July 25, 2015

A woman sitting behind a couple at a baseball game photographs the wife's phone, which shows her texting to another man.

The woman passes a note to the husband: "Your wife is cheating on you. Look at the messages under Nancy! It's really a man named Mark Allen." They include a phone number for him to message if he wants the photograph of the wife's phone, and he does: "This is the guy you gave the message to at the ball game send me that pic please." He gets the photograph and the woman tweets a photograph of her holding her phone with his message asking for the photograph and her sending the photograph. Nice touch: Her iPhone has a classic cracked screen. And the tweet is drawing commentary:
"Yeah it sucks that she might have been cheating but it was really none of your business," @steelerfan1874 reacted. "You should have paid attention to the game instead of the people in front of you."

"No one safe out here any more," @PizzaPartyBen added.

39 comments:

campy said...

If she'd found a man cheating on his wife, no one would have said to MYOB.

MisterBuddwing said...

Campy: Not so sure about that. (I'm sure a lot of guys would have had something to say.)

When I saw the news item online, I groaned and thought, "Do you really want to get mixed up in this???"

Tank said...

It's like starting a book that you can't finish because you hate everyone in it.

Matt Sablan said...

So, is the only person we can root for here the husband?

Maybe?

Matt Sablan said...

On the one hand, I'd like to know. On the other, I feel like you probably would have had to go looking to find this out about someone's text messages when looking at the game.

I guess this might be a case where snooping turned out not to be THAT bad?

Tank said...

@Matthew

Not really. You (we) really have no idea at all what else is going on in that marriage. One lesson I learned long ago when I did some divorce work was how little the outside world knows about what goes on inside a marriage. Experiment: think about your own marriage and all the things you and your spouse know that no one else would ever suspect.

OT: The things that people tell their divorce attorneys would make your head explode. Not literally.

Levi Starks said...

I know some deeply committed baseball fans who are women, but I suspect there is a significant number for whom going to a game is primarily a social event. The two women in this story have created their own game which they find more interesting than baseball. Good for them.

Michael K said...

"It's like starting a book that you can't finish because you hate everyone in it."

Gone Girl. Unfortunately, I finished it. Whew !

Michael K said...

"The things that people tell their divorce attorneys would make your head explode. Not literally."

My daughter gave up on family law after a client called and left an awful rant on her voice mail, then killed herself.

Tank said...

@Michael K

I had a client shoot himself in the head. He did not miss. He fully recovered, we helped him get his life back in order, he got together with his high school GF (after 40+ years) and is living a great life now. Sometimes it works out.

That said, I'm happy to be well out of the divorce business.

SGT Ted said...

Pretty bold, communicating with her fuck buddy in front of her husband.

sane_voter said...

As I get older I see many more shades of gray (not channeling the book) in relationships. I would not alert the man or woman if I don't know them. What if he is abusive and she is trying to get up the courage to leave?

Michael K said...

Tank, my students a couple of years ago, got to interview a guy on the neurosurgery ward who had shot himself in the head and missed his brain. The bullet was in his frontal sinus behind his forehead. Powder burns on his temple. Interesting discussion.

Etienne said...
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jr565 said...

The NSA should at least have this level,of capability when dealing with terrorism. All this woamn did was cheat.
I nominate her to start monitoring for threats to the homeland.

jr565 said...

Maybe this marriage is open and this woman was just contacting her next Paolo:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/07/what-open-marriage-taught-one-man-about-feminism.html

Matt Sablan said...

"Experiment: think about your own marriage and all the things you and your spouse know that no one else would ever suspect."

First thing I learned in this thought experiment: I'm married and I don't even know it!

I get your point though.

Shane said...

Divorce/custody practice is a sad and depressing living. Getting paid to handle others' sadness, sense of loss, achieve the best equitable outcome for my client and for those still committed to the family, especially the kids, helping them through what often amounts to a death in the family, from which some never recovered leaves marks on all involved.

Criminal defense was an emotional walk in the park comparably.

I have never been cuckolded (hopefully), but how many who have been actually ever know? Personally, I sure as hell would want that note and the opportunity to follow up. If your life is a lie, and its not (in this instance, with these listed facts) of your doing, knowing exactly what you have spent 29 years investing in seems like a prudent thing.

I applaud these women. They saw what they apparently perceived as a wrong. They didn't stand up and make a big deal of it, focusing the attention on themselves or embarrassing the wife/couple. These women made a private record, were discrete with the perceived innocent in the situation (and let HIM do what he wanted with the information that the wife arrogantly and stupidly made available to those in the vicinity of her seat and exposed device.) There's no stupidity exception of privacy at a baseball game when you know there are people less than a foot over your shoulder. If you hold the device openly, you are choosing to make it public. These women weren't the NSA. They were just there. The wife exposed herself.

(The two things that cause me pause is how/why this story became a media item; and how/why their names came to be revealed in the article. If this was of the women's doing,that smacks of opportunism. If the women marketed the story without the husband's knowledge, everything I have written here is even more crap than me feeling it necessary to share my opinion on any of this. If the husband knew and okayed it, fine.)

They discretely handed the guy a note - that gave HIM the complete/sole option of involving himself further by responding or ignoring the note. They put their necks out there by offering him a contact if he thought he should see what they said they had. HE chose to reach out to them and not have his head remain in the sand.

