- Thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this  video. Okay, very quickly because I have not  

talked about this yet and I feel like I should,  but I run a Substack newsletter. Over the summer  

I've been using it as a platform to run a book  club, and the book club will be continuing on  

a more seasonal basis. But in the meantime, I've  been also using that platform to do more personal  

writing, to create lists of reading materials of  movies that I'm interested in, recommendations,  

and also as a place to share smaller like informal  essays. If you're interested, you can just check  

it out, but thanks, everyone. Let's get to  the video. Cheating is a tale as old as time,  

quite literally. In Greek mythology, there are  countless stories of cheating. One of my favorite  

myths is the one where Zeus turns his mistress  into a cow to throw his rightfully enraged wife  

off the scent. Shakespeare's Othello was driven  to madness by the paranoia of his wife cheating  

on him, eventually killing her by the end of  the play. Infidelity always has and continues  

to be a popular plot development in literature and  movies from "The Scarlet Letter," to "Sabrina," to  

"Titanic," to "You Got Mail," to "The Notebook,"  to the highest form of art of all "Challengers."  

All is to say we've been conditioned into watching  and reading infidelity stories for entertainment.

- [Movie Actor] I know you've been cheating me.

- And so it's no wonder why we're captivated by  cheating, obviously if it ever involves ourselves,  

but also if it involves other people  as well. And in this day and age,  

it doesn't even matter if the cheating actually  happened, just the implication of it is enough  

to get people excited. For example, last year  Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan's heavily  

publicized relationship ended in December, 2024  with Barry deleting his Instagram account after  

getting accused of cheating on Sabrina. Now,  where do these accusations even come from? There  

was honestly not that much evidence. Some might  say there was no evidence. The girl that everyone  

thought Barry was cheating with clarified that  the rumors were false and that nothing happened.

- No, I did not get with Barry. I have  never even encountered this man in my life.

- The actual statement from some insider  on their breakup was that they're both just  

young and career-focused, but that didn't  matter. The internet had taken the bait and  

someone needed to be punished. On December  7th, Barry made a statement on X about how  

these attacks were starting to encroach on his  family's safety. "Knocking on my granny's door,  

sitting outside my baby boy's house intimidating  them. That's crossing a line." A number of people  

replied to Barry's post brushing off his concerns  about his family to get to the bottom line. "So  

did you cheat?" Another person said, "I feel  like you could have said sorry in here somewhere,  

but okay." Sorry to who exactly? Does Barry  need to be apologizing to us as if we're his  

girlfriend? And even if Barry did cheat on  Sabrina, saying sorry to her through a tweet  

would be absolutely insane. I feel like people  don't know what they're asking for at this point.  

Ethan Slater and Ariana Grande faced similar  backlash with cheating speculations. In 2023,  

the "Daily Mail" reported that the two were seen  all over each other on the set of "Wicked" and at  

Michelle Yeoh's Oscar party, all before Ethan  was separated from his ex-wife Lily Jay. The  

source went on to make the claim that Ari and her  then husband Dalton would even go on double dates  

with Ethan and Lily. I remember at this time  everyone was bringing up Ariana's song "Breakup  

With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" as evidence of  her grotesque attitudes towards home wrecking.

- She says she knows it isn't  right and that she doesn't care.

- [Mina Le] While Ariana Grande hasn't addressed  the exact allegations, she has mentioned to  

"Vanity Fair" that the popular narrative  is not how it actually went down. She said,  

"The most disappointing part was to see so many  people believe the worst version of it. That was  

definitely a tough ride." As a result of this  backlash, Ethan and Ariana have understandably  

laid low and the subsequent "Wicked"  press tour, which ended earlier this year,  

emphasized the main co-stars Ariana and Cynthia  Eviro's friendship, chemistry and emotional bond.

- I didn't know that was happening.

- I've seen it on a couple posts.

- I'm sure part of this marketing decision was to  deflect negative press from Ariana's love life.  

