Rarely, as a romance reporter, am I confronted with breaking news. When I am, it can come in the form of a TikTok video. And in some cases, it’s a video of two people making out.
This should never have been news in the first place. But on Thursday, a TikToker posted a video of a pair kissing on a bench in New York City’s Central Park. “Get a room,” he tells them as he approaches, clearly filming. “There’s kids around.” By today, the clip had received 3.9 million views. Commenters had identified the kissers, noting with glee that one of them appears to be married to someone else. Thousands flooded in to offer takes. (“Nice of you to teach them a lesson!”) One person posted a close-up picture of the woman’s face, making fun of her appearance. Several took it upon themselves to ridicule the man’s socks. Soon, the New York Post had published an article identifying the two as lawyers involved in defending OpenAI in a lawsuit (as if that gives their makeout public-interest relevance) and referring to the incident as “the kissyface.” The Daily Mail shared that the woman “appears to have called in the cavalry—her parents Tracy and Matt have flown in from California to New York.” I’d call mine too.
The whole saga unfolded almost exactly a year after two co-workers—a company’s CEO and its head of human resources—went viral for embracing at a Coldplay concert, a jumbotron moment that spread around the internet for months. People accused them of cheating on their partners. One person in the pair, Kristin Cabot, told The New York Times in December that she’d received 500 or 600 calls a day since the video blew up, and a total of about 60 death threats. She’d been labeled a slut and a home-wrecker and had her looks picked apart. Local police had to start surveilling her house. She resigned from her job. Her children became afraid to go out in public.
Public shaming of this sort is terrible for the people filmed. But these videos don’t affect only their subjects; they’re corrosive to the whole culture. Even if the chances are slim that you’d show up in a viral video, the possibility can be chilling. And the last thing Americans need right now is another reason not to make out.
Already, the country is in a season of unsexiness. Young adults in particular are having less sex and partnering up less. A large share of single people say they aren’t interested in dating at all. Perhaps this is partly because these activities are, if you ask me, messy and a little embarrassing. Flirting and dating open the door to rejection. Kissing and sex are sometimes awkward and—I mean this in the best way—pretty much always weird. Falling in love—well, that’s actually just humiliating. Romance, in all of its forms, is like learning a language: You can’t move forward without putting yourself out there, flailing around, and looking stupid.
The prospect of looking stupid is even scarier when your mistakes—or, let’s say, less-chic moments—can be permanently documented and distributed on a mass scale. Members of Gen Z, a cohort raised on social media, might feel especially paralyzed by this. When their parents were getting drunk and French kissing at parties, talking too loudly on a street corner or failing to call someone’s landline when they said they would, they did not have to worry about being filmed or having their texts screenshotted or becoming the next West End Caleb.
Now, in a time of life meant for sloppiness and lessons learned, many young people seem unwilling to be imperfect. In one Yahoo/YouGov poll, published earlier this year, a large share of Zoomer respondents said that the fear of being “cringe” held them back from opening up emotionally, pursuing hobbies, seizing professional opportunities, and expressing themselves freely online. A survey from the dating app Hinge found that nearly 60 percent of Gen Z respondents said their fear of rejection had stopped them from pursuing a relationship, and a similar share reported that they’d declined to tell someone how they felt because doing so might be a turnoff.
This is what happens when you live in a panopticon. No one even has to have a camera out for people to feel, subconsciously, like they must be on good behavior—a tiny crisis-PR professional fast-walking around in their mind.
[Read: The reality show that captures Gen Z dating]
Of course, accountability is good. The public-shaming impulse has been, at times, a reaction to years of bad behavior—particularly among men accustomed to getting away with a lot and facing very few repercussions. On platforms including “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook groups and the Tea app, some women have tried to create virtual whisper networks, naming offenders so that other people don’t get hurt. But those efforts, and social-media callouts in general, can feel like someone is using a giant club to hammer a glass nail. In the case of public makeouts, one also has to ask: Who is actually harmed?
The online vigilantes don’t really know what’s happening in the Central Park man’s marriage, and it’s not their business. (Neither person in the video seems to have spoken with the press.) Cabot, of the Coldplay episode, told the Times that she and her husband had already been divorcing at the time of the concert, and that her boss had been going through the same process. “I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot said. “I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up. But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them.”
I’d venture to say that more people could stand to have a couple of High Noons and dance—and act, if not inappropriately, a little chaotically. In fact, I’m starting to appreciate the public display of affection as a means of resistance against the surveillance mindset. Why not kiss in front of strangers? In an erotic environment this frigid, plenty of people could stand to be reminded of what unabashed yearning looks like: live and spontaneous, not curated for the screen.
[Read: Teens are forgoing a classic rite of passage]
The psychological research, insofar as it exists, smiles upon PDA. A doctoral dissertation completed last year, for instance, found that PDA was positively associated with relationship satisfaction and constructive communication. A 2022 study found that heightened “PDA-related vigilance” was linked to worse psychological well-being. To be fair, affectionate behaviors in public and private tend to be healthy for couples. But there’s something extra special, I think, about the willingness to act on a surge of romantic fondness as if no one is watching—in a world where anyone could be. It shows that you’re able to step away from watchfulness, or perhaps that you’re so taken with someone that you don’t even care how you look. It’s a feat of un-self-consciousness in service of lust or love.
One might call it cringey—but that’s precisely why it’s great. I used to feel mild discomfort watching people I didn’t know (or, worse, ones I did) in an act of intimacy. I’d lightly judge and look away. Next time, instead, I’ll tip my hat. Thank you, I’ll say silently. That’s the shameless energy this nation needs.
Leave a Reply