Awful truth #24: Just because technology can do something doesn’t mean it should.
“Everyone believes in virtue, but who practices it?”
—Balzac, Old Goriot
“Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man—now they crush him.”
—Oscar Wilde
Few of us could resist clicking on this titillating story: Two wealthy elites, whose affair was uncovered by the Kiss Cam at a rock concert, and then broadcast via the Internet to the entire world at the speed of light. Hypocrisy disclaimer: I, too, didn’t resist.
The resultant collective puritanical glee, while momentarily entertaining, should chill you to your marrow if you’ve a lick of sense, and most of us damn well don’t.
The philanderers were exposed in a hilarious manner, trying to dodge the camera’s attention like vampires twisting away from a beam of sunlight. They appeared suspicious as hell in doing this, which immediately drew the scrutiny of the so-called “Internet sleuths”—who went to work and quickly found out the pair were wealthy executives at a tech company (the CEO and HR director, no less!) and married to others. It was now an actual NEWS story, which it would not have been prior to the Internet. Boy, did this story have legs. The New York Post ran articles about this incident for days! Maybe they’ll win a Pulitzer Prize.
Predictably as hell, the Internet did its mob thing and self-appointed itself as the judge, jury, and executioner, sans both due process and sober consideration of the matter: Adulterers! We got us some adulterers over here! Scarlet letter time, folks! Time for some good old disproportionate humiliation and personal destruction! Equally predictably, the cheaters’ employer panicked, and the miscreants resigned (likely given little choice but to do so).
Yes, adultery is wrong. It’s a betrayal. Yes, seeing our betters face a comeuppance is delicious fun. But important questions must be asked—and answered: Did their affair need to involve the entire goddamn world just because technology makes it possible? Was wildly disproportionate shame and punishment somehow world improving? Was the likely resultant dissolution of the marriages made smoother and more amicable? Was any possible reconciliation destroyed? Should all marital cheaters suffer the same fate as these two, which included job loss for both of them?
Don’t expect any widespread reflection regarding these inconvenient questions. What are you, a killjoy! We’re having fun over here!
Folks overdosed on schadenfreude at the expense of this couple, fully imbibed with a sense of moral superiority likely undeserved as hell if their own sins were found out. The Internet with its social media sites requiring hits of crack-like clicks from an army of billions of sanctimonious busybodies is merely the anthropomorphizing of our darkest natures. What mattered to the Internet—jerk that this Internet guy is—was digitally facilitated prurience. In other words, we witnessed twenty-first century technology wielded mercilessly by the puritanical mentality of the Salem Witch Trials. The accused weren’t hung or burnt at the stake, but they did suffer the digital equivalent.
Adulterers, when caught, are rightfully punished in divorce court or via some serious soul-searching and amends which somehow preserves the marriage, if indeed the relationship is worth saving. Prior to the Information Age, the punishment might also include localized embarrassment, within the family, a neighborhood, or, at most, a town. The subsequent disapproving whispers would emanate from, at most, scores of folks, but nowadays…at most is a quaint and woefully inadequate qualifier, not when millions upon millions can scream out in sanctimonious glee: We caught us some adulterers! We’ll show them!
When Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone,” (ironically, in reference to an adulterer’s proposed punishment), he didn’t envision a world where keyboards serve as proxy stones and are manned by millions of eager-as-hell stone throwers.
Doesn’t Jesus realize that prurience is solidly entrenched in human DNA—and amplified like the bejesus by the Internet? It must’ve had some sort of survival benefit a million years ago on the savannah. Though, I don’t see its utility then or now, we Homo sapiens remain intractably beholden to it.
It would be unrealistic to suggest we not enjoy the wicked delight of the moment (I did, too). Our primordial DNA shall be served, one way or another. But it’s imperative that we not unthinkingly revel in the result: job loss, ugly divorces, humiliated children, memorialized embarrassment for a common sin as old as mankind (the Internet is forever), the unwanted and unnecessary participation of millions of gawking strangers.
Ubiquitous cameras, staggering amounts of data storage, and the Internet are nuclear weapons for humiliation and personal destruction—and such weapons are indiscriminate in the damage caused. Even deserved embarrassment must have limits. But limits in the Internet Age? C’mon, are you a luddite?
People are allowed to fall in love. People are allowed to fall in love with co-workers. People shouldn’t betray a spouse or significant other, but we don’t know the true state of their marriages or whether these betrothals should’ve occurred in the first place. Screw your sober context, man! It’s the Internet!
This story should be a warning that technology amplifies the false piety of others. Makes us insufferable scolds. Metes out disproportionate punishment with no checks or balances. Saves embarrassing shit forever, so long as the server farms hum.
The crucial thing we must learn—but likely won’t: Just because technology can do something doesn’t mean it should. I’ll also add that job loss should not be the punishment for adultery, unless the couple is fornicating on an office desk or behind the loading dock.
One final question, to which I have the answer, and you should, too: Did this incident make the world a better place for exposing a cheating couple?
Nope. It made the world far worse.
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