A TikToker told a story about being “the victim of a hate crime” after she caught a man on a plane texting with his significant other about the “fat” person sitting next to him on the plane.
The TikTok video comes from @laurenmewing, who has gathered nearly a million views for her story of being oddly “fat-shamed” on the flight. The TikToker says that she and the man were the only two people in the row on the plane.
The TikToker says she was returning from a trip to Nashville about a month ago. As she recounts, “He has his phone out, like, way up front of him like where I can see it.” She notes how she could see the conversation he and his significant other were having about the flight.
He allegedly conveyed to the person on the receiving end of the messages, to the TikToker’s shock but ultimate amusement, that the flight was “too small with this fat ass next to me.” Given that it was just the two of them next to each other, the TikToker emphasizes, “He was talking about me.”
The TikToker captured a photo of the conversation at the time, and she featured it in her TikTok video. The exchange included the significant other’s responses: “Ha ha ha” and “Tell her about keto.”
He amped up the body-shaming of his rowmate. As she relays, the man continued the conversation by saying, “I’ll be all right; don’t think we’ll get off the ground.” He also complained, according to the TikToker, that he “hates being on small flights with fat people.”
As overboard and offensive as it might have seemed, the TikToker seems to laugh it off. The video concludes with, “If you’re his wife or girlfriend and you see this, your boyfriend sucks”—it seems delivered with comic intent.
In a followup video, the TikToker shared a comment calling her “gorgeous” and surmising. “Sounds like he’s been in trouble with his GF before that had nothing to do with you,” the commenter said.
In that video, she assures viewers that she’s not upset. “Didn’t spend more than an hour thinking about it,” she says. And at the time of the incident, she says that she shared the text exchange with family members because she found it funny.”
But then she reflects and says, “The sad thing is that I could have been someone that it did effect. Imagine if it was someone who was insecure or dealing with a lot of body image stuff.” She goes on to observe that if that was the case, it could have “ruined their whole “day, week, year.”
She then concludes that it’s a reminder to be kind and that the things you can say—or text openly enough for someone to share on TikTok later—can affect people.
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