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'Bachelor' Producer Publicly Shames Fellow Airline Passenger On Twitter
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Yesterday, Elan Gale (producer of The Bachelor, etc) was on a plane with a woman named Diane, who was sitting a few rows ahead of him. Diane was annoyed at the flight's delay, because she wanted to get to her family for the holiday. According to Elan, she was not particularly kind to the flight attendants, allegedly telling them that she wanted to be with her family on Thanksgiving, and...
Okay, that is not very nice Diane! But everyone understands that people do not always act their best during stressful flight situations, particularly with delays and especially on holidays... right? Except Elan took the opportunity to escalate the situation very quickly, live Tweeting all along to his (at the time) 30,000+ followers (he now has over 90,000). He even sent her a glass of wine and a passive-aggressive note:
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Chances are if he had sent a nice, kind, understanding note the whole situation would have been defused. Diane would have realized that people are generally good and decent souls, and maybe she should reflect the kindness just practiced on her. Instead, he followed that up by hand delivering two small bottles of vodka to her seat, which got him a hand-written reply from Diane:
This made Elan even more vengeful, and he started Tweeting out descriptions to his followers:
By this time, Diane was apparently just chilling in her seat as the plane was finally moving, but Elan's anger was boiling up, and he had his one-man Twitter show to feed, so he wrote another note, telling Diane, "I hate you very much. Eat my dick."
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Diane believed this was inappropriate, and she was correct:
And then... SIGH, it's like when Mike keeps calling and leaving messages for that girl on her answering machine except... angrier and more hostile. Stop!
She allegedly slapped him when they got off the plane, where he was waiting for her to hand her another note, that read, "Diane, allow me to introduce myself. I am TheYearOfElan. Look me up online. Read every tweet. Read every response. And maybe next time you'll be nice to people who are just trying to help. PS... Eat My Dick."
Absolutely no one wins in this situation, you cannot fight anger with anger. As Medium's Nisha Chittal pointed out today, "Perhaps Diane was in the wrong. But what Elan really means in his final note is: look at how I just shamed you on the internet. Look at how all my Twitter followers mocked you. Now, change your behavior or else. Whether Diane was in the wrong or not, that’s creepy." And moreso than creepy, it's a pretty sad way to behave as an adult human being. He also now seems to be hiding behind a "I just want everyone to be nice" defense, but really it just seems like he wanted to create his own mini reality drama on his flight.
Everyone, just stop being dicks.
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