Spread the love
Post Views: 1

It’s enough to put you off your in-flight meal. Unwashed and unpleasant feet, belonging to strangers, are riding high on a pictorial list of undesirable, unsavoury and downright off-putting in-flight sights and behaviour – propelling sites and forums collecting them to new heights.

The light of social media is shining on gross and unsavoury behaviour in the air, in the form of Passenger Shaming, a means of revealing the unpleasant habits of fellow passengers.

Several interlinked forums, including Facebook and Instagram can be reached through passengershaming.com. The Instagram version, created by former flight attendant Shawn Kathleen, has made Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Best Instagram Accounts” #passengershaming

Sites display pictures apparently designed to shame passengers. There are lots of feet, often bare and with gross toenails, draped over seats or propped over the seat in front, so the passenger there can relish the smell of a stranger’s toes while eating. Blecchhh!

There are pictures of disposable nappies, removed from infants after use and pushed into seatback pockets. There’s a shot of what appears to be a dead goat in an overhead locker and a picture of an infant (face pixelated for anonymity) using a potty in the middle of the aisle.

There are pictures of people asleep all over the place – in the aisles, under seats, draped over armrests – even a portrait of a middle-aged couple where the woman appears to be clipping hairs from her male partner’s ears. That last one could have been taken on a bus, judging from the seat. The man seems to be oblivious, much more concerned with what’s happening on his phone (isn’t everyone?)

There’s even a Passenger Shaming video channel. Some people feel that persistent midair toenail pickers should be immortalised on video: such as this clip below, shot on an AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Hanoi on a Sunday afternoon when a passenger was confronted by a shoeless and sockless man repeatedly picking his dirty feet.

There are pictures of people semi-naked (it can get hot on a plane) or with their hands down the front of their pants (where did I leave that passport again?)

There’s a pair of false teeth left behind on a seat. That can happen to anyone, right?

The only problem with the shaming aspect is that very few pics show the perpetrator’s face or any identifiable feature.

So there’s no real shaming – just plenty of vicarious gross entertainment!

Written by Peter Needham