New rule for Netflix employees: No looking at anyone for more than five seconds

Staredown! Or maybe you’d better not. The new rules are pretty strict if you work for Netflix, and while I’m not entirely sure how you would enforce a rule like this (or who would want to be in charge of doing so), I know it’s not going to be like looking at the sun if you don’t divert your eyes before the click hits 0:04.9:

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Netflix has introduced new anti-harassment training in the wake of the #metoo movement that rocked Hollywood and seriously disrupted production on its House of Cards show. New rules imposed on set reportedly include no looking at anyone for longer than five seconds, no lingering hugs, no flirting and no asking for a colleague’s phone number. “Everyone was spoken to about #MeToo,” an on-set runner currently working on the new season of Black Mirror told The Sun. “Senior staff went to a harassment meeting to learn what is and isn’t appropriate. Looking at anyone longer than five seconds is considered creepy.

Word is that Netflix employees are having a hard time taking the rule seriously, and have been seen having staredowns in which they count to five and then quickly look away. That’s about how seriously you should expect a rule like this to be taken.

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But how did we get to the point where employers even have the idea to pass such idiotic rules? Let me posit the theory that it’s the result of abandoning any sense of morality or decorum whatsoever in society, and then thinking we can make rules to manage people’s unrestrained carnality. If people don’t know enough not to leer at their colleagues, not to touch them in a sexual manner, and generally to act like gentlemen or gentleladies as the case may be, then hapless employers attempt to institute literalist rules – no looking for five seconds, no touching below here, no asking for a date more than once – because it does no good to tell people to simply act appropriately. People either have no idea what that means, or it doesn’t mean anything to them because they don’t think in such terms. Hey, Harvey Weinstein got away with it! Well. Not forever he didn’t. But everything will be fine at Netflix now because the five-plus-second staredown has been banned, even though the hearts of people are as dark as ever.

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