Are We Humiliating Women When We Out Their Cheating Partners Publicly?

Everyone loves a bit of juice. No one wants to be the subject of gossip, sure, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t feel the slightest bit of intrigue about the lives of others. This might be why, when a video about someone's cheating partner pops up on a TikTok feed, people watch. We’re seeing it happen now with the news about UK influencer Molly-Mae Hague and boxer Tommy Fury splitting up — TikTok has become a cesspit of cheating speculation, with some people claiming they’ve seen Fury cheating at clubs in Manchester. 

Beyond celebrities, we’re investing in the relationships of regular people, too. On social media, it’s becoming more commonplace to see young women film themselves outing a stranger’s infidelity. Either they've seen someone’s husband on Tinder (screenshots incoming) or they’ve spotted a man wearing a ring flirting with a woman on a plane (video inserted), or perhaps they’ve seen suspicious activity at a nightclub (photos snapped). But are we humiliating women when we out their cheating partners publicly? 

“PSA for Summer in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan” begins a viral TikTok video. The video creator, Mana Baye, took to the app to try and find a woman named Summer, who is married to a man who’s cheating with Baye’s ex-best friend. Comments quickly racked up, with viewers keen to know if Summer had been found. Baye teased the answer would be revealed in her podcast. Some people have questioned why Summer wasn’t DM’d with a “hey girlie” message, while others think the video is purely for likes and profile-boosting. But, plenty are adamant that Summer needs to know her husband is a cheat and that using TikTok as a medium to find her is fine. Refinery29 reached out to Baye to hear her side of the story but she didn’t respond to our questions.

Women are feeling compelled — maybe even triggered — to out disrespectful spouse behaviour. Recently I came across a video of a woman claiming she saw a man cheat on his partner while she went to the toilet at a Kings of Leon gig in Fort Worth, Texas. Ana-Jamileh posted that the man in question allegedly lied to a blonde woman that his partner was actually his sister and then swapped numbers with her. A follow-up came later: The woman had been found, and she is now single. “I was waiting to tell her when it was just her. But no dice,” Ana-Jamileh wrote in the comments, explaining why she went to TikTok instead. Comments called her a “girl’s girl” for doing this. Refinery29 reached out for comment but didn’t hear back.

These women witnessing assumed acts of infidelity seemingly feel it is their mission to do the right thing. The “right thing” being finding the wives, girlfriends and partners of these men (these videos never seem to look at queer relationships, likely because they centre on heteronormative assumptions) to warn them they have terrible partners. Many of us would want to know if our partner was cheating but would we want to find out like this? There’s something humiliating about airing dirty laundry so publicly, but when we don’t know how to find the person in question, some might argue it boils down to women helping women. How else might they find them? Even if the end justifies the means, there’s something icky about the whole thing. Not to mention how confident a person has to be to take their suspicions online, knowing they may be uprooting a person’s entire life. Open relationships and misunderstandings? We don’t know her.

Even if the creators of these videos have pure intentions, we as viewers don’t — we’re here for entertainment, whether we’re good people or not. Social media has fuelled our ability to gossip and our sense of entitlement to comment on the lives of others. Academics have claimed that “the spread of information through online social media should not be understood simply as a diffusion of data through a network, but as a gossip economy”. This couldn’t be truer than when it comes to dissecting people’s relationships online — people who often didn’t ask for it and are not in the public eye. 

It might be cynical to suggest these videos are being posted for clout but in an age where people pride themselves on being “social media stalkers” (as in finding people online at the drop of a hat), it does make you wonder. Brooke Duffy, a professor in the department of communication at Cornell University, tells Refinery29: “People understand that more dramatic — even sensational — content ‘does well’ (a euphemism for metric engagement), and so they may be compelled to manufacture drama, with those around them unwittingly thrust into a starring role.” Duffy says social media has encouraged “intimacy sleuthing” and has allowed us to feel as though we’re owed information around romantic relationships. “Over the last two decades, all of us have been socialised to accept — and even accommodate — digital surveillance. ​Advertisers, employers, dating websites and social media companies prod us to ‘put ourselves out there’. But we also run the risk of having others put us out there.”