Meanwhile, Lily Jay actually published an article  in December that mostly focused on how publicity  

has affected her career and how she now fears  that the rumors will harm her credibility as a  

therapist. So I think it's important to remember  that while online users may think they're  

supporting the victim of the situation, they most  likely are not and are just participating in the  

celebrity media circus of it all. But again,  why do we even care so much about a problem that  

doesn't actually involve any of us personally? And  why is our understanding of infidelity lacking in  

so much nuance? Cartoons Hate Her explains  on their Substack how the internet views  

cheating. "Cheating is evil and cheaters are evil.  Cheaters are innately evil and cannot be reformed.  

Cheating never happens because of any problems  in the relationship, and the blame always falls  

specifically on the cheater, no matter what  happened prior to the cheating. Cheaters  

should be shunned from society for life." In  reality, hot take, but please walk with me here,  

cheating is not that black and white of an issue.  Renowned relationship therapist Esther Perel wrote  

an iconic piece for "The Atlantic" titled "Why  Happy People Cheat." And she goes on to explain  

that she doesn't subscribe to the symptom theory  or this idea that infidelity must be a symptom  

of something wrong in the relationship.  Perel writes, "The intricacies of love and  

desire don't yield to simple categorizations of  good and bad, victim and perpetrator." Shannon  

Keating echoed these sentiments for her article  "Why Are We Still So Scandalized by Cheating?"  

She writes, "It's one thing to think that  cheating in the abstract is a clear wrong.  

But it's another thing entirely to consider  it across the board, without qualifications,  

as an act of abuse and deserving of social,  professional, and even carceral consequences."  

As just a concrete example to drive this point,  someone cheating because they're stuck in an  

abusive relationship and afraid of divorcing their  abusive spouse is much different from someone  

cheating because they have no respect for their  partner. In saying all this, the purpose I have  

for this video is to examine our attitudes towards  cheating in the public sphere. I personally do not  

care about Sabrina and Barry or Ariana and Ethan.  I'm fine not ever knowing their full stories  

because it's none of my business. And ultimately I  do think cheating is wrong, and I would personally  

not recommend any of my friends to date a  cheater regardless of why they cheated, even  

though I believe in everyone's ability to reform.  But that's just how I feel personally. I can talk  

about that more at length on another day, but for  this video I want to focus on our relationship  

to cheating on the public stage because on a  societal level, I think cheating is not on its  

own something that anyone should be humiliated  for on a massive scale. And actually it's just  

not something at all that we the public should  be involved in, and yet we are. So why is that?

- [Narrator] Cheating scandal  surface with Tristan Thompson.

- I don't even know how to describe  it besides it's just so up.

- [Reporter] This couple was caught on  the big screen at the Coldplay concert.

- [Announcer] Either they're having  an affair or they're very shy.

- [Reporter] This is a kiss cam catastrophe.

- Any CEO that cheats on his wife will be  fired because that is the ultimate betrayal.

- I might actually have gone on with  your cheating and your bullshit if  

your attitude around here had  been even the least bit loving.

- I use Squarespace for my book club website, and  I love it because of how easy and customizable  

the platform is. I've been really happy with the  basic features thus far, but I've recently started  

looking into the platform's CSS capabilities just  to add a touch more uniqueness. And I've been  

using Squarespace forums to self-teach myself,  and honestly, it's just been awesome. Everyone  

is just super helpful. Squarespace has really  streamlined the site building process and their  

community features are just the cherry on top.  But on top of having a snazzy looking website,  

Squarespace offers so many different analytics.  You can really check on every single aspect of  

your site and see who's been meandering there,  which is super helpful if you're using your  

website as part of your brand building. Speaking  of brand building, if I ever decide to sell merch,  

it will be going up on this Squarespace. The  platform makes it super easy to list products,  

connect to a payment processor, and streamline  customer emails. Check out squarespace.com for  

a free trial, and when you're ready to launch,  go to squarespace.com/menale to get 10% off your  

first purchase of a website or a domain.  Okay, I would say that a lot of our anger  

towards celebrity cheating is magnified when the  perpetrator is someone who has a large fan base,  

especially a large fan base of female  fans. John Mulaney is the perfect example.

- Please welcome John Mulaney.

- I'm not a man.

- Mulaney is a beloved comedian who rose to  fame based on his good-guy standup sets. He had,  

you know, boy nextdoor looks and a  somewhat dorky and earnest demeanor,  

marking him visually at least  as unthreatening and wholesome.

