When Stephanie snapped her fellow train passenger's picture on Wednesday and posted it to Facebook with the warning that he was loudly bragging about his infidelities, she never expected to get inundated with emails. But since her Facebook posting went viral she's received hundreds, she told Salon, "all of them extraordinarily positive." And she doesn't regret exposing an alleged cheater to Internet ire.
"I just thought he was such a pig," said Stephanie, who asked that her last name not be used (that's also not her above). She said she didn't worry at the time about what effect her posting might have on him, since she was so disgusted by what he was saying. "I was just so fed up with the two-hour train ride and listening to this person be so vulgar," she said.
Later, she added, "A friend of mine said, 'Have you thought about this might hurt his wife's feelings?'" But Stephanie said if she were his wife, she'd want to know: "I would be thinking if I were in her shoes, knowledge is power."
She dismissed the notion, suggested by one Facebook user, that she might have publicly framed the man as a cheater simply because he was loud and annoying. "That's not how I would get back at people," she said.
Stephanie's unaccustomed to Internet fame. "I keep things kind of private," she said. "I don't have 2,000 friends." But her experience over the last few days has shown her how fast and how far a single Facebook post can travel. "I'm just so shocked by the power of social media," she said. "That's what I take from this."
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