AITA for telling 2 guys at a park to not film people even though the people being filmed did not ask for help?
I’m 18F and live in Montréal. My parents are Indian, but they moved to France before I was born, and then later we moved to Québec. I speak French, English, Tamil, and Hindi, although my Tamil and Hindi honestly aren’t amazing. I speak slowly and definitely don’t sound native. A few days ago I was sitting at a park by one of the canals reading a book. It was a really normal summer day. There were people having picnics, some girls doing yoga, people walking dogs, a mother and daughter fishing, etc.
Two men, probably late 30s or early 40s, came by and were talking loudly in what sounded like Punjabi. At first I didn’t care. They were taking pictures of each other and the canal and being a bit loud, but whatever, it’s a public park.
Then they started filming people up close. First they walked over near the girls doing yoga and were recording them. The girls looked uncomfortable but didn’t say anything. One of them eventually just got up and left. Then the men started filming a mother and daughter who were fishing because they had caught a fish. Again, the mom looked visibly annoyed but didn’t say anything.
At that point I got irritated and went over to them. I spoke in French, since it is the default in Quebec and basically asked what they were doing and told them to stop filming random people.
One of them answered in English and immediately got defensive, saying I was “showing off” because I spoke French and that I should be ashamed for not knowing Hindi properly.
So then I answered them in Hindi and repeated again to stop filming strangers without permission.
They called me an AH and told me to mind my business. They said they were only posting the videos for family back home and for “Indian friends to see life here and show they made it” One of them also said something like “showing white people also do yoga” which honestly made me cringe. Then they started mocking my Hindi accent and laughing at me.
Now I’m wondering if I overstepped because technically the people being filmed never directly asked for help or confronted them themselves.
At the same time, I’m exhausted because I constantly feel like I have to prove I’m not whatever stereotype people have about Indians, immigrants etc. And when people act like this in public it makes me anxious that others will judge all of us for it.