At this point, anyone who leaves the house runs the risk of ending up behind someone else’s video. Phones have made filming a habit for strangers, while Meta glasses have made some cameras almost invisible. If that video makes it to TikTok, the short encounter could end up in front of millions of viewers — and the people in the video might not even know it.
But every now and then, the camera seems to catch something cruel: something that could happen. It’s less common than normal viral fodder…though it happens more often than it should.
When is it appropriate to film strangers in public?
On July 23, TikTok creator Jay Guapõ, who boasts 3.5 million followers, posted a video showing a man and a woman kissing near Central Park West and West 63rd Street. Guapõ goes to them while continuing to record.
“Get a room. There are children nearby,” he told them.
The video received more than 2 million views within its first few days. As it went viral, commenters began searching for what the couple had to say, checking out their bodies, and speculating why they seemed uncomfortable being filmed, aside from the obvious.
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On July 25, both social media users and The New York Post had identified the lovebirds as Nathaniel Cullerton, 45, and Kelsey Borenzweig, 29, attorneys at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. According to the company’s website, Cullerton is a partner in Wachtell’s litigation department, and Borenzweig works with him in the same department. Neither has publicly confirmed the nature of their relationship, and the video does not indicate that the other person was dating.
The Daily Mail he initially reported that Cullerton was married and that Borenzweig had recently been in a relationship; However, the newspaper later cited a source who said Borenzweig and his reported partner had split. Still, viewers are skeptical.
“The most obvious story ever,” wrote another.
“That’s definitely his boss,” guessed another.
The internet had already started treating the kiss as an unauthorized sequel to a Coldplay concert. For those who need a refresher, in July 2025, Astronomer’s former CEO Andy Byron and the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, are shown hugging on a stadium screen during a Coldplay concert. Once they realized they were on camera, they just walked out and were never seen again.
Mashable Trend Report
Videos of their reaction have gone viral on social media, racking up more than 130 million views. Viewers identified the individuals, and both managers resigned from The Astronomer after the video went viral. Cabot later filed for divorce, although she said she and her husband had separated at the time of the concert.
The Central Park video appeared to offer the Internet a similar mystery to investigate, while reigniting the debate that strangers can be turned into content just because they’re in the public eye.
The video has revived the general privacy debate
While some viewers focused on whether the lawyers were dating, others questioned why Guapõ filmed two strangers kissing in the first place.
“This is scary, it’s not an episode of Cheaters,” commented one TikTok user.
“It’s not right to film strangers living outside,” argued another. “This? Just two people kissing. Idgaf if they’re lawyers, working together, cheating, whatever.”
Others see it differently. One commenter said public speakers are “low-key and want others to see,” while another wrote, “Don’t be fooled and we have a right to record in public.”
The disagreement went beyond this particular couple. “We live in a surveillance state,” one user wrote. “Forget about the government, your neighbor is doing it.”
Another blamed the incentives created by social media, saying the “economy of attention” that leaked comments encourages people to point cameras at strangers in the hope of capturing something embarrassing.
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That controversy has followed social media, especially TikTok, for years. Videos featuring strangers are now common across the board, from street interviews and photo attempts to public pranks and organized acts of kindness. People from them don’t always know they’re being filmed or understand how the images will be presented, especially since smart glasses and other wearable cameras make filming difficult to see.
The increased intelligence has fueled the proliferation of capture accounts, pranks, and “accounts” that record unsuspecting people. Creators have secretly recorded attempts to get women’s phone numbers in gyms, airports, bars, and stores, while others have targeted shoppers and service workers with deliberately inappropriate pranks. In February, a woman said a man posted a photo of her wearing smart glasses and asked for her number, even though she refused permission for it to be shared.
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The same week the Central Park video went viral, the head of Instagram, Adam Moseri, said the platform will remove videos with smart glasses that show people being abused or exploited.
“We don’t want people to secretly take videos of other people and torture them and post them on our platform,” Mosseri is reported to have said on his Instagram page.
Instagram also banned two accounts of artists who used smart glasses to film women in public with more than 1 million followers.
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The Central Park video may not involve the obvious abuse targeted by Instagram’s policy, but it raises the same basic concern: a stranger can be photographed without vocally consenting to the content, then identified and judged by millions of people with only a few seconds of action footage.
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