweeting woman face some sort of consequences? Or is this just life now where you're internationally known - name, age, occupation, affiliations, face everywhere for essentially doing nothing because someone was bored on a plane for a few hours and had no grasp of boundaries? I mean it's a news cycle and we'll all be onto the next whatever but i's just gross and I'm not sure how to stop it. This could have turned out so much worse for so many reasons. It's made me rethink a lot of things, particularly my social media footprint.

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Yeah, not to be a killjoy but when I read this I thought it went way, way beyond 'cute Twitter story' and into some seriously invasive (and exploitative) stuff. It got a ton of attention, but is it really kosher to use the experiences of two strangers (and much speculation) to get attention? 

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A Twitter friend tweeted this saying it was cute and I took a look, but after a few tweets I stopped reading it because the intrusion bothers me. IT IS NOT OK TO TAKE MULTIPLE PHOTOS OF STRANGERS WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION. (Unless they're breaking the law/doing something terrible which you need to document). The response I got when voicing my unease was 'but they weren't identified online by the person taking the photos'.

Don't take the photos in the first place. Certainly do not post them online without permission. That's a baseline for normal behaviour. 

Someone once took photos of me at a beer event and posted them on their blog without asking permission. I was the subject of the photo, not an incidental inclusion. When I challenged them they said they would take it down if I could explain why it was a problem. 

 

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1 hour ago, Isis said:

A Twitter friend tweeted this saying it was cute and I took a look, but after a few tweets I stopped reading it because the intrusion bothers me. IT IS NOT OK TO TAKE MULTIPLE PHOTOS OF STRANGERS WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION. (Unless they're breaking the law/doing something terrible which you need to document). The response I got when voicing my unease was 'but they weren't identified online by the person taking the photos'.

Don't take the photos in the first place. Certainly do not post them online without permission. That's a baseline for normal behaviour. 

Someone once took photos of me at a beer event and posted them on their blog without asking permission. I was the subject of the photo, not an incidental inclusion. When I challenged them they said they would take it down if I could explain why it was a problem. 

 

Yup, this, and it boggles my mind that this is hard to understand for people. If you found out a complete strangers had been taking multiple photos of you (caveat being with you as the subject, obviously you will inevitably get caught in the background from time to time) you would quite rightly be pissed off and probably very concerned. It’s the kind of behaviour that is associated with stalking and sever invasion of privacy.

Re: the photo at the beer festival and similar events, my opinion would depend. Your situation yeah sounds reasonable for you to be annoyed. But events where there is maybe an official photographer or notices stating promotional photos will be taken or something, I think you are tacitly agreeing to your photo being taken and used. Of course, if you ask for it to be removed it really ought to be, no questions asked

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I read the actresses tweet thread the other day on Twitter and thought it was funny and cute until she actually started posting details about them and pictures of them. Once she crossed that line and got to the point where they weren't generically anonymous people but people who could be identified it went too far.

And now it sounds like the guy is enjoying his two seconds of "fame" while the woman has deleted all her social media accounts. Makes you never want to talk to anyone on a plane again. Glad Twitter wasn't around when I was in my 20s and talking to cute seat mates.

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Just to clarify re my annoyance at being photographed by a fellow beer blogger - the dude stood in the same room as me for ten minutes afterwards (only half a dozen people were in there), would have been pretty easy to say a quick, 'hey, is it ok if I put this image of you on my blog?'. But he chose not to. Then when I confronted him he doubled down and refused to take it down unless I explained the problem. Um? The problem is I did not give you my permission AND I've asked you to remove it? 

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16 minutes ago, Isis said:

Just to clarify re my annoyance at being photographed by a fellow beer blogger - the dude stood in the same room as me for ten minutes afterwards (only half a dozen people were in there), would have been pretty easy to say a quick, 'hey, is it ok if I put this image of you on my blog?'. But he chose not to. Then when I confronted him he doubled down and refused to take it down unless I explained the problem. Um? The problem is I did not give you my permission AND I've asked you to remove it? 

What a weirdo. Seems totally reasonable to have expected him to ask you in a room with hardly anyone and especially to remove it when asked...ugh. 

I really don’t like other people getting shared online without their permission, however nice the story - it’s a big invasion of privacy when people pseudo stalk them online as a consequence. 

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On 7/7/2018 at 1:09 PM, Theda Baratheon said:

What a weirdo.

