Last night, Timothée Chalamet got on a plane. This wouldn’t normally be breaking news, but today it is, because someone live-tweeted his entire flight. Or, more accurately, her entire experience sitting next to him on said flight. Honestly, it reads like the most genuinely adorable interaction, and only confirms Chalamet as the purest soul in our eyes, but it also reads like his diary, and ultimately, that’s not okay.
Written by Chalamet superfan @alankruthahaha, the thread began with a very excited Alankrutha announcing to her followers ‘Y’all nbd just sat next to @RealChalamet on a 3-hour flight and we CHATTED FOR AN HOUR NBD I AM SUPER CALM RIGHT NOW AS EVERYONE CAN TELL.’
It proceeds in the same excitable, complimentary theme, whereby Alankruta revealed how she gingerly asked the ‘lanky dude’ who looked and sounded like Timothee Chalamet if it was in fact him. Confirming her suspicions, she details how nervous she was, stunned into asking him every question that came into her head from ‘have you met Beyoncé?’ to ‘why are you sitting in economy class?’ (apparently, he said no to the first and how dare you to the second- laughing of course).
With her proceeding reactions striking the relatability chord in all of us as she blundered through a conversation with him, the thread – on the surface - is extremely sweet, not only highlighting Alankrutha’s hilarious ability to recount stories but also how genuinely precious Chalamet is. The entire encounter, from Alankrutha’s perspective, seemed completely wholesome on both sides. However, that’s all we have, her perspective.
Objectively, when you put aside the fact that this was a very lovely experience and paints Chalamet in a complimentary light, detailing the every movement and interaction of a stranger on a plane (including how quickly he eats Pretzels) to more than 30,000 people interacting with the thread, is an invasion of privacy. We might’ve read the thread and nearly cried at the loveliness of it all, but had this interaction not been as heart-warming as it was, would we have the same reaction? And more importantly, would Chalamet have reacted well?
Last May, a similar debate arose when a cinema goer spotted Greta Gerwig at a screening of ‘I Feel Pretty’ and live-tweeted her reaction to the film. Considering she loudly critiqued the whole thing, many were uncomfortable with the user sharing her private thoughts to thousands of people online.
It’s something about the intimate setting of being in a film, or even more private, a plane, that makes all of this way more uncomfortable. In fact, one of the most notable examples of this discomfort was in June last year when one woman live-tweeted the first meeting of two strangers in front of her on a plane, selling it as a love story. It at first seemed like one woman’s romantic side had got the better of her, with heart-felt intentions to share what she thought was the start of a romance. But actually, videoing the passengers, sharing their conversations and private details about their lives meant that both people’s privacy were invaded way beyond the plane ride.
In fact, the female passenger involved in the thread was forced to issue a statement telling people to respect her privacy. ‘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,’ she said in June last year, ‘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.’
This isn’t a recent phenomenon either, people have been live-tweeting others affairs for years, with one woman sharing the entire conversation, and pictures, of a couple breaking up on a plane in 2015. It seems that as soon as we spot something vaguely entertaining happening in a public space, people think they can then share that experience with more people, seemingly unaware of the impact of going viral on everyone involved.
And that’s the thing, these threads shouldn’t have to go viral for us to realise that they’re wrong. Tweeting about strangers’ interactions in this level of intense detail, sharing their private information without their consent, often in scenarios where it’s impossible for the person in question to escape the situation (what was Chalamet going to do, ignore the fan next to him for this three-hour plane journey?), is honestly perverse, even if the encounter is as sweet as Chalamet’s was with this fan.
So yes, the thread may be cute, but it’s also eerily creepy.