Have you ever actually gotten into a serious fight with someone in public? As tensions rise, you tend to become oblivious to the world around you. You don't need to be screaming to draw attention to a somewhat raised, agitated voice. Especially if everyone around you becomes silent. You can't expect rational behavior from two emotionally involved people being angry at each other.
They have no expectation of privacy
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't grant it to them. If we would only ever give people what they were legally entitled to, the world would be an awful place.
> Have you ever actually gotten into a serious fight with someone in public?
Being capable of self-restraint (a trait the author laughably tries to attack Boyle with rather than the childish twits fighting in a restaurant), the answer is emphatically no.
> Which doesn't mean we shouldn't grant it to them. If we would only ever give people what they were legally entitled to, the world would be an awful place.
"Expectation of privacy" isn't just a legal term with specific bounds, it is an exploration of the bounds of privacy that society is prepared to accept. Idiots fighting in public have clearly surrendered their privacy, not just legally, but morally and ethically.
"Being capable of self-restraint" does not automatically imply you are always, in any circumstance, capable of self-restraint. Conversely, finding yourself in a public argument of this magnitude does not automatically imply you are incapable of self-restraint. There's a lot of shades of grey here. People are emotional beings and that sometimes gets in the way of rationality. I've never been involved in a public fight, but I can readily imagine that happening, given the right person and the right provocation. I was attempting to elicit some empathy. A little consideration for the shortcomings of others goes a long way.
I certainly don't agree with your assessment of 'the bounds of privacy society is prepared to accept'. That's shifting the responsibility for your personal response onto 'society'. You are responsible for your actions, independent of what 'society' feels about it. That something is possible does not give you, you personally, the moral prerogative to act upon it. That's a naturalistic fallacy: taking the state of affairs as it is in the world and labelling it 'right', because it is the case.
This guy should not have tweeted and photographed the fighting couple, even if five other people were doing it simultaneously and even if they enabled it and even if they should have realized it could (would?) happen.
> childish twits fighting in a restaurant ... idiots fighting in public
Wow. You have already decided that these people are twits and idiots without even being there. Why? Because someone twitted about them having an argument in public, at some Burger Kind restaurant somewhere.
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