'Coldplay Kiss-Cam Flap Proves We're Already Our Own Surveillance State' (theregister.com) 67
Brandon Vigliarolo writes via The Register: A tech executive's alleged affair exposed on a stadium jumbotron is ripe fodder for the gossip rags, but it exhibits something else: proof that we need not wait for an AI-fueled dystopian surveillance state to descend on us -- we're perfectly able and willing to surveil ourselves. The embracing couple caught at a Coldplay concert this week as the jumbotron camera panned around the audience would have been another unremarkable clip, if not for the pair panicking and rushing to hide, triggering attendees to publish the memorable moment on social media. "Either they're having an affair or they're very shy," Coldplay singer Chris Martin said of the pair's reaction.
As is always the case when viral moments of unknown people get uploaded to the internet, they didn't remain anonymous for long, with the internet quickly identifying them as the CEO of data infrastructure outfit Astronomer, Andy Byron, and its Chief People Officer, Kristin Cabot. We're not going to weigh in on Byron's, who internet sleuths have determined is married (for now), or Cabot's behavior - making someone pay for the moral transgression of an alleged extramarital affair may be enough reason for the internet to go on a witch hunt, but that's not our concern here.
What's worrying is what this moment says - yet again - about us as a society: We have cameras everywhere, our personal data has become one of the most valuable commodities in the world, and we're all perpetually ready to use that tech to make those we feel have violated the social contract pay publicly for their transgressions. This is hardly a new phenomenon. [...] There's really no reason to set up an expensive and oppressive surveillance state when we all have location tracking, internet-connected shaming machines in our pockets. Big tech gave us the tools of our own surveillance, and as "ColdplayGate" shows yet again, we'll keep using those tools if they'll make us feel better about ourselves - especially if someone else gets knocked down a peg in the process.
As is always the case when viral moments of unknown people get uploaded to the internet, they didn't remain anonymous for long, with the internet quickly identifying them as the CEO of data infrastructure outfit Astronomer, Andy Byron, and its Chief People Officer, Kristin Cabot. We're not going to weigh in on Byron's, who internet sleuths have determined is married (for now), or Cabot's behavior - making someone pay for the moral transgression of an alleged extramarital affair may be enough reason for the internet to go on a witch hunt, but that's not our concern here.
What's worrying is what this moment says - yet again - about us as a society: We have cameras everywhere, our personal data has become one of the most valuable commodities in the world, and we're all perpetually ready to use that tech to make those we feel have violated the social contract pay publicly for their transgressions. This is hardly a new phenomenon. [...] There's really no reason to set up an expensive and oppressive surveillance state when we all have location tracking, internet-connected shaming machines in our pockets. Big tech gave us the tools of our own surveillance, and as "ColdplayGate" shows yet again, we'll keep using those tools if they'll make us feel better about ourselves - especially if someone else gets knocked down a peg in the process.
Bad example (Score:5, Insightful)
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What makes this one so funny is they respond SO guiltily. It's hilarious. But I don't need some over-reaching attempt to wordplay it into being a big new social issue.
Re: Bad example (Score:1)
Re: Bad example (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/c... [wsj.com]
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Re: Bad example (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the advice is this: "if you take your mistress out in public, don't act guilty if 'caught'(seen?)"
The ONLY reason anyone outside the auditorium knows about this indiscretion is because of his reaction - if he just stood there the comment would have been "how sweet, cuddling at their age" and everyone, *everyone* would have moved on.
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Even if you're NOT married.
Those things are expensive, crowded and generally obnoxious. Fuck all that.
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Especially a big public event where people are going to be whipping out their phone and snapping photos and taking videos of anything and everything and posting it all to social media.
It's one thing movies have started to get right - when some crime happens in a very public place, they start scouring social media for the event to see if the culprit i
Re:Bad example (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I don't know what's supposed to be surprising about this. Going to a rock concert with your mistress absolutely screams "I want to get caught".
Now, imagine an alternate scenario where the guy owned a Tesla and the wife caught the cheating by playing back the sentry mode footage? Then yeah, he'd be hoisted by his own petard. That'd be the missing irony, as increasingly pervasive surveillance backfired.
I'm Surprised (Score:2)
Yeah, I don't know what's supposed to be surprising about this.
A viral kiss-cam video turned out to be (proven) not fake. I can't be quite as dismissive of them now.