- Women will see me as a threat. That is  funny. Yeah, that is silly. That is silly.

- As writer Kayleigh Donaldson sums up, "To be  frank, Mulaney is extremely easy to infantalize."  

And I fully drink this Kool-Aid. For better or  for worse, I have always had a soft spot for  

effeminate men. That is also something that can  be unpacked on a later day. But one of Mulaney's  

defining bits was that he would always refer to  his then wife, Anna Marie Tendler, with reverence.

- I love and respect my wife very much.

- [Mina Le] Separating him from the  legions of male comedians who came  

before him who tend to punch down on their wives.

- I never wanted to be a husband.

- I remember one of the earliest pieces of John  Mulaney content I saw on the internet was a gif  

set of his 2015 standup show "The Comeback Kid"  where he joyously shouts, "That's my wife." But in  

2022, Mulaney and Tendler got divorced. Donaldson  reported at the time, "The responses to Mulaney's  

split and new love seemed unusually frantic.  Some cried that love was dead. Others lamented  

how Mulaney didn't seem like that kind of guy. He  just loved his wife so much. How could he do this  

to her? How could he do this to us?" Media studies  professor Amanda Herberg explained to Vox that,  

"Mulaney's star persona really came to represent  a rejection of both traditional toxic gender  

roles and the necessity of children in defining a  successful, meaningful marriage. It goes without  

saying that this is connected especially with  millennial women for whom ideas of domestic bliss  

look very different than they did for their  parents and grandparents generations." Okay,  

I should clarify. While there's been no proof that  Mulaney cheated on Tendler, people were upset by  

the fact that it was Mulaney who dumped Tendler  after building a platform off of being a wife guy.

- He would always talk about how  much he loves his wife. You know  

what John Mulaney did? He went to  rehab and immediately divorced her.

- And while Tendler was grieving and sharing  emotional art on her Instagram, he had swiftly  

moved on with the younger hotter Olivia Munn  who admitted that she had had a crush on Mulaney  

for a while. To make matters worse, Mulaney had  apparently told Tendler that he didn't want kids.

- People always ask us, "Are you  gonna have kids?" And we say, "No."

- [Mina Le] But now has two children with Munn.

- We are having a baby together.

- Neither of them have divulged the  nitty gritty details of their marriage,  

but it didn't matter anymore. People began  to form a parasocial relationship with  

Tendler herself, seeing this poor woman  as a symbol of heartbreak, female pain,  

and abandonment. Around the same time, former  Try Guy Ned Fulmer was caught making out with  

his employee Alexandra Herring in New York City.  An actual proven cheating scandal because he was  

and is still married to Ariel Fulmer. Ned  like Mulaney branded himself as a wife guy.  

He constantly mentioned his wife and even had a  Bobblehead figurine that said my wife as merch.

- My wife, my wife, my wife Ariel,  my wife. My wife is awesome.

- Ned loves his wife.

- Zoe Aiko Sonnenberg, a journalist who studied  the Try Guys for the months leading up to the  

scandal. This is real journalism, guys.  She writes, "The success of the Tri Guys'  

brand has less to do with their shtick itself  than with their performance of authenticity,  

the promise that the character on screen and  the human behind the character are largely  

the same. This is especially true in their  personas as good guys, kind, and inquisitive,  

and genuine men navigating the world before our  eyes. They're less actors than people you know,  

in appearance at least. This is the  fundamental draw of the channel. And  

when the facade fell away online this  week, the fandom reacted in kind."

- Ned, are there any secrets  that you're hiding from us?

- Don't think so.

- That's a lie.

- Unlike actors such as Jude Law  and singers like Adam Levine,  

their personal relationships do not necessarily  affect their ability to act or to sing. Even  

John Mulaney who straddles the line between  personality and artist is able to recuperate  

his career because he has a talent that  people like and he's able to actually  

write jokes unrelated to loving his wife.  Surprise. His 2023 standup show "Baby J"  

avoids the divorce issue entirely in favor  of diving deep into his addiction issues.

- Do you know how bad of a drug problem you have  

to have if when you open a door and  see people gathered, your first and  

immediate thought is, "This is probably  an intervention about my drug problem."

