A passenger on a Delta flight from Tampa to New York in a middle seat saw the man sitting beside her at the window sigh and roll his eyes. She glanced at his phone and saw a text he sent: “ugh / urgh, HUGE woman sat next to me.”
She probably shouldn’t have been looking at her phone, but she says it was ‘right in front of her face,’ and she saw it because “I have eyes.”
She then recorded herself on the flight, red-eyed and crying,
We’ve taken off, and I can’t stop crying… now I feel like a prisoner for the next 2 hours… I’ve lost 60+ lbs and have actually been feeling really good about myself… Be kind, can you send me some love?
In a follow-up clip she adds “flying while fat is hard” and says she stayed quiet because she just wanted to get home to her kids and was afraid that if she confronted him, she’d be the one removed from the plane. She says the man realized he’d crossed a line and tried to bury the message by sending multiple blank texts so it would scroll off the visible part of the screen.
The woman says she didn’t overflow into his seat – that he was actually leaning into hers. And after her weight loss she’d finally felt OK about a middle seat.
@soberspouse
@soberspouse But also, wtf is wrong with people
@soberspouse Whoa. Thank you
Commenters are overwhelmingly hostile to the guy: “rude,” “cowardly,” “small man.” A smaller camp thinks what he did was mean but “private” – “don’t read other people’s phones.” While others believe the real villain is tight seating.
I sort of think that a single mean line to a friend – that he thought was private – was a reasonable way to blow off steam. He’d have been clearly disappointed with her sitting down in the middle seat beside him. He was going to feel even tighter in tight coach.
And the truth is that this doesn’t come close to the woman who confronted her seatmate for sending racist text messages. Sitting in the aisle on a Delta San Juan – Atlanta flight, she noticed the guy in th emiddle seat texting about being stuck near “Black and queer people” and writing about a “big black woman” and hoping airlines raise prices to “weed out” people like her. She confronted him mid-flight, telling him she saw the messages and that he’s disgusting.
But snooping on phones isn’t new. About six weeks ago I wrote about a passener who snapped a photo of her seatmate’s Facebook post describing her needs from a lover.
Meanwhile, a snooping passenger turned a grieving seatmate’s condolence text into a mid-air bomb scare, forcing their American Airlines flight to divert. “R.I.P.” doesn’t mean everyone on the plane is going down.
America is the fattest country in the world outside of Pacific island countries like Nauru and Samoa. The only other exception happens to be Kuwait.
The red states are much heavier than the blue states and their life expectancies follow. Colorado happens to be the fittest state
Wasn’t Gary just telling us how he enjoys crying on airplanes (when watching movies), so what’s the big deal? Cry harder. It’s healthy.
1. Don’t look at others’ phone screens. I have no idea why that’s so hard to do 2. People say/type insensitive things all the time, get over it, grow up, you’re an adult 3. Some people are overweight and they don’t care. If it bothers you then entail behavior modifications. Yeah, sometimes overcoming problems is hard. I have no idea of why people think everything in life should be a LifeTime Movie.
The thing where we air our emotions as video selfies to people while crowdsourcing feel-better notes will be the end of Western society. Just a matter of time. People have no idea anymore how to handle and self-regulate their emotions.
And if someone calling you fat when you’re fat makes you cry from Boston to Tampa, you had an unhealthy sense of self. I’m 6-5 and 300 lbs and if someone called me fat, I’d think to myself, yeah, I’m a big boy and move on with my day. Probably buy him or her a drink to say sorry.
What a disgusting reaction. I even defend the guy’s right to say it privately to someone he knows. He’s allowed to have feelings and opinions and to privately express them. She’s the one who crossed the line and publicly exacerbated the situation.
Texting in public is NOT a private affair. That’s why the word “public” is used. It’s free game once the act is done in public. Don’t like it? Then buy a blackout hood like the old large format photographers used to use.
@George Romney I’m always part alarmed and part amused when you and I agree…as is the case here.
I can’t imagine going through life with the thin skin some people in the world have.
People love to snoop. Coach seating doesn’t give you much room. People can have differing opinions. Live with it. She should not have snooped. I have nothing against the guy.
It never happened. She’s a big fat liar.
If you’re obese you should have enough self-awareness NOT to buy a middle seat. Period. Just like an unusually tall person should have enough self-awareness NOT to buy a seat without sufficient legroom. Period.
Maybe it’s time for airlines to weigh passengers. Forget whether my bag is overweight. What about the obese passengers? Aircraft weight calculations, like elevators, were developed at a time when most people were not obese.
The man is an idiot for not tilting the phone away from the passengers next to him.
When you start nosing around with other peoples’ stuff, bad things are bound to happen. Is he a bad guy? No, I don’t think so. What he said may not have been nice, but it was written out of a little frustration and not to hurt or ridicule. And, even if it was, don’t read other people’s texts! You get what you ask for when you do.
MYOB.
People should mind their business and pay attention to their own phones, not others, period.
We have pictures of the actual woman. Why did you do a “huge woman” AI image?
At one time, perhaps. These days the transplants are skewing the numbers…
@ThatOtherOtherGuy — She’s a what-now? *starts crying again*
He wasn’t wrong…
@Denver Refugee — Time to skip the lifts and skin up the mountain; plus, at most places, it’s free (saves a fortune and gets you fit fast.)
So, you would have had a more enjoyable flight had you not snooped. The solution is????
drama queen
What an utterly pathetic age we live in where people record every thing to display in public for attention. Incredibly egocentric.
I didnt know so many from the viewfromthewing audience are complete aholes.
Don’t expect privacy in a public setting, especially in close quarters. Also, shaming is part of bullying,.which is abuse.
CDon’t expect privacy in a public setting, especially in close quarters. Also, shaming is part of bullying,.which is abuse.”
Yes, I think that expecting privacy may be a folly, just like expecting my wallet to be returned to me if I drop it. But, decent people don’t read my phone screen and return lost wallets. And, sending a text about the weight of your seatmate to a friend, with no intent of it being shared with the seatmate is nothing approaching bullying.
Yes, the guy was a jerk — even though she was snooping and he didn’t intend for her to see his message. But I lost sympathy for the woman when she turned a painful moment into social media content.