Re: Bad example (Score:3)
The first public jumbotron trouble that I can remember is in Ferris Buellers Day Off.
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People have been getting caught sneaking around by low tech means for thousands of years too. Feeling up your subordinate in public has always come with some risk of getting found out, especially if you're rich and a somewhat public figure.
Dystopia this isn't (Score:3)
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I think in broad strokes, infidelity is bad, but when it comes to a specific case, I'd say nobody is in a position to judge without much more context.
And that's what makes this kind of stuff rather shitty. People feel confident filling in all sorts of details from their own imagination and prejudices, and even if you get it mostly right 9 times out of 10 (to be very charitable, in my opinion) does that excuse the 10% of the time where the internet mob is wrong?
Re: Dystopia this isn't (Score:2)
I opened my post with "I think cheating is bad" so what do you think, dummy?
Re: Dystopia this isn't (Score:2)
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"destroyed by their reaction of hiding"
My point was exactly that while we think we have all the context we need, we sometimes don't, to potentially devastating effect. The fact that the internet brigade has a high chance of being "right" in this case doesn't invalidate the point. People can have perfectly legitimate reasons to not want the details of who they're in a relationship with broadcast at large.
All you post tells me is that people are very hungry to see people "get what they deserve" and extrapolat
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I think cheating is acceptable in general. That's how we are done, and it does not cause real harm to anyone. In the past you'd considered a cheating partner or divorced parents to be a shame, but that's not the case anymore in many parts of the Western world. There could be cases where cheating is NOT acceptable, for example if you're very religious (of a religion that views cheating negatively), or if there is a risk that the new partner transmits an STD through the cheating partner, to the non-cheating
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I meant to write: That's how we are made / that's the matter we are made of. I don't know the correct way to formulate it, I'll take suggestions.
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Leaving out all the details leading up to this point (unless you really want to hear them), I was thinking just the other day about a (fictional) situation where I was gone for some period of time, about a year or so, and came home to find my wife with a boyfriend and how would have to shoot him dead right where he stood, without so much as saying a word, and then turn around and leave.
Yeah. That's how I feel about cheaters.
Re: Dystopia this isn't (Score:1)
No that's how you feel about being cheated, otherwise you would have shot your wife. You Infact love cheaters.
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Well, sure, there's no problem with cheating...if you think dishonesty is OK, and if you don't mind constantly lying to your spouse, and if you think kids don't need parents who are committed to each other and to them. No problem at all.
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I meant acceptable as a society, not as individual action. I mean I advocate the de-criminalisation of adultery in the very few countries that still have laws against it (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan... and a few US States).
I'd compare the reactions to adultery, to road rage. Certainly stealing your parking spot was a bad idea, but nobody should die over that.
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is your implication that there are circumstances when cheating is acceptable?
Yes. When it is reciprocal.
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I think in broad strokes, infidelity is bad, but when it comes to a specific case, I'd say nobody is in a position to judge without much more context.
Well, at any rate, infidelity is the only real broad societal issue that features here in this story.
I don't think there has ever (2025? 1925? 1625?) been much expectation of privacy, when canoodling amongst a crowd of thousands ...
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Am I the only one felt a bit jealous about this? My boss never buys ME concert tickets.
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Is it supposed to be a bad thing that two people who cheated got outed?
No, the bad thing is that people feel the need to make other people's relationship their business. It's not bad they got outed, it's bad that we live in a society hell bent on outing them.
Going to a Coldplay concert (Score:1)
Re:Going to a Coldplay concert (Score:5, Funny)
I know, right.
His wife is probably at home laughing her arse off bemused at his mistress' appalling taste in music!
Re:Going to a Coldplay concert (Score:4)
She reportedly already removed his last name from social media profiles.
Like my wife said, "You're not allowed to embarrass me."
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C'mon man. Stadium cam is a bit of fun - see yourself on a big screen with 99,999 others cheering you on.
Having an alleged extramarital affair, well boo-hoo.
The important thing is, fuck Coldplay (Score:2, Insightful)
That band sucks.
People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:2)
The opening scene of Woody Allen's 1979 movie Manhattan featured a couple in a convertible driving by. Unfortunately, the woman in the car was NOT the man's wife and the two of them were in the theater together when that scene played on the big screen! Lots of hilarity ensued...
ultimate embarrasment (Score:5, Funny)
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What a way for your wife to find out you listen to Coldplay
I'm really out of the loop here. Is this just the usual internet hate of all things pop music, the fact that Coldplay really hasn't put out anything good in 14 years, or some TMZ scandal that I missed?
