Not Real

Unsettling reaction by traveler sends Internet into a frenzy

She was not staying on the plane… and she meant it.

If you have been online at all over the past week you have undoubtedly seen the bizarre video of the young woman on an American Airlines flight desperate to escape her plane before take-off. It has been an Internet sensation, which means a whole boatload of uninformed opinions have blossomed.

So... why not add one more to the mix.

According to an accumulation of reports, the (as of this writing still-unnamed) woman pictured above was having a conversation with someone on the plane; whether it was with a fellow passenger or a flight attendant, be it a friendly or acrimonious exchange, we do not know with confidence.

Then something happened - something very upsetting - which caused the woman to react as she does in the video linked below. I could describe it to you, but it is something you MUST see for yourself.

Eventually they did let her off the plane, and due to the severity of the incident they had to disembark and reschedule the entire flight. Many people had stories to tell afterwards; one person claimed she was not arrested while another said she was, while still others asserted she was mentally impaired, either by illness or drink or drug.

A few thought she did it for attention, and even Carrot Top (yeah, I too did not know he was still alive) got in on the complaining. He was allegedly on the flight, and afterwards moaned about how the incident had delayed his flight, while accusing her of doing it over a lost ‘earbud.’

Seriously… an earbud?

After all that… well, there’s not much else to tell, beyond a smattering of additional, unsubstantiated tales. So what can we gather from the information that is available, and by what we can see with our own eyes?

First, utilizing discernment we can easily cast aside certain assertions. She did not do it to gain attention, nor to 'go viral' - she was not filming herself, and she has not sought attention in the aftermath. In fact, as mentioned above we still do not even know her name.

We can also put to rest the notion it was a stunt to recover her lost earbud. Any individual who was so materialistic that they would stage such an elaborate ruse just to retrieve an earbud? There is no way she is leaving the rest of her belongings behind. Yet she was willing to leave her carry-on bag - and everything in it - just to get off the plane; she didn't care about ‘stuff’... she wanted to be GONE.

As for the assertions of a minor celebrity? The day I embrace Carrot Top as a trustworthy source of news is the day I... well, I think that sentence justifies itself.

What we are left with is what we can see. I watched her eyes during the video, and to be honest I did not see what many saw. I did not notice drunkenness, nor any evidence of drug use; she seemed to have faculties about her, without any hint of genuine mental impairment.

Mental illness does not track either. This was not the rant of a crazy person - it was a rant, yes, but one through which she expressed genuine concern for the safety of those on the plane, despite the obvious terror she was experiencing. 'Crazy' people, in a crazy moment, are not notorious for their empathy toward others.

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

No, what I saw in her eyes - as Atypical Isa aptly pointed out in a TikTok of her own - was the aforementioned terror. Cold, mind-numbing terror. She saw something which shook her to her core... and she wanted no part of it.

Of course, without hearing her side we are only left to speculate what that was, and the Internet has had a field day with it. Everything from shapeshifting to lizardry (a new word I may have just made up) to demonology have been considered.

Even anti-black racism (it WAS a white woman, after all, so of course someone had to go there) has been suggested, though again we do not even know who the target of the tirade was, much less their shade of skin.

And - speaking of which - why haven't we heard from them? You would think if someone was a victim of an unjustified barrage of hatred that went viral they would have come forward by now to claim said-victimhood. There is a story claiming to identify the 'not real' person as a man in a green hoodie, though again there is no validation of that claim.

There is one other point of interest: I was listening to Dana Loesch’s podcast yesterday, and she was discussing this event. During the show she referenced a story which claimed there was a person who saw the green-hoodie-man at one point wink at the woman in question… wink vertically.

Just like a lizard - or a demon - would wink. If true? Yeah, that would cause an outburst.

Of course, as mentioned above this is all pure speculation, based largely on hear-say, unreliable sources, and suspicious supposition. We may never know who she is, what she saw, or whom she was referencing, but there IS one thing I can say, and say it with absolute certainty: If I am on that flight - even if I saw nothing for myself except for her reaction  - I am following her off the plane. Quickly.

Call me crazy, but I believe she saw something that was 'not real'... and I, too, would want no part of it.