‘Crying over this is insane’: United Airlines passenger blasts them for the ‘worst flight of her life,’ but some have zero sympathy for her plight

Human beings are never going to get along with each other. That’s not a cynical take, nor a dismissal of our capacity to be civil with each other, it’s simply the acknowledgement that, even if the world were to be wiped clean of its prejudices, there’d people you’d dislike on on a bio-psychological level.

Consider, if you will, the split reactions to this TikTok update from @kayleigh.berman, who seems to have single-handedly upstaged the entirety of moral dilemmas up to this point. To critique or not critique her emotional response to this United Airlines mishap, that is the question.

The eight-second video captures a teary-eyed Kayleigh sporting an ironic thumbs-up to punctuate how not-okay she is with her plight on this flight to Italy. Captioned with “Thank you United airlines for the worst flight of my life,” the video’s description reveals that Kayleigh, a vegetarian who also has celiac disease, was not given a meal during her nine-hour flight to Italy, despite her checking on three separate occasions to ensure that she would. She was eventually brought small salads that had gluten ingredients in them.

Commenters, ranging from celiac folk to non-celiac folk, men to women, old to young, could not agree on a verdict here. Some sympathized with her whole-heartedly, while others rolled their eyes while apathetically saying something to be the effect of “you’ll be fine.” Others still wondered why she didn’t bring her own snacks, and those who supported her starting pointing fingers at everyone else for their lack of empathy.

Let’s break this down a bit. Was it crappy of United to assure Kayleigh that she’d have a meal, and then not have one available for her? Yes, absolutely. Is it something worth crying over? Well, that depends. We all have different relationships to our emotions that are further affected by the circumstances around us, and so Kayleigh is absolutely within her right to cry about this if that’s how she chooses to respond to this on an emotional level.

But here’s the key question: Is this something that Kayleigh should have posted on social media? It’s here that Kayleigh can no longer be let off the proverbial hook. By posting this, you’re actively asking for engagement and opinions, and that includes engagement and opinions that aren’t receptive to your plight.

And in this context specifically, it’s completely naive to think that people won’t criticize you for crying over something like this, considering that this predicament is, relatively speaking, an incredibly minor inconvenience. Take a glance, if you will, at certain statistics provided by Feeding America: 47 million Americans are food-insecure, 14 million American children are food-insecure, 49 million Americans relied on food programs in 2022, and every single state in the United States faces issues with food security. All this, while Recycle Track Systems reports that 120 billion pounds of food is discarded every single year (in other words, there’s absolutely no reason for food insecurity to exist, and yet…).

All in all, there’s no shame in crying over anything at all, but you should have the wisdom and maturity to gauge how others might respond to the thing you’re crying about, and adjust yourself accordingly. Kayleigh seems young, so there’s plenty of time for her to grow in that regard.