They are not the victims here, I don’t accept this framing.
This.
"What such episodes reveal is a pathology in the social body, and the desperate need for a new ethic of privacy."
…
"Leaking, doxing, spying on private citizens on Reddit, on private Facebook groups, on X, on Instagram, on TikTok — regardless of the moral quality of the subjects under consideration — hurts everyone. Because it makes everyone subject to this omnipresent, collectivized panopticon, and the more these images circulate, the more normal it becomes."
https://unherd.com/2025/07/the-sadist-assault-on-the-coldplay-couple/
Discussion
I don't know how you could have read the article, or even my excerpts, and concluded that that's the point.
Apologies if I misinterpreted your point. What I’m mainly speaking to is how this article is a call to personal responsibility by asking for restraint from the public (which I don’t see likely to materialize) while maintaining what seems like a sympathetic tone to the couple in question, who did not exercise personal responsibility in their actions by attending a public event where anyone could reasonably assume cameras would be present. In addition, the statement made by the CEO read like a hollow attempt to play the victim. I hate living in a panopticon, too, but we can’t pretend we don’t and then get outraged when things like this inevitably happen.
lol, nobody expects the papparazi, we have many weapons
If you’re not living a lie and being unfaithful to your family, there isn’t much they can do to you.
it's also a thing if you have lots of money you go to the VIP section anyway, this is a big part of the reason why they have VIP sections - for celebrities to not get mobbed.
They were/are cheats and fools. And now they'll pay a heavy price. That's on them, though I'd argue the price is extreme.
That our culture now revels in seeking out and utterly destroying individuals whose failures have no impact on them is the part that is a sickness.
I think it’s partly a backlash to the economic divisions in society. People see these executives of billion dollar tech companies getting away with whatever they can, while they’re struggling to keep a job and a roof over their heads. Their only outlet is to express their frustrations via public displays of schadenfreude.