The wife was not just apparently s/texting with her masqueraded "Nancy" (interestingly, apropos of nothing, she chose the same "secret name" that Keith Richards writes in his auto/biography he uses for Mick), cuckolding her husband openly, and flaunting her thing to these women (or anyone else nearby, inc next to the guy she was married to for almost 30 years, and obviously thinks is clueless and worthy of such public contempt.

These women did a solid by this guy. He could have chosen to wallow in his blind (or now known) ignorance, but HE CHOSE not to in contacting them. The moral marshmellowing of comments (on the original story) condemning the women for not just shutting up and watching the game is crap. The women gave the husband options and information, not of the creation. What he did with that info is not of their doing.

That people are condemning these women is just another piece of this waffling country going down the shitter. These women should just be grateful the wife was not a higher up for planned parenthood negotiating body parts sales with her lover. The president himself may (yet) feel compelled to call a presser and condemn these women for "obviously, acting stupidly."

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Experiment: think about your own marriage and all the things you and your spouse know that no one else would ever suspect."

Purely by coincidence, I met a young fellow who played sports with, partied with, and dated the children of the neighborhood where I live, all before we moved into the neighborhood. Some of these families are more than a little dysfunctional and he was witness to some crazy shit that I would never have suspected from the usual casual interactions with my neighbors. Adulteries, drug use, weird little betrayals and schemes, these people apparently lived their lives with no awareness that their children, and their children's friends, were watching and talking.

Jason said...

it's like starting a book that you can't finish because you hate everyone in it.

Sooooo it's like reading the New York Times?

Etienne said...
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YoungHegelian said...

In my line of work, I end up often end up going through clients' data files with a fine tooth comb when we attempt to recover their systems from disk failures, malware infections, etc.

I've found all sorts of "interesting" stuff. The only bit of malfeasance the law requires me to report is child pornography, which, thank God, I have never found. For everything else, I figure if total confidentiality works for lawyers, doctors, & the clergy, it's good enough for me. I understand that a court of law wouldn't see professional confidentiality as covering what I do, but, honestly, that's because lawyers are Luddites at heart, and if they really understood, we'd be covered, too.

Static Ping said...

So do we have confirmation that this is real? Sounds like one of those too good to be true stories.

Charlie said...

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Gahrie said...

I officially became a grumpy old man the day I saw my first Ashley Madison commercial.

Valentine Smith said...

The truth shall set ye free!!! I love it!

Problem with that is true freedom scares the shit outta most people.

But airing it on twitter and the News are a humiliation too far.

Check that: fuck her she deserves it.

Smilin' Jack said...

This is so cool. All those annoying bozos who are always whining about how modern communications technology has cut us off from interacting with the people right in front of us need to read this.

Michael K said...

"the day I saw my first Ashley Madison commercial."

As long as you aren't in the database. I hear that 20% of Ottawa is.

Fen said...

Pretty stupid move. Breaking up a marriage can get you killed.

Fen said...

If I was cheating on my wife and someone outed me, she would leave me and I would have nothing left to live for. What do you think happens next? I would inflict the same amount of pain and loss on the person who outed me. And what's the best way to get revenge on a mother?

Anonymous said...

So that's what happened!

When she suddenly stopped writing me, I was like, wtf?

Freeman Hunt said...

They posted it online? Were they trying to fulfill the stereotype of their generation as shallow, self-obsessed insensitives?

Getting involved with this couple's problems one could argue for or against, but there is no defense for publicly posting the photos.

I Callahan said...

Screw her. If she is cheating, she deserves whatever negative publicity she gets.

Blue@9 said...

"I applaud these women. They saw what they apparently perceived as a wrong. They didn't stand up and make a big deal of it, focusing the attention on themselves or embarrassing the wife/couple."

And then they went to a NY newspaper to tell everyone about it.

Tank is right-- it's asinine to get involved in the private lives of total strangers, particularly couples. Adultery sucks and it's wrong, but it's not like physical violence or other criminal acts. These women are busybodies who amused themselves by injecting themselves into a private matter and then publicizing it. "Outing" people? This is the new era assholery that leads to despicable sites like Gawker.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'm not thinking of the woman; I'm thinking of the man.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Those women did not do that out of a desire to help; they did that out of wanting to be drama queens and attention whores.

They have no idea, none, what the circumstances are. How dare they insert themselves into someone else's life.

Disgusting behavior.

walter said...

Clearly the couple are punking the nosey folk with some high tech/trans role-play...and it's kinda rapey somehow...

MadisonMan said...

Busybodies are everywhere. People need to have lives.

mikee said...

I was taking a shortcut, driving behind a Walmart a week ago, and saw the following:

A pickup truck and a van parked behind the store. A group of 5 teen females and 2 males, and another lone male, either late teens or early twenties.

The lone male and one of the teen males started fighting while the others used their phones to record the event.

I pulled over, called the police, and watched as the lone male was pulled over in his pickup truck, while the police chased the van down the street, about 2 minutes later.

Was this a gang initiation, a real fight, students making a video for film class, or what?

If it was consensual violence, there is no problem: that is legal in Texas, although disturbing the peace might apply. If it was gangs, I don't want them behind my Walmart. If it was anything else, the police might could help with the problem before anyone gets hurt.

Intruding on public misbehavior used to be called things like "maintaining community standards" or "not putting up with that s**t" depending on the neighborhood.

The line between busybody and helpful assist is often in the eye of the beholder.