Please don't do that.  He's not a weirdo.  Perfectly ordinary non-inhumane people do it every day.  The point is to make it clear that it is not OK.  Framing someone as fringe allows people to not see themselves in the behavior.

Other than that, I agree with you completely.

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12 hours ago, litechick said:

Please don't do that.  He's not a weirdo.  Perfectly ordinary non-inhumane people do it every day.  The point is to make it clear that it is not OK.  Framing someone as fringe allows people to not see themselves in the behavior.

Other than that, I agree with you completely.

Perfectly ordinary people refuse to take down photos of other people after they've been asked to?  I could think of far less flattering terms for someone who chooses to behave in such a manner.

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I have a particular friend who won't stop taking pictures/sharing them on social media.  Asking her not to take your picture is like asking a cat not to knock over your water glass. 

She really likes doing it and can't understand what is wrong with it.

It would be nice if simply saying "I don't like that, please don't do it" was sufficient but it's not.  She's not a horrible person.

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On 7/9/2018 at 6:38 PM, aceluby said:

Perfectly ordinary people refuse to take down photos of other people after they've been asked to?  I could think of far less flattering terms for someone who chooses to behave in such a manner.

I think the point was that the person was being rude not weird.

Frankly, they are an arsehole. This was the first of many arsehole behaviours they demonstrated. I've had to say 'I told you so' numerous times in the past 12 months when acquaintances of mine act surprised at this person being an arsehole to them. :dunno:

I get that you can't stop a friend taking pictures with you in them. But you absolutely should be able to get them to stop posting them online after you have made it clear that you don't want that to happen. They don't need to understand it, they just need to respect your wishes. My husband is similar - any picture of him that gets published generally only happens after a negotiation. Sometimes I wish we could share more stuff (that's relative, obviously) but if he doesn't want to then I am not going to do it against his will!

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The social media climber who posted the original thread, invaded their privacy, and begged BuzzFeed for a job based on exploiting someone else's life without asking permission, has now apologized -- because she's gotten backlash for it.

Amazingly, her apology includes an offer to the woman whose privacy she violated, to "help her tell her story however she wants" or some bullshit like that. This dipshit is an unrepentant narcissistic attention-seeker. Even in a goddamn public apology she makes it about herself. It takes some chutzpah to try and keep involved with the life of a person you helped drive off social media. She deserves the Internet dragging she's getting. But hey, she got more followers to promote her shitty acting/photography/comedy/cockroach career, so she profited.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/planebae-apology-couple-twitter-viral-story-rosey-blair-helen-a8441821.html

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4 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

The social media climber who posted the original thread, invaded their privacy, and begged BuzzFeed for a job based on exploiting someone else's life without asking permission, has now apologized -- because she's gotten backlash for it.

Amazingly, her apology includes an offer to the woman whose privacy she violated, to "help her tell her story however she wants" or some bullshit like that. This dipshit is an unrepentant narcissistic attention-seeker. Even in a goddamn public apology she makes it about herself. It takes some chutzpah to try and keep involved with the life of a person you helped drive off social media. She deserves the Internet dragging she's getting. But hey, she got more followers to promote her shitty acting/photography/comedy/cockroach career, so she profited.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/planebae-apology-couple-twitter-viral-story-rosey-blair-helen-a8441821.html

DG's description matches my take on this.  It was a pretty cynical attempt to go viral and once it got some initial traction she just fed it more to maximize it.  There's almost no downside to infringing on others to get retweets, clicks or views.  It reminds me of the #metoo expose on Anziz Ansari.  Even if there is eventual backlash, you still got your name out there and you can rationalize your behavior later. 

We now have attention-seeking combining with fame-seeking and money-seeking as self-involved narcissists enter a race for coveted status as influencers.  Unfortunately we seem to be rewarding this behavior more often than we punish it.

I know this sounds sanctimonious, so I apologize in advance, but I've never used Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.  I don't know why so many people do it.  The amount of negative behaviors and emotions that these foster far outweigh the positives.  We're so careful to monitor how our kids use social media and the internet, but most adults don't apply the same caution to themselves.  

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I use all of those social media accounts and I'm happy about that, I use them all in different ways, and for different things but not everyone who is active on social media is an attention seeking fame hungry creep. 

Finally caught up on this story and actually read about what it was. Super creepy. Girl's twitter is a shitshow. She's totally unrepentant and even her ''apology'' is all about how she can maximise this further. Disturbing stuff. 

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