Exposing Cheaters Isn’t Always a Flex
How would you feel if a stranger put your relationship on blast?
A man is showing off what looks like a back tattoo to a blonde woman sitting beside him on a plane. She holds up his green T-shirt; they chat animatedly, leaning in close. If you were seated a few rows away, it might seem like a wholesome interaction; at least they aren’t passive-aggressively jockeying for elbow space! But the woman who recorded and posted the video to TikTok sensed something more sinister: “If this man is your husband flying @United Airlines, flight 2140, from Houston to New York, he’s probably going to be staying with Katy tonight,” the clip’s caption reads.
The text goes on to explain that the man met the woman at an airport bar, convinced her to swap seats with someone else so they could spend the four-hour flight drinking together, and told her about his job, hobbies, and 8-year-old daughter. “I wouldn’t have known he was married if he hadn’t been wearing his wedding ring,” it reads. “????Do your thing TikTok.”
Within 24 hours, internet sleuths in the comments identified the man and his wife, found their social-media accounts, and shared photos of their family. Many were applauding the original poster, Caroline Rened, for her public-service espionage; she even posted a grainy follow-up video with a caption reading, “Update they were making out and ended up in the bathroom.” Rened was hailed as a “girl’s girl” doing both the FBI and “the Lord’s work.” Hundreds of others said they wished an iPhone-wielding guardian angel had outed their own philandering partners. “My ex husband cheated on me while I was pregnant with his child,” said one. “I would have LOVED for him to be called out on social media, it just didn’t exist like this in 2007.” Divorce lawyers chimed in to offer their services.
Rened isn’t the first TikTok vigilante to expose a suspected cheat. There are tens of thousands of hidden-camera-style confrontations under the hashtag #catchingcheaters, or women catfishing other people’s partners with flirtatious messages like, “I don’t normally DM guys but you’re so cute ????,” under #loyaltytest (and, yes, these videos almost always involve a straight man stepping out on a woman). But while these wannabe Joey Grecos see themselves as holding deceptive men to account, not everyone celebrated “plane guy’s” surreptitious citizen’s arrest. A TikToker who goes by @prettycritical blasted Rened for invading the couple’s privacy: “Now all their friends know and all their family knows,” she says. “Everyone that they know professionally knows. If she wants to leave husband now everyone knows why. If she wants to stay with her husband and work it out, now everybody has an opinion on whether or not she should have.”
Commenters who took up Rened’s challenge to #findthewife tagged the woman’s TikTok account, posted details of when plane guy landed, and shared photos of the couple and their family, while others have suggested doing the same for Katy, the alleged other woman. That followers of this saga have busted out the popcorn has left some people feeling disgusted. “Maybe she would prefer not to have the potential deterioration of her marriage turned into a TikTok reality show for the morbid fascination of strangers w/o her consent,” wrote one commenter on X. “But y’all don’t actually care & are just in this for the TMZ of it all.”
Rened’s video makes certain assumptions: that plane guy is in a monogamous marriage, that his wife would be grateful to see his behavior publicly exposed, and that such a transgression warrants strangers posting her personal info online. But at a time when ethical non-monogamy and polyamory are on the rise, not every flirt with a wedding ring is crossing a line. We don’t know what rules plane guy and his wife abide by in their personal lives. Besides, if Rened really cared about this woman’s well-being, why not track her down and send a private DM? Instead, the video strips plane guy’s wife of any agency, reducing her to a hologram onto which people can project their own baggage. While an online sisterhood has formed around the wife, it’s unclear whether she wants the camaraderie. She hasn’t recorded her own video expressing gratitude toward Rened and the internet sleuths or responded to any of the commenters who have tagged her. Instead, she’s been silent, her TikTok account set to private.
The plane-guy saga is the kind of intimate, unscripted moment that makes for viral gold. For the viewers, there’s catharsis in watching some asshole get caught. There’s a mystery to solve and people to fight with in the comment section. I also get the impulse to put plane guy on blast. Had I been on that flight and within earshot of the situation, I would have hung onto their every word and invented an elaborate backstory for each of them: In my version, it’s Katy’s first time on an airplane. Upon landing, I would have texted the group chat about the scandal and bored my husband with every detail. But I would have opted to watch Fatal Attraction during the flight itself instead of filming a grassroots version of Cheaters for the entire internet to see.