Secondhand Smut

When you sit on a train on a daily basis as I have for the past six years, you can't help but notice that people have been taking advantage of their commute using increasingly advanced technology. When I started my regular train commute in 2003, newspapers and magazines was overwhelmingly the diversion of choice. As time as gone by, I've seen more and more people using PSPs, iPhones, and of course, laptops to view digital content from movies to television shows.

A recent article highlights what might be an emerging dilemma when it comes to commuting etiquette. That is, what are the bounds of decency when your seatmate, or the dude in the seat in front of you on your commute insists upon viewing porn on his mobile device in view of other passengers?

Thankfully, I've not been faced with this dilemma. Most of my irritation has been aimed towards those fellow commuters who are deathly ill sneezing and coughing who still insist on sharing their contagious selves with me in a poorly-ventilated enclosed space for 45 minutes. But I have been in situations where there's been a guy with a with a 15-inch laptop who's watching a mainstream R-rated movie, let's say, Crank, and I can't help but wonder if common decency would dictate that the viewer would fast-forward past Amy Smart and Jason Statham's sex scene in public, or a scene where a bad guy gets his hand shredded in a sewing machine. I don't get the sense these commuters would think twice about it - even when there are occasionally kids riding into work with their parents.

Well, I guess I shouldn't be too harsh and cast stones from a glass house. After all, I do expose my poor fellow commuters to my ill-advised fantasy football moves and the mindless drivel in my blog. But at least I use a privacy filter for my screen.