Let's stop making innocent strangers go viral

Plus: Late-night hosts, doppelgangers, Beyoncé and a fall preview

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when Natasha Lyonne offered to solve a crossword puzzle with you. It was the week when two shows that normally have writers claimed they could wing it. And it was the week when there was NSYNC again. (Lots more at the news quiz.) Let's get to it. Opening Argument: Let's stop making innocent strangers go viral It's challenging to explain the problem of people thoughtlessly making other people into social media content, because if you provide examples, you only draw more attention to something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Or, worse, you confuse your point and sound like you're being critical of people who film police or otherwise try to document dangerous situations. Suffice it to say that on a regular basis, a photo or a video will go by in some social media feed or another in which a totally ordinary person doing a totally ordinary thing -- eating lunch, walking down the street, talking to friends -- is removed from all context and made into a snotty comment about how the world is. "Why are they on their phone instead of looking at the beautiful sky?" "Why are they talking to their friends too enthusiastically about that movie I didn't care about?" "Why are they wearing those shoes?" "Why are they walking like that?" Delmaine Donson / Getty Images And if you look at the numbers on the post, it will turn out that some totally ordinary and unwilling person has been viewed in this quite dehumanizing context by a million people. In fairness, this was a pretty predictable result of everybody having a camera with them at all times. Who hasn't wished they had a camera to document the amazing "small person walking huge dog" moment they spontaneously got to enjoy? Or a video of the man giving his friend a speech about ... whatever, Robert De Niro or whether people should roll up the cuffs on their pants? Curiosity happens, and surprise happens. The observation of and interest in other people in public is not inherently exploitative; it's often lovely, actually. Surveillance of them, not so much. This isn't to say surreptitious video of people engaged in some sort of harmful or dangerous treatment of somebody else is wrong, or that you need to ask permission to film somebody who's harassing the clerk at Target. But if the person isn't doing anything wrong, if you are purely using someone as a curiosity, what exactly is the reason you know not to say, "Can I take your picture?" Deep down do you know the person might not want you to? That they would not allow it if they knew about it? "Can I take a picture to use you as an example of how boring I think your clothes are?" Nobody says that. What is that person doing by wearing those shoes that entitles you -- not legally, but personally -- to do something using their image that may be a deeply unpleasant experience for them? Is the answer to walk around with your head down, ignoring the world of hilarious weirdness that's often around you? Of course not. Here's one answer: Become a storyteller. Instead of publishing a photo of those three people you saw wearing almost identical yoga pants and tank tops to demonstrate how basic you think that is as a standard uniform, put a little effort into describing them with words in a way that doesn't allow anybody to identify them. This is what language is for! You are telling a little story about something that you saw. You can be just as cutting as before, maybe more so. You're just not making anybody famous without their consent. We need an etiquette of pictures and videos of strangers, I think. We're far enough into the "practically everybody has a camera" age that we know how it goes, how much people often do not welcome attention they never asked for, and how you just never know when your post you expect to be a small deal will become a big deal, bigger for someone else than for you. There are digital stickers you can put over somebody's face if you don't know whether they want their picture on your feed. There are ways to offer descriptions and preserve anonymity. There is your group chat to share things with; there are your texts. We're all finding our way through a very different environment than existed maybe 10 years ago. But bear in mind: Standing there with your phone out taking a picture of people who are innocently eating lunch might qualify as pretty weird behavior to some people. And one of them might also have a phone. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend The Netflix film Love at First Sight is the kind of solid romantic comedy that used to be thick on the ground and now requires a little more tracking down. Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy are very charming as a couple who meets on a plane and then has to figure out how to reunite once they land. PCHH favorite Rob Delaney is a delight as Richardson's loving dad. (Do they dance together? They do.) A swell, cozy watch. I've just started reading Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein, and if you just said to yourself, "Wait, which one is Naomi Klein again?" then you know what the book is about. Also: Coming this week, dropping on Wednesday on Apple TV+, the series The Super Models, about Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista, is the latest entry in the genre of documentaries about people made by those people, and it should be taken as such. With that said, I found a lot of what these women and the people who worked with them had to say quite interesting, and if you remember the height of the supermodel era, you might, too. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Hulu; Peacock; Apple TV+; Tubi TV; Keri Anderson/Prime Video; Katalin Vermes/Starz Entertainment NPR's sharp TV critic Eric Deggans joined me to talk about the state of late-night and the Strike Force Five podcast that several late-night hosts recently launched. (Eric also wrote this week about how to help fix streaming.) Aisha talked to Reanna Cruz and Shar Jossell about Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour. Stephen chatted about Olivia Rodrigo's album GUTS with Anamaria Artemisa Sayre and Cyrena Touros. And Glen, Aisha, Stephen and I talked about some of the things we're excited for this fall in our fall preview. I have always found The Morning Show very frustrating but fun to write about, and I wrote this week about the third season and how much better I think it would be if it would let the lead characters just be bad. Some of the PCHH team also helped with NPR's fall streaming guide, which I hope helps you make your way through the very crowded landscape. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Glen Weldon: Stephen Fry, Mythos, but specifically the audiobook Aisha Harris: Victoria Monét, Jaguar II Stephen Thompson: The Beaches, Blame Your Ex Linda Holmes: Why We Love Baseball Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. 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