Foot fetishes are pretty vanilla as far as fetishes go. The truth is, the whole incident was far more harmful to Ms. Shah than QT. He is still a famous, established director; it won’t dent his career, and if you google him, this is hardly the first thing that comes up. She is the one who got fired from her job, and is known for letting some old guy she was physically disgusted by jerk off on her. What she does sexually is between her and her partner, but the mistake was relaying the story to 15 people online…who knows, maybe even more than that.

Everytime she shows her foot anywhere, people are just going to have that sour look on their face, from the image of QT sucking on them while pleasuring himself.

Yes, but the same 300 million Americans could also be sent a video showing another side of Hermon. That’s the whole point of an apology video, will everyone accept it? who knows, will the ‘damage’ be undone, maybe, maybe not, will “you curry cunt” comments still continue? probably, but they’d continue anyway by that segment. People love a story of redemption as much as they love a story of “fall from grace” Of course, this is just some random girl on a metro north train, but it’s no use griping about technology, with heightened technology comes good things and bad things, but the same holds true, if a person keeps their head straight and doesn’t act like a complete idiot in public, they’ll do alright, even with the 3000 million iPhone cameras trained on them every second.

That’s the best you’re gonna get.

I think we should curb idiotic behavior first, then worry about the more difficult job of curbing ‘voyeurism’ by amending privacy laws, which really are just fine the way they are now.

Imagine this guy saw this 30 years ago. He would have told his friends. Some people would have laughed. But there wouldn’t be a permanent record and the 300 million people of America snickering at this then. The same guy’s action has vastly different consequences today. It is now behavior that is far more dangerous, and we need a systematic rethink of when voyeurism has to be curbed.

You’ve met NotG’s parents?

It was a tone of superiority and her complete denial of any kind of inconsiderate and idiotic behavior, sort of the same sentiment I get from a statement like this:

“I am done with you, and I hope never to meet or know the likes of you.”

I hope to never ride a train, eat at the same restaurant, see a movie, or just generally never be in a public space with the likes of you… well, not until after I get my iPhone4.

fair enough. but both of these people were adults, into their 20s.

“If I look back to a few years back, I would call myself very immature.”

Just a few years?

“ot so in the future, where every infraction is at the mercy of characters like commentators on this board. They have nothing better to do than to run around with pitchforks. You may rationalize in retrospect that this incident was funny and hence became viral. But can you predict what may go viral? You may not have meant any harm to Raju, but the fact is harm was done”

this isn’t “every infraction” Hermon’s behavior was deliberate, drawn out, calculated. Yet you keep saying anyone that merely has an opinion on her shitty behavior is carrying a “pitchfork” and rationalizing it. Harm was done to Raju, but as alina said, its better for her to go around not acting like an imbecile, I guess the same would hold true of your neices and nephews.

“They are well within your rights—what if your boss finds out you go to a mosque and therefore prejudges you because of his biases? You don’t get a chance to defend yourself (clearly s/he isn’t going to be stupid enough to tell you). You don’t get any recourse to any harm done to you if it is cloaked under other pretexts.”

umm. yes you do:

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/006588.html#more

you’re conflating way too many things. religious discrimination is different than privacy. Secondly, you control all the information you put out on the web. It’s your choice to have a facebook profile, its your choice to put all kinds of things out there. Whats this “other pretext” that you’re talking about?

The privacy rules may need revision, but Hermon Raju or Beejoli Shah are in no way poster childs for the need for revising. Both of these people made choices, and got what was coming to them. Hopefully other people considering such decisions will make better ones knowing these two cases are already out there.

Look, the reality is that people constantly judge others all the time on their behavior, whether or not it impacts them personally. We judge our neighbor when we see him in the grocery store in his pajama bottoms. We judge the parents of the child acting spoiled in public. We judge the man who cheats on his wife and the sloppy co-worker who wears the same wrinkled clothes everyday. You can’t expect folks to turn off their brains and not react to things we see. Is Hermon Raju a villain of some kind? Nahh. Was she funny to laugh at for a few minutes until the next YouTube meme came along 5 minutes later? Sure.

it is that different. she works for a hollywood PR firm, and she mistakenly made a huge fool and laughing stock of a very big player in the same general range of potential clients. as a practical matter this was not premeditated, but the “optics” look very bad.

there is a bigger issue where the line needs to be drawn between “personal” and “public,” and how that impacts our work life (or lack thereof). but this specific case isn’t very easy to transpose to other situations.