Woman catches man sitting next to her on plane ‘calling her fat’ in brutal text message exchange

We all know what it’s like to sit next to someone on a bus or a plane who wouldn’t exactly be our companion of choice.

But one woman has revealed how she was brutally mocked as “fat” by a stranger as they sat side-by-side on a flight.

TikTok user Landen Ewing posted a clip describing the bizarre encounter which occurred on her way back from a trip to Nashville about a month ago.

She explained that the man “had his phone out way in front of him” which enabled her to read a text conversation he was having, apparently with his girlfriend.

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Ewing said he was asked the flight was going, to which he responded (much to her bemusement): “Too small with this fat a** next to me.”

The TikToker clarified that the pair were sitting alone in the aisle, so he couldn’t have been referring to anyone but her.

She sneakily captured a photo of the man’s message to-and-fro at the time, showing the girlfriend writing back comments including: “Ha ha ha” and “tell her about keto.”

The stranger went on to jokingly reassure his partner, typing: “I’ll be alright – don’t think we’ll get off the ground” before complaining that he “hates being on small flights with fat people.”

As any viewer of the clip will see, Ewing is most certainly not fat (not that it matters), and she didn’t seem to take the shaming too seriously – though she did brand it a “hate crime” in her caption to the video.

She ended her video by laughingly addressing viewers saying: “If you’re his wife or girlfriend and you see this, your boyfriend sucks.”

Her post racked up more than 1.1 million views and 240,000 likes in just three days as thousands of commentators offered their take on the eyebrow-raising incident.

“He totally thought you were hot and did not want his gf to know he was sitting next to someone attractive… yikes,” one concluded.

“Sounds like he’s been in trouble with his GB before and that had nothing to do with you,” agreed another.

“You should have airdropped him a note that said, ‘I can see what you’re typing and I’m not happy about it,” suggested a third.

While a fourth joked that she should wind up the man by asking the flight attendant for a diet coke in front of him and saying: “I apparently have a weight problem.”

The TikToker said she wasn’t upset by the remarks but noted others could be @landenmewing/TikTok

In a follow-up video, Ewing reassured her followers that she had not been offended or upset by the stranger’s remarks and, in fact, had laughed about it all.

However, she acknowledged: “I could have been someone that it did affect,” adding: “Imagine if it was someone who was super insecure or dealing with a lot of body image stuff.”

If that was the case, she continued, it could have “ruined their whole day, week, year.”

Ewing concluded that the whole thing was a reminder of the importance of being kind, because words really do have the power to cause others significant hurt.

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