A recent video of a purported argument between a flight attendant and a transgender passenger over pronouns harvested tens of thousands of views, shares and comments across multiple online platforms. The video is staged. The bogus sky-high standoff represents just the wingtip of a wide body of staged air scenarios, all with telltale giveaways, touted by the creators as social commentary but criticized as clickbait rage-farming.
In the Sept. 12 video, shot from a nearby seat, the male flight attendant challenges a passenger鈥檚 demand to be identified as a man, leading to a nose-to-nose confrontation over transgender pronouns.
鈥淒id This Really Happen?鈥 asked the Grassroots Army YouTube channel as it reposted a three-minute, 28-second slice of the . It garnered 88,000 views along with about 2,500 comments almost exclusively applauding the flight attendant and disparaging the passenger.
The channel has since been removed from the platform, but also appears on an apparent backup account.
The video made another appearance on an Instagram post from Sept. 13 by the self-described "anti-woke" account , garnering more than 90,000 likes. 鈥淭rans person freaks out on an airplane鈥 states the caption, adding the account owner has not confirmed the veracity of the video.
The staged fight also , attracting more than 227,000 views.
Rating: Fake
The pronoun airline video was created by American comedian Jibrizy and posted on his Facebook page on . At the conclusion of the seven-minute, 45-second video, Jibrizy stands with the two actors, specifies the preceding as a skit, and asks for online comments on the argument and how each participant handled the confrontation.
In his Facebook bio, Jibrizy describes himself as "a director making controversial topic videos that feel real.鈥
The disclaimer at the end of the video was removed from the Grassroots Army, Today is America and the TikTok versions.
The video is shot on an airline cabin set that features blue LED lights running the length of the cabin above the passenger windows. There is a blue glow above the overhead baggage racks, and a blue vertical support column blocks one of the windows. A row of white lights above the aisle is slightly off-centre, and a power chord can be seen dangling from the light on the end.
The same actors perform in other airline-argument video skits on Jibrizy鈥檚 Facebook page: A transgender person identifying as a woman hitting a ; a Black man hitting a white 鈥淜aren鈥 while claiming ; a Black man demanding a white woman give up her seat to him, citing ; and a Black man touching a white before being hauled away by fellow passengers at the direction of the flight attendant.
Similar videos, same set
The set is the backdrop for videos posted by others on Facebook, including one posted by the Beverly Hills Comedy Team on Aug. 11.
The four-minute, 26-second video shows a man confronting a woman over her child kicking the back of his . He calls her a poor mother, tensions escalate and angry words are exchanged before the pilot arrives to defuse the situation by taking the boy on a tour of the cockpit.
The video does not have a disclaimer implying it is staged, but the Beverly Hills Comedy Team Facebook bio states 鈥淲e make silly videos.鈥
The video soared into the viral-virtual stratosphere with 40 million views when a version of it taken from TikTok was reposted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by right-wing political activist Lauren Witzke with the comment,
The Witzke post has since been tagged with a community note, the platform's crowd-sourced fact-checking program, suggesting the video is phoney.
The blue lights reappear in an unrelated video clip from July of a passenger wrapping plastic wrap around a row of seats for before being stopped by the flight attendant. The video attracted 10 million views over three months.
The original version posted on May 20 on the creators' YouTube channel states it is
How to spot staged airplane videos
Comments left by skeptical online commentators suggest ways to spot a staged air spat.
In staged videos, the camera is held vertically to suggest a smartphone, but the audio is often too crisp and clear to be from such a device. The camera is often held at a static spot and in a perfect position to catch all participants, unlike the low-angle herky-jerky movements of actual cabin video.
There is often another passenger at the side of the frame to act as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the action or intervening to move the confrontation along.
The window shades are down, there is little to no ambient noise from the engine or air systems, and there is no identifier for the airline and no information on the flight name, when or where it took place.
The acting is wooden, the ceiling high, the cabin walls more squared than rounded,the seats broken and missing pieces, the aisle spacious, the legroom massive, and the overhead light and fan control buttons out of reach for anyone sitting down 鈥 or entirely absent, as they are for some of the seats in the blue-light videos.
Sometimes the fakery shifts from not-so-subtle to glaring, as in one TikTok video with the blue-light set featuring a man who resembles the flight attendant from the pronoun video orchestrating a mile-high .
In this video, empty space can be seen above the back wall and one of the passengers is a mannequin.
Comedian Chris Grace, known for his recurring role in the TV series "Superstore," took to TikTok on to call out the faux videos, focusing on the pronoun fight.
鈥淭here are these studios you can rent that are fake airplane sets that have these blue lights and that鈥檚 where all these dumb, fake, viral videos have been shot,鈥 Grace said.
鈥淪o repeat after me: If you see these blue lights, the video ain鈥檛 right.鈥
Sources
An archive of the staged video posted on YouTube can be found (archived )
Staged video can be found on Instagram (archived , archived ) and on TikTok (archived , archived )
(archived , archived )
Other Jibrizy videos featuring the same airplane set can be found on Facebook (archived , archived ), (archived , archived ), (archived , archived ) and (archived , archived )
(archived , archived )
Video of child kicking the back of a seat went viral with this (archived , archived )
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