- It was his effort to reconcile who he was  seen as with who he is, and it was pretty  

well received by critics and fans alike. But when  it comes to just being a straight up personality,  

your personal behavior has a direct correlation  with how likable you are to your fan base,  

and therefore does affect your career. It  makes absolute sense to me why the other Tri  

Guys would ax Fulmer's role because he was now  unfit to be Ned the Tri Guy, a character who's  

super into his wife. Even though it's ironic  because Ned and Ariel are still together,  

so I assume they've worked out their issues  privately. And in that case, the actual  

victim of the situation has forgiven him, but the  uninvolved fans are still mad about it. Granted,  

I was never a Try Guy watcher, so I can't really  say how I feel about Ned Fulmer getting fired on a  

personal level. Obviously I understand why because  he could no longer be the character he created,  

as I mentioned, and it is pretty bad that he  hooked up with his employee of all people.  

taliaisnotcool has a video essay on this scandal,  and she made an interesting point that Ned was  

using his wife as a branding tool and a way to  insulate himself from criticism. His use of his  

wife as a symbol could be seen as exploitative  to garner support and views because it did not  

translate into actually treating her well. Again,  I don't know Ned personally, and this could be  

totally wrong. And I do believe in complex people,  so I think it also is possible to really love your  

wife but still do things to hurt her. So Ned the  Try Guy, the wife-lover character, could have come  

from an authentic place. Regardless, this is  what the optics were and the internet does not  

like complex things. And Ned becomes a parable  for fake nice guys, the kinds who deceive women  

into thinking they're feminist when really they  treat women terribly. Again, not saying Ned treats  

women terribly, but I think this is just the kind  of societal paranoia that his story contributed  

to and is only bolstered by the ongoing meme of  performative feminist men who masquerade as caring  

about women's issues, even sometimes wearing  women's wear to come across as gender progressive  

and non-threatening, all in order to sleep with  them and dump them afterwards like any other guy.

- Who taught you? John I suppose?

- No, I taught John this heaven.

- Feminism even in love?

- Needless to say, I think a major reason for  our outrage towards celebrity cheating scandals  

is because these scandals reaffirm our anxieties  about patriarchy. People online were pointing out  

this disturbing trend of men getting famous and  then leaving their longtime girlfriends and wives,  

such as the cases of Barry Keoghan, Ethan  Slater, Jeremy Allen White, Ryan Reynolds,  

Taika Waititi, Benjamin Millepied, et  cetera, et cetera. For many of these cases,  

cheating has never been confirmed and rumors  are dubious, but I think people are critical  

of what they believe to be a man leaving  his long-term partner for a hot and famous  

celebrity, making their non-famous wives seem  disposable, especially when they're mothers.

- Gets the golden globe, gets the Vanity  Fair cover, boom, like you blow up your life.

- I know, that's kind of how we felt about it.

- It's like very Hollywood.

- One may ask, "Who cares?" Are that many of  us in a position of dating hot and upcoming  

actors who could potentially fall victim to  this trend and leave us? I don't think so.  

But while we may be immune to this particular  problem, feminists have long argued that the  

personal is political, meaning that specific  relationships, sex lives, lives in general,  

they do not exist in a vacuum and so they  cannot be separated from the patriarchy.  

So it's less that we're afraid our husbands  will leave us for Sabrina Carpenter,  

but that these cases reinforce the patriarchal  notion that no matter what you do, our husbands  

are superficial to their cores and will chase  a hotter younger woman if given the chance.

- You're married.

- I am. Yes, I am.

- This fear of men's superficiality is  also why during the time of "Lemonade,"  

many women were lamenting who  would possibly cheat on Beyonce.

- Beyonce.

- I understand where people are coming from  when they say things like this, but the core  

of this idea is the belief that if you're a  perfect enough woman you won't be cheated on,  

which implies still that it is a woman's  responsibility to not be cheated on at the  

end of the day. But it's also easy to see why  people fall into this logic. According to early  

2000s research women tend to report infidelity  as being related to relationship dissatisfaction,  

whereas men often described extramarital  involvement as more about their desire for sexual  

excitement. These conclusions imply that women  cheat because their husbands are bad and men cheat  

because they want more than what their perfect  wife has to offer and are therefore insatiable.