Besides, I thought the rock band that got all the internet meme hate was Nickelback. "Shit, I ain't even mad you were cheatin', but Nickelback? Really!?"
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Elevator music for millennials.
Falsetto power ballads are so fucking boring.
Anonymity in a Crowd of Thousands? (Score:2)
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Private and public are opposites.
What you do in public view is observable (and recordable, and publishable) by others.
Want to keep your affair private? Do it in private.
That's the real meaning of privacy.
There are many elephants in this room (Score:2)
OK, so this one guy happens to be CEO of a small-medium sized tech company, and he got caught being a naughty boy. For the most part, people at the upper end of the social food chain don't have to worry about their personal information being used against them, or a few seconds of bad behaviour ruining their life.
I hope this one-in-a-million occurrence doesn't wind up being used as "proof" that the rest of us shouldn't worry about who has access to our personal information, or that our every twitch and fart
Re: There are many elephants in this room (Score:2)
What does this have to do with "personal information"? This guy was a nobody, he was up on the Jumbotron, everyone laughed at the over-reaction, someone posted a video of the over-reaction on the internet, and someone who knows who that nobody was and shared it.
If someone used facial recognition I could see some issues, but in this case? Not buying it.
Fuck all of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying to turn this story into some surveillance state bullshit is just absurd. Read the back of a concert ticket. For at least the past 30 years tickets have clearly informed me I might be photographed and recorded at a concert. They warn you when you're going to buy the fucking things.
Don't take your mistress to a concert, you're just as likely to be seen by a neighbor as you are to be caught on a kiss cam. I don't give a shit about the guy's morals but he's demonstrated he's far too stupid to run a company. I hope his wife cleans him out, she deserves every penny after having to deal with his dumb ass for so long.
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The story is misguided. The real story here is that we live in a world hell bent on getting in each other's business. Someone's on camera, whoop de fucking do. The problem here are the people who then feel the need to sleuth around the lives of these people in an attempt to expose them.
Some people must be so lonely.
Re: (Score:2)
The real story here is that we live in a world hell bent on getting in each other's business. Someone's on camera, whoop de fucking do. The problem here are the people who then feel the need to sleuth around the lives of these people in an attempt to expose them. Some people must be so lonely.
I think the point is these days it does not take much for people to be sleuths. Even if people are diligent about keeping offline, that does not guarantee that their information does not make it to the Internet. For example, if you don't post photos of yourself online, you would think no one knows what you look like. Well, you attended an event like a family reunion where you were tagged. Now people can know what you look like.
Caught on Camera (Score:2)
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Good for them (Score:1)
Time Flies (Score:2)
Woah. There's a blast from the past. Coldplay. Still riding on the success of that yellow song?
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The music video for The Scientist is well done. I also like Viva La Vida.
If you go out anywhere in public (Score:2)
Just assume you are on camera, because you probably are.
Workplace favoritism (Score:2)
No doubt this company had a strict policy against dating a subordinate, as most companies do, as this leads to inappropriate favoritism and the potential for blackmail. If the head of HR, who is supposed to enforce such policies, is flagrantly violating it, what chance is there that other employees will be treated fairly? Aside from the moral implications of this cheating couple getting caught, it's a serious risk for the company, in a pure business sense.
OK Brandon (Score:2)
So; much hand-wringing that we "use that tech to make those we feel have violated the social contract pay publicly for their transgressions".
There is already zero legal penalty for violating one of the most core of the contracts we can enter into as a human. So what do you suggest now? That the guilty forget how to blush? That the rest of us refuse to recognise irony when we see it?
I actually admire the woman for visibly retaining the instinct of shame. She, for one, has not forgotten how to blush. The guy
No more public filming (Score:2)
Idiotic habit (Score:2)
When I go to a concert, I want to see the band, not random members of the public.
It doesn't prove that (Score:2)
It proves that rich people TOO are dumb enough to take your squeeze into public spaces.
The lyrics now in their heads... (Score:2)
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh, I beg, I beg and plead, singin'
Come out of things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head, and a
Trouble that can't be named
A tiger's waitin' to be tamed, singin
Strange wording but I agree. (Score:2)
The article has a strange take on the concept, but technically the description appears to be accurate. We don't need a surveillance state, and people can see you in public.