The end of privacy happened 30,000ft above Dallas. A woman called Rosey Blair switched seats with a stranger on a flight from New York, and then started tweeting. “We made a joke that maybe her new seat partner would be the love of her life and well, now I present you with this thread…”
The story unfolded like a summer romcom, the man and woman in the seats in front gradually introducing themselves, touching each other’s arms, even getting up to go to the toilet at the same time. They were both vegetarian personal trainers, they talked about their mothers, they shared fitness tips then a cheese board. And every movement was documented and annotated by Blair, whose initial tweet was shared more than 300,000 times.
To give an idea of the scale of this, of how far this story travelled, one website compared it to Donald Trump’s tweet about saving the United States from North Korea, one with foreign policy implications, which was retweeted just over 19,000 times. It was a four-hour flight, and it took around the same amount of time again for the tone of reactions to shift from “greatest love story ever told” to, well, “problematic”.
The man, named #PlaneBae by the internet, came forward quickly with great ceremony and delight, making appearances on TV shows and posing on Instagram with his top off, basking in the warmth of his very own hashtag. The woman, less so. #PrettyPlaneGirl wanted to remain anonymous. Until last Friday when she broke her silence, saying that on the flight she’d been photographed without her consent, and since disembarking had been shamed, harassed and doxxed (her information was published maliciously online), with “voyeurs” coming to find her “in the real world. I did not ask for and do not seek attention. #PlaneBae is not a romance – it is a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics,and consent.”
For those who had been breathlessly popcorning the story, rooting for a happy ending, the reckoning was painful. They thought that they were enjoying a tale of true love, when instead they found that they were participating in a festival of exploitation, extras in a cautionary tale about viral fame and consent.
Is it still possible to have a private life? To be more than just content? To step out into the world and be more than a walking mine, your every movement monitored and monetised? To wake up and swipe your phone without your eyes flickering over the knowledge that you are paying for all these free services by sharing the valuable details of your favourite breakfast cereals, or sexuality, or thoughts on road safety?
People have embraced sousveillance, the recording of people from below, as a way to hold police to account. But here, between two seats as strangers chat, the ethics of our relatively new power – to record private moments and to share that recording in seconds – have been cracked open. These recordings will sit online for ever, staining #PrettyPlaneGirl’s privacy. Nowadays there is no such thing as 15 minutes of fame, because that 15 minutes can play on a Boomerang loop for eternity.
Last week it was revealed that “baby club” Emma’s Diary, which provides weekly emails during pregnancy and Argos vouchers if you sign up to its app, is potentially in breach of data protection regulation and may face a £140,000 fine. It gathers much of its data by approaching women in hospital, in a similar way to Bounty, which also provides information packs and more vouchers, and whose miniature pack of baby wipes I still have at the bottom of my largest bag.
Which means that not only is the information these women are receiving – often while still bleeding – skewed heavily towards commercial gains, but also that the information they give is shared at a moment when they’re wildly vulnerable, and in a space they assumed was private. They thought they were having babies – like the girl on the plane who simply thought she was going home, they didn’t realise they were producing content, too. (The operator of Emma’s Diary has challenged the claims. A regulatory process by the Information Commissioner is continuing.)
So many of us are both victims and aggressors in this economy of oversharing, where we live once removed from the dirt of real life, yet are encouraged to share the minutiae of our lives simply for the thrill of strangers clicking.
What will be the story that stops us selling ourselves and fellow passengers’ secrets for pennies? As the heatwave threatens to break, could this be the summer of our dis-content?
One more thing…
The One was Vicky Jones’s debut play, and it’s on at the Soho theatre in London right now. It is brutal and wise, especially in the way that it drags an audience into the dark belly of a horrible relationship, forcing us to ask questions about consent and love and violence. It’s also… really funny?
We have just invested in a human-sized paddling pool, a deal on Wowcher. It took a while to inflate, but then it became a little oasis in our dried-out husk of a back garden. Oh God, the wintry calm of good, cold feet.
John Lewis is doing this thing with Quality Street for Christmas where you put your name on a tin and then go to its pick’n’mix counter to fill it with only your favourite chocolates, yes, the purple or green ones. No more offensive strawberry creams, or ridiculous toffee pennies that sit in your mouth like a fallen palette. This year is finally looking up.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
The operator of Emma’s Diary has challenged the claims. A regulatory process by the Information Commissioner is continuing.