This unfortunate trend caused a scandal earlier this summer when an American woman named Caroline Rened posted a video of a man on a flight, claiming he was cheating on his wife back home. She saw the man with a woman and they were talking as though they were strangers, flirting, kissing, then allegedly disappearing to the toilet together. Although Rened’s now deleted the video, plenty of stitches with the original exist, so the content is still very much circulating #messytiktok. Within a day of the video going up, viewers were able to identify the man in the video and then find his wife. There are even articles online about who these random people are, because of how much search this whole thing has created. People went as far as to find pictures on her social media account with her young children, resharing them as they talked about the situation as if they had any authority on the matter. All I can think about is how sickened the wife must feel, not only to have found out that her husband cheated but also knowing that the entirety of TikTok knows it too and that her full name now comes up on Google search. Refinery29 reached out to Rened to ask why she posted the video but she didn’t reply. 

Playing private detective in this way is a new phenomenon. As Liz Kelly, therapist and author of This Book Is Cheaper Than Therapy: A No-Nonsense Guide To Improving Your Mental Health puts it, going viral is “a new aspiration for many — this didn’t exist 20 years ago”. “It's important to acknowledge that relationships are complicated, and we don’t always know the whole story,” Kelly continues. “We don’t know if a couple has an open relationship, are polyamorous, or are considering divorce or separation. A person might be navigating interpersonal violence or abuse, trying to protect their children or pets, or dependent on their partner financially. Exposing someone online without their consent could cause serious harm and emotional distress.” Also, some people know their partner cheats and make the choice to stay. I met a woman in this situation once and while I was internally appalled, who am I to judge? “When you post something online that will impact another person, you should first consider your motivations. Is this truly about helping another person, or is this about your own prior experiences? Can you take action privately if you genuinely want to help this person?” Kelly also believes that in some cases, this altruism might actually be masking a person’s own emotions around cheating — they might think about a time when they were betrayed, an emotionally stirring experience, then leap into action. “When a person sees someone potentially being cheated on, it often brings up their own prior negative experiences in relationships,” she says. This might make a person angry and resentful afresh. “If someone’s behaviour emotionally activates you, acknowledge and name what emotions are coming up. Your instinct to act might be more about you than helping another person.”

While none of the women who posted the videos mentioned above wanted to speak to Refinery29 about their take on the situation (and their critics), one woman who posted a similar video did. Twenty-six-year-old Cariad from Manchester created a video (which quickly amassed 3.3 million views) about a woman’s partner she saw out on a stag do. Watching the intro to the video, you think, Oh here we go again. “If your fiancé is called Lewis and he’s just had his stag do in Dublin and your name is Lily, you want to hear this.” This time though, it’s good news. The man in question, named Lewis, was seen intervening and helping a woman being harassed by another man. Cariad said she “loves watching this sort of content” so decided to make her own, thinking, What better way to find Lewis’ partner than through TikTok? “It's become so apparent in the comments of the video that people are so surprised by 'good news' these days, which is sad,” she says, as lots of viewers also assumed the story about Lewis would be bad. I asked Cariad if she still would have made the video if instead she’d seen a man cheating that night. “Hmmm, that's a good question. I think I probably would have tried to find the girl but maybe not so publicly — that would be the worst way to find out your fiancé had been unfaithful.”

Social media has normalised commenting on other people’s relationships, for better or worse — usually worse. As viewers, we cannot resist the content. But maybe we should. When I saw the video captioned “PSA for Summer in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan”, maybe my response should have been, My name isn’t Summer and I don’t know anyone in Michigan, so I’ll keep scrolling. Whether it’s haphazardly done or considerate, causing destruction to people’s private lives should never be taken so casually.