- Alright, so I cheat, I used to  cheat. I'm not getting spayed.

- And now this isn't to say that women never do  wrong. JoJo Siwa was accused of cheating on her  

partner Kath Ebbs with her "Celebrity Big Brother  UK" costar Chris Hughes, and faced backlash for  

a myriad of reasons, for allegedly cheating, for  lying about being a lesbian, which I don't really  

think is fair because sexuality is complicated  and not always easy to understand for everyone,  

and also for her and Hughes's cringe behavior  online, which is something I unfortunately  

cannot defend. I also cannot defend whatever this  "Betty Davis Eyes" Auto-Tune monstrosity is. But  

Ebbs said following the scandal, they have  felt the most depressed they've been in six  

years. Bottom line, women can also induce harm.  According to Michelle Shenkman, unequal power  

dynamics can create many problems. I don't know  the situation between Kath and JoJo intimately,  

but JoJo did have much more fame than Kath,  which I think does skew the relationship a  

bit. In traditional straight relationships,  implicit gender roles can lead to these power  

dynamics pretty easily. Shenkman writes,  "When power in a relationship is unequal,  

there is an implicit dynamic of a top dog and an  underdog. The top dog is unable to be vulnerable  

for fear of showing weakness and the underdog  must hold back for fear of upsetting the balance,  

making intimacy nearly impossible to achieve."  But we could go further. Lauren Rosewarne's book  

"Cheating on the Sisterhood" explores the gender  politics of cheating. So for instance to her a  

married man and a single woman infidelity pairing  is actually disempowerment for both the wife and  

the mistress. She notes that the word mistress is  apt. It implies literally catering to the needs of  

a married man. In this dynamic, the man wields  power through his choice between two women and  

his ability to set the terms of each relationship,  putting each woman into a position of diminished  

agency. Also, usually in the scenario the man is  older and richer, using his proximity to power to  

entice a younger woman who is not as advantaged.  Rosewarne describes the mistress as a commodity  

that powerful men can afford. In this case,  the mistress is getting sexually exploited.  

So Gloria Blanchfield Thomas defines sexual  exploitation as, "Using someone sexually for one's  

own self-centered purposes, regardless of what  destructive effect this might have on the other.  

Sexual exploitation is robbing someone after  you've gotten what you want sexually. It is  

using a person as a sexual object." And you may  be thinking, "How is it exploitative when the  

mistress is a consenting adult?" Well, Rosewarne  argues that just because women can gain sexual  

pleasure doesn't mean they aren't being exploited.  She references Simone de Beauvoir's argument that  

women have learned to take pleasure in their  own subordination. In these types of dynamics,  

the men also tend to emotionally exploit their  mistresses with the whole, "My wife doesn't  

understand me like you," platitude. When men  talk shit about their wives to their mistresses,  

Rosewarne writes, "It is quite likely that the  single woman will do whatever she can to avoid  

resembling the woman that he's cheating  on: this may involve repressing emotions,  

being uncharacteristically sexually uninhibited,  or walking on eggshells around him. Such behavior  

is unlikely to aid self-esteem and is very likely  to impede sexual equality by helping to promote  

the repressive image of the good woman." Yeah,  every so often I'll come across a crazy take  

that given the history of men cheating,  it's actually feminist for women to cheat,  

which brings to mind a scene from the 2006 film  "Little Children" in which the protagonist Sarah  

participates in a book club discussion of Gustav  Flaubert's novel "Madame Bovary." And she says.

- In her own strange way,  Emma Bovary is a feminist.

- Oh, that's nice. So now cheating  on your husband makes you a feminist?

- No, no, no. It's not the cheating. It's the  hunger. The hunger for an alternative. And the  

refusal to accept a life of unhappiness." For some  feminists, and I feel like this is an extension  

of my arch nemesis choice feminism, being able to  prioritize our own individual happiness regardless  

of the harm it causes is considered a radical act.  Doubly when women are able to quote, "Have sex  

like a man," which usually translates to having  sex without feelings involved and often enough.  

