Given time, we’ll look back on moments like #planebae as tests in our cultural adjustment to social media.
In this case, and in most, the hashtag is as stupid as the entire controversy. Earlier this month, when two women switched seats on a flight from New York City to Dallas, one of them surreptitiously documented the other’s flirty interactions with her new seatmate on social media. The story quickly went viral, and before they knew it, the unlikely seatmates were thrust into Internet fame. And with morning show producers calling and social media sleuths hunting down her identity, the woman whose life had been mined for #content wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. The woman who had documented the whole exchange, meanwhile, was living it up.
This all happened in a public place — a commercial flight, and just about everyone who helped make the story go viral thought they were sharing a sweet and harmless encounter. But even the sweetest and most harmless stories can bring about unintended consequences online. That’s beside the point anyway — we have to decide whether simply existing in a public space means consenting to documentation on social media, where the potential for viral fame is almost lurking.
Sharing someone’s public conduct is more understandable if someone is behaving outrageously in a public space, but far less so if they aren’t, as in the case of #planebae when two people seated next to each other on an airplane were having a perfectly normal conversation among themselves. Or so they thought.
The woman who thrust the other into unwanted fame has since apologized, and plenty of people have expressed their discomfort with the saga. But it’s not just #planebae — viral Instagram and Twitter feeds post videos and pictures of people that risk crossing these lines all the time. We laugh when we don’t know the back story. As we’ve digested #planebae, where a backstory has emerged, it’s all seemed less amusing.
And maybe that’s the lesson.
