TikTok is (still) obsessed with exposing cheating. But are internet sleuths going too far?

On June 24, TikTok user @carolinerened shared a video of a man on a United Airlines flight. Not much can be ascertained from the video itself, but the user's caption has caused an internet storm. This lengthy explanation included flight details, names, and alleged this man was cheating on his wife.

"I wouldn't have known he was married if he hadn't been wearing his wedding ring," the user writes. "Do your thing TikTok," she continued, in a now-deleted video which had over a million likes.

TikTok did, in fact, do its thing, with thousands of views and comments leading to the man and his wife being doxxed, and the man since deleting his social media profiles.

This is the latest incident of cheaters being exposed on TikTok, and with the help of strangers online. The cheaters are inevitably shamed, their partners are informed, and the whole world can watch the breakdown of a relationship on their feeds. What would ordinarily be a private situation is suddenly more public than ever.

TikTok sleuthing is a steadfast phenomenon, seemingly and increasingly pervasive on the app. Not only is it indicative of a certain kind of voyeurism that accompanies TikTok, the trend spells out one of the graver consequences of digital culture today: a lack of empathy and nuance beyond the confines of a phone screen.

And people don't seem to be on board any longer.

While some users say they stand by exposing cheaters, and helping out their apparently unknowing partners, an overwhelming majority have said this post took it too far, even while agreeing with the universal rule that cheating is wrong.

Across X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, users have pointed out the moral wrongdoing in this kind of exposure, largely in context to the "airplane guy" cheating. Their qualms include how public sleuthing is a severe betrayal of privacy, and how it can (and most likely will) subject a couple to public interrogation and even ridicule.

"You guys are loving this, you cannot get enough," TikTok user @prettycritical said in a video about "the married man on the plane", which garnered over 200k views. "Although you're the exact demographic is to call yourself 'girl's girls', your only allegiance is to your own entertainment." The creator pointed out that some relationships have different rules, that we can't know for certain how strangers choose to live their lives, and we certainly can't decide if this is how a person wanted to find out about their husband committing infidelity.

"Posts like these fundamentally value entertainment over privacy but position themselves as forms of activism or justice," wrote one user on X. "This is psychotic behavior. It is actually not normal or 'accountability reporting' to spy on strangers and try to expose them to loved ones," said another.

In essence: this isn't the internet's business, says the internet.

The situation is reminiscent of Couch Guy, the college student who was surprised by his long-distance girlfriend and inadvertently turned into a TikTok fascination, accused of infidelity and being a "red flag". The man himself, Robert McCoy, wrote about how the internet conducted an ongoing, invasive, and boundary-less investigation of him:

Given the apparent tendency of the TikTok algorithm to present viral spectacles to a user base increasingly hungry for content to analyze forensically, there will inevitably be more Couch Guys or [Sabrina] Praters in the future. When they appear on your For You page, I implore you to remember that they are people, not mysteries for you to solve.

McCoy said "it felt like the entertainment value of the meme began to overshadow our humanity" – and that seems to be the case all over again.

TikTok has the potential to create collective change and spark important conversations, but the problem with TikTok detectives is entirely separate. Using a guise of justice and righteousness does not excuse the reality that a person's extremely private life is being made public domain, without any consent of their own. What may have begun with good intentions has morphed into an obsession with information, attention, and becoming a public "savior". Ultimately, holding others accountable can be noble, but this method seems to be anything but.