I've always thought this was a pretty silly  take because it takes like the worst approach  

to equality. Like rather than expecting men to  be emotionally mature and be better individuals,  

we're calling for women to be more emotionally  immature and be worse individuals. It's a very  

pessimistic outlook, I think. But I think we've  all also drawn the wrong assumption that every  

liberal-seeming woman, especially a celebrity, is  a feminist and lives by and dies by the feminist  

sword, and uplifts sisterhood, and never does  anything to cater to the patriarchy. Hence,  

why Sabrina Carpenter's album cover received so  much backlash because people had these kind of  

expectations for her. But living the feminist  way 24/7 is something that not even outspoken  

feminists are able to do. Rosewarne herself was  the other woman in a marriage, and she explained  

in an interview, "Ideally, of course, it is  in the best interest of feminism for single  

women not to get involved with married men, but  idealism is a very different thing from reality.  

While we can, of course, choose whether we act  on our emotions, individuals make decisions for  

a suite of reasons, not just politics. In  any case, I made a selfish decision that  

exploited my own priorities at that time in my  life. Evidently my feminism proved lower down  

on that list than some other priorities, like  being in an intimate relationship." Once again,  

I think there can be a lot of nuance to  cheating discourse. I love to ask, you know,  

a mistress why feminism is lower down on their  list of priorities. Maybe not in that kind of  

loaded language because I feel like that's really  offensive, but people hate talking and unpacking  

the reasons why someone might do something  bad. It's just much easier to name the crime  

and enact the punishment, and that's also the  kind of culture that our society breeds as well.

- This is the big bad world full of  mean people where nasty things happen.

- Now you tell me.

- In 2013 there was a highly publicized Gallup  poll which surveyed 1,535 people. The poll  

gathered information on American's moral  approval of topics, like assisted suicide,  

the death penalty, having a baby out  of wedlock, gay or lesbian relations,  

among others. Infidelity had the lowest approval  rating even compared to a number of controversial  

topics on the list like polygamy and human  cloning. Human cloning is less controversial than  

cheating. I'm honestly shocked. The result was  the same as the poll's previous iteration in 2001,  

but the disapproval rating is nearly twice  what it was 40 years before that. A number  

of publications weighed in on the poll results.  I loved what the "Huffington Post" had to say.  

They argued that infidelity vast disapproval  rating is because it is a stand in for lying,  

especially lying to someone you've sworn loyalty  to. I think that's why progressives are generally  

okay with polyamory and open relationships because  these relationship models imply that all parties  

are in the know what's happening. There is no  deception involved. Hugo Schwyzer commented on  

the poll results for "The Atlantic," pointing  out that changing ideas towards marriage has  

made it so marriage is now a part of individual  happiness rather than for the purposes of baby  

making or communal stability as it once was. He  mentions Karen Swallow Prior who wrote about how  

young people are marrying later because they  see marriage as a capstone to a well-ordered  

life rather than a cornerstone upon which to  build. This new way of viewing marriage is,  

quote, "much less forgiving of sexual betrayal  because it presumes that those who finally get  

around to marrying should be mature enough to be  both self-regulating and scrupulously honest."

- Unless you're well mated, this  business of marriage is much overrated.

- I understand that completely. I've been in the  same relationship since I was 23, but I think I  

apply this kind of rhetoric to my friendships, you  know, 'cause every so often I'll encounter someone  

who is just incredibly rude. But usually if  they're younger than me, like in their early 20s,  

I'm able to rationalize it in my head like, "Oh,  it's just because they're young. They have yet to  

learn life's lessons." Meanwhile, if the person  being rude to me is in their 30s, it's like super  

disorienting because I guess I just go through  life with the assumption that anyone who's reached  

a certain stage of adulthood, let's say 25,  should be mature and normal. So in a similar vein,  

dating around when you're 21, okay, it's a bit  more acceptable to be all over the place, but  

if you're in your 30s, there's an expectation that  you know how to handle yourself in a relationship.  

