Videos of bad passenger behavior on planes have gone viral throughout the coronavirus pandemic, and many of them have been authentic. But one of the latest videos, purporting to show a man complaining about a woman breastfeeding her cat next to him on a flight, is not real. The whole thing was staged and originally published on a Facebook page. The video went viral on TikTok, then made its way to Twitter, where it racked up thousands of views and hundreds of retweets.
The video was broken into four parts by TikTok user @alessiavaesenn and posted there over the weekend. Late Monday night, actor Marshall Allman and others published all four parts on Twitter, crediting the TikTok user as the original poster. Journalist Ryan Broderick later traced the original video to a Facebook user called The Gooch, who posts parody videos, including many set on planes.
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The Gooch posted the “woman breastfeeding a cat on a plane” video on Dec. 16 and even includes a disclaimer announcing that all videos he posts are for “entertainment purposes only.” The person behind the Facebook page is a former Ringling Brothers circus clown and told Rolling Stone the video was published on TikTok without his permission. The video also ends with the woman getting up from her seat and revealing that the cat is obviously fake.
This is not the only fake video of an in-flight altercation going viral in recent weeks. In November, a video claiming to show a woman refusing to sit next to an unvaccinated person and being removed racked up over 35 million views. The video was staged and even has an IMDb page. Although the people behind the video admitted it wasn’t genuine, others shared it to push their own agenda. The conservative group Turning Point USA even published it on YouTube with the title “WATCH: Woman FREAKS OUT Over Unvaccinated Passenger On Plane,” notes Snopes.
As for The Gooch’s video, that one might have gained traction on social media because it took inspiration from an alleged incident in November. A woman allegedly began breastfeeding a hairless cat and refused to stop after flight attendants noticed, reports Newsweek. An image circulated that allegedly shows a message sent using the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), claiming a passenger was “breastfeeding a cat and will not put cat back in carrier.” There was little detail of the alleged incident and Newsweek did not independently verify that it happened. There was also a TikTok video from a flight attendant who claimed to have been on the plane and saw the alleged incident.
