Hilarious Interview With Fake Frontier Flight Attendant Goes Viral — YouTube Comedian Fools Thousands Online
Just because it's on Facebook or YouTube doesn't mean it's true.
YouTube You’ve heard it a million times, but still, no one seems to remember it — don’t believe everything you see online.
Unfortunately, this was the case for some Facebook users after reacting to a satirical video on YouTube that referenced airlines duct taping unruly passengers.
Two incidents of airline passengers being restrained with duct tape attracted a lot of attention over the past month — particularly the most recent occurrence on a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Miami.
Due to the oddity of duct tape being the restraint of choice, people were particularly fascinated when a video interview of a main claiming to be a flight attendant named Alfredo Rivera being interviewed by a reporter about the now infamous incident began circulating on social media.
Is the Frontier flight attendant 'duct-tape interview' real?
Absolutely not. YouTuber and comedian James Bates, who goes by the name The Real Spark, made the video posing as a Frontier flight attendant named Alfredo Rivera as a spoof of the event.
Bates' video is a comedic take on the duct-taping incident imagined from the flight attendant's perspective.
“Sometimes our job has us attending to crazy people,” Bates jokes. “Sometimes if you push us too far, sometimes you’ll have to attend this a** whooping.”
“On this particular flight, I’m sitting in the jump seat, and I’m just looking at him act a damn fool. He’s spitting and cussing and going crazy,” he said in the video.
He explained how he restrained the passenger who he fictitiously described as smelling like “a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, four shots of Everclear alcohol, and regret.”
He goes into further detail saying the passenger was groping the other flight attendants’ breasts, but the YouTuber “had to step in” when the passenger began groping his breasts.
Many believed the video was a real interview with a real flight attendant.
While Bates’s page clearly states that he is a comedian and not an airline attendant, some Facebook users were not fully in on the joke.
One post has been viewed over 24 million times and was flooded with thousands of comments appearing to fall for Bates's humor.
"I agree with this man 100%, and same goes for law enforcement lets start listening to those in charge," one user wrote.
"He did what he had to do and used what he had to work with," wrote another. Fortunately, some users did fact-check others in the comments!
"Although this is pretty funny, I think it’s funnier that everybody on this message thread thinks this guy is a flight attendant," one person teased.
Is Alfredo Rivera the real flight attendant's name?
Nope. That's a fake-out too.
Alfredo Rivera is the name of a passenger on the flight who had spoken with a reporter for ABC 6 News.
The name of the real male flight attendant who was involved in the duct-taping incident has not been released as of this time.
The flight attendant interview is a prime example of how quickly fake news can spread and be believed.
While this was an honest mistake in that the video was intended to only ever be taken as comedy, it shows how misinformation can often spread like wildfire through social media.
A parody of a current event may have been originally shared in order to get a couple of laughs but can quickly turn into other users misunderstanding the video and viewing it as factual.
It’s a tale as old as... well, the internet. You can’t believe everything you read online.
With so much of our news being published on the internet, how are we supposed to know what to believe without doing some deep digging?
Social media algorithms are essentially a funhouse mirror of your internet personality. Your reflection is still there, but it may not be accurate.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networking apps see what you pay attention to online. They see what the people you follow are sharing and posting, as well as what your followers are sharing and posting. They also notices how you interact with that content and tailor your feed to what it thinks you want to see.
While this leads to more interaction and interest on the site, it can prove to be problematic when it takes things just a little too far. Your feed can become littered with only posts that confirm your beliefs.
The scary thing about some of these posts is that they can often evolve into a virtual game of telephone. The life cycle of a social media post begins as a parody video with a caption explaining the comedy and fictitious nature.
As this post gets shared and commented on and edited, it can end up on your feed telling you that the man in the video using less than professional language is the actual flight attendant involved.
The moral of the story here is: be careful what you read on social media, or at least double-check the sources.
Livvie Brault is a writer who covers self-love, news and entertainment and relationships.