I think we also wanna believe that people can  be easily separated into good versus bad. I try  

to challenge myself when I catch myself  categorizing people like this, you know,  

for example, thinking everyone who is 30 plus  should be good when really someone's maturity  

level or self-awareness can come at any age or  never come at all. But we are a culture obsessed  

with morality. That's the bottom line that I wanna  say. Conservatives are obviously historically  

obsessed with traditional and religious ideas of  morality, regularly targeting anyone who deviates  

from the norm. Did you know that up until 1973 men  could legally justify killing their wives if she  

was committing adultery in Texas? But liberals are  also obsessed with morality, though I'd argue in  

a less overtly violent way. When it comes to  issues like cancel culture, liberals feel an  

urgency to align with goodness and cast away evil.  And I think part of the reason for this is that  

we all know deep down that meritocracy is a lie  and people get to high places because of their  

connections, and where they're born, and what  kind of money they were born into. Yet we still  

want to believe that the people who have made it  deserve their spot and are at least good people.  

There's a sense of injustice when a bad guy gets  to capitalize on being a good guy, as is, I guess,  

the narrative with Ned Fulmer, or in general  when a person is beloved by millions but actually  

hurting those in her private life, as is with the  case with Ariana Grande. I also read this Substack  

essay by Anna Bab who commented on the recent  season of "Love Island" USA's controversy. The  

SparkNotes recap is that in July before the season  finished, one of the contestants, Cierra Ortega,  

was kicked off the show because posts of her  using the c-slur resurfaced. She used the  

term to describe the shape of her eyes pre Botox.  Ultimately, when it comes to the public response,  

we all have our own personal boundaries on what we  will accept from celebrities, and these boundaries  

guide our moral compasses and help us rationalize  the world to seem less chaotic. Racism is bad, so  

we should de-platform every racist, and that will  make us feel like the world, or at least my world,  

is controlled and not racist. But Bab  raises an interesting point. "Ironically,  

as fans called for the contestants' heads in the  name of social justice, they remained oblivious  

to the internal biases shaping their opinions in  the first place. For example, Chelly and Olandria,  

two Black women displaying the patience levels  of stoic therapists during the season's biggest  

arguments were branded as bullies over a  minor friendship dispute in a single episode,  

causing the women to lose around 50,000 followers  combined. What is the impact of outlawing slurs if  

the prejudices behind the language continue  to shape our actions and, by extension,  

our society?" We have to question whether or not  our incessant need to uphold morality is actually  

maybe counterproductive. There are different  ways racism manifests, right? And by treating  

someone who used a slur out of genuine ignorance  the same way we treat someone who used a slur  

because they are literally a white nationalist,  we are robbing ourselves of being able to enact  

actual change. Rayne Fisher-Quann really said it  best in her essay "Here We Go Again, and Again,  

and Again." In the essay, Rayne addresses the  Adam Levine scandal, so I'm bringing it back  

to cheating. The reason I wanted to bring up  the Cierra situation in the first place was  

because I think it is a perfect example of how  the internet sees canceling. But anyway, in 2022,  

Levine cheated on his wife Bahati with a number of  women, including Instagram model Sumner Stroh, who  

was between ages like 19 to 21 when Levine slid  into her DMs. This incident is where that joke,  

"That body of yours is absurd," originates from.  It was like a crazy text message that Levine had  

sent another Instagram model, Maryka, who came  forward after Stroh shared her story. Well,  

Levine was mostly made fun of as I said in this  like kind of lighthearted way for being cringey.  

Stroh was being slandered with labels like whore  and slut. She was facing dehumanizing comments  

about her body. And her claims against Adam were  being largely discredited due to her Only Fans  

presence and, sorry, also vocal fry. The desire  for these people to uphold the morality of a  

monogamous relationship led them to weaponizing  misogyny and pitting the two women against each  

other in this like age-old battle of Madonna  versus whore. Rayne begs the question, "What power  

could you possibly be fighting when you take the  same philosophical and political position as the  

puritan churches of the 18th century, that there  is no end to the humiliation and punishment that  

a sexually deviant woman can deserve?" Rayne also  expressed frustration in that when she brought up  

how Sumner did not deserve this mass public  shaming campaign and harassment on Twitter,  

people discredited her main argument and instead  accused her of excusing cheating. Okay, I agree  

with Rayne that as a society we are obsessed with  this like spectacle of punishment rather than  

nurturing empathy and allowing redemption. She  writes that as a result of the societal thinking,  

