Plane Bae

Confirmed 60,213

About

Plane Bae is the nickname given to Euan Holden, a man who was the subject of a viral Twitter thread in which he was documented making a romantic connection with a woman he sat next to on a plane.

Origin

On July 3rd, 2018, Twitter user @roseybeeme^[1] tweeted a thread detailing her experience on a plane in which she asked a man to switch seats with her to one row forward so that she could sit next to her boyfriend on the flight. After joking with her boyfriend that it would be funny if the man and his new row partner would be the love of each other's lives, she discovered that the couple actually did seem compatible and documented some details of their conversation, physical contact, and their trip to the airplane bathroom on the flight. The first tweet in the thread gained over 362,000 retweets and 889,000 likes.

Spread

The viral thread was covered by several news organizations including USA Today,^[2] who discovered that Holden is the brother of former US Men's National Soccer Team player Stu Holden. Other publications like Vox^[3] and the Atlantic^[4] were more suspicious and critical of the ordeal, bringing up that the incident may have been a hoax and that even if it wasn't, it could be an invasion of privacy. Holden tweeted after the thread went viral that it was "hilarious," telling @roseybeeme he knew she was taking pictures (shown below, left). He also created a hashtag for the event, #catchflightsandfeelings (shown below, right).

The story was covered by news organizations as well, as Holden and the documenting couple appeared on national news, while the woman in the story, identified as Helen, has not stepped into the limelight.

Fallout

In the days following the viral thread, the woman who was filmed, known as "Helen," confirmed that she'd been doxxed and harassed in real life since the thread's spread.^[5] In a statement to Business Insider, the woman wrote:

"I am a young professional woman. On July 2, I took a commercial flight from New York to Dallas. Without my knowledge or consent, other passengers photographed me and recorded my conversation with a seatmate. They posted images and recordings to social media, and speculated unfairly about my private conduct.
"Since then, my personal information has been widely distributed online. Strangers publicly discussed my private life based on patently false information. I have been doxxed, shamed, insulted and harassed. Voyeurs have come looking for me online and in the real world.
"I did not ask for and do not seek attention. #PlaneBae is not a romance – it is a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics and consent.
"Please continue to respect my privacy, and my desire to remain anonymous."

Beeme also deleted the original viral thread, saying, "The last thing I want to do is remove agency and autonomy from another woman… I wish I could communicate the shame I feel in having done this, but I truly feel that at this point my feelings are irrelevant." (Full apology shown below).

Euan Holden posted to YouTube his thoughts on the situation, calling it a humbling experience for him (shown below).