"There will always be a woman who we feel deserves  to be punished. There will always be a woman  

placed between the public crosshairs who reminds  you of the girl who bullied you in middle school,  

or you think talks like a liar, or who did the  one thing by which your personal moral compass  

cannot abide. If she ever gets absolved of her  crimes, there will be another worse woman waiting  

to be next." I really hang on to that phrase, "a  woman who reminds you of the girl who bullied you  

in middle school," because I think so many of  our attitudes towards celebrity scandals are  

projections based on our own life experiences  and this need to rectify the wrongdoings in  

our own lives. We may never get the justice we  deserve from our ex-boyfriends cheating on us,  

but maybe we can de platform Ethan Slater and that  will feel like a tiny justice, not just for Lily  

Jay, but for the culture at large. To de-platform  someone rich and famous for cheating is to make  

the biggest statement possible that this is  not acceptable behavior. Ultimately, audiences  

gain a comforting sense of certainty when they  decide that a celebrity has cheated and that the  

celebrity therefore has an easily categorized  moral alignment. Daniel Heller-Roazen wrote a  

book, "The Enemy of All," which in the original  context he's referring to pirates as the original  

enemy of humankind, but I think what he has to say  can relate to cheaters as well. The reason why the  

pirate is so terrifying is that they exist outside  of the laws of nations and are therefore a threat  

not just to individuals, but to the boundaries of  states themselves. Cheaters and home records exist  

as not just a threat to you and your relationship,  but to a sense of order and the sanctity of the  

monogamous relationship, which promises partners  the security of being the only one their partner  

loves. If Ariana Grande is out here stealing  boyfriends left and right, no one is safe. If  

Beyonce can be cheated on, so can the rest of us.  And furthermore, the fact that there are so many  

cheaters out there today means that theoretically  any monogamous relationship could be infiltrated.  

Unfortunately, any philosopher, any statistic  will show that humans are not like just distinct  

certain categories, and real life and real  relationships are actually very messy. There is no  

one size fits all. Going back to Esther Perel, who  charts the complex motivations behind cheating,  

"Cheating can be an act of existential reckoning,  a part of self-definition and exploration,  

a confusing and unknowable impulse, happy people  can and do cheat. The more I've listened to  

these tales of improbable transgression from  one-night stands to passionate love affairs,  

the more I've sought alternate explanations. One  of the most uncomfortable truths about an affair  

is that what for partner A may be an agonizing  betrayal may be transformative for partner B.  

Understanding both sides is crucial, whether a  couple chooses to end the relationship or intends  

to stay together to rebuild and revitalize."  You know, as humans, we love categories. We  

love categorizing women as Madonnas or whores.  We love categorizing ourselves into aesthetic  

categories of cottagecore or clean girl. We love  categorizing people into their specific careers,  

like finance bro and fashion girly, and we  love categorizing people into cheaters and  

non-cheaters. These labels help us understand the  world because actual communication and getting  

to know people takes risk and effort. As Bab  explains, "Demonizing others for unintentional  

prejudice conveniently distracts us from our own  in the short term, but in the long run, it makes  

us afraid to face ourselves. But by allowing space  for well-intentioned people to unlearn in public,  

we might create space to confront our biases  without shame." Bab is unpacking this via the  

lens of racism cancellations, but I think the  same advice can apply to how we look at cheating  

scandals. If we fail to understand the myriad of  reasons why someone might cheat, which is what we  

do when we create like blanket statements like,  "Ariana Grande is hot and a pick-me," or "Ned  

Fulmer actually hates his wife," we actually are  then unequipped to handle cheating or really any  

relationship problems if or when they come up in  our own lives. But if we allow ourselves the grace  

to understand, then we can properly diagnose what  is fixable and what crosses a personal boundary,  

and we can even move forward away from that  relationship, feeling like we properly know  

ourselves better. This is the end of the video,  guys. Thanks so much for sticking around listening  

to me chat. I know I was talking about something  quite controversial this time. So we'd love to  

hear your respectful, respectful opinions,  open to disagreeing respectfully. But yeah,  

on that note, I hope you had a lovely rest of  your day, and I'll see you next time. Okay, bye.

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