Teen Girl's Meltdown After She's Asked Not To Vape On A Train Could Be A Lesson About How Adults Handle Angry Teens
Social media has had a field day mocking the girl, but some can't get past the fact she's a child.
@P0well97/Twitter, @DRALLIMA/Twitter We've all been trapped on public transit or in a restaurant alongside a surly teenager making a scene. It's part of sharing a planet with them, after all.
But a British teen took things to a whole other level while having a belligerent meltdown on a train in the UK—all because the woman beside her asked her not to vape.
Videos of the altercation have gone viral on multiple platforms and have drawn no shortage of mockery and criticism.
But others feel like the virality is inappropriate—she is a child, after all—and have become outraged that adults are using her to crack wise on social media.
With the uproar has come a debate about what is appropriate when it comes to putting children on social media, and how adults should handle teens making a scene.
Dubbed 'London Train Girl,' the teen has gone viral for her outburst over her vape.
When a fellow passenger asked the teen girl to not vape on the train, she went absolutely ballistic, calling her a "silly fu-king b-tch" and other profane names.
Several videos show the teen girl standing up and hurling profanity at fellow passengers on the incredibly crowded c2c train, a commuter line that serves the London and Essex area.
Throughout the various angles she can be heard telling various passengers to "shut the f-ck up" and to “stay in your lane, don’t f-cking say sh-t.”
The altercations continue escalating as some passengers laugh at her and others lose their patience.
One man unloads a string of classic Britishisms, telling the girl she's "getting on my fu-king t-ts" and scolding her that "we’re all going to work and we don’t want to listen to your fu-king bollocks!"
In another moment, she and the woman who asked her to stop vaping trade barbs over each other's stinky breath, with the teen girl yelling, “My breath stinks?...Yourself stinks you dirty b-tch!"
The viral videos quickly turned into a chorus of mockery of the teen girl online, with people insulting her weight, accent and calling her illiterate.
It's hard to deny that some of the moments in the videos are hilarious—especially if you've ever been caught in a situation like this yourself.
One TikToker recut one of the videos to zoom in on a passenger who seems truly exasperated, creating a hilarious moment many found instantly relatable.
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But much of the response to the girl's antics was more on the mean-spirited side.
Many people in the background of the videos mocked the way the girl's accent—a class marker in the UK—with one calling her "illiterate" and another calling her an ableist slur.
On Twitter, "Augustus Gloop," the name of the heavy-set teen in the film "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory" who eats himself to death, trended on Twitter after users nicknamed the teen girl after him.
Comparisons were also drawn to former reality star Honey Boo Boo and Chunk from "The Goonies," while others commented that "her parents must be so proud."
But some were disturbed by the backlash the girl received.
At the end of the day, she's still a child.
One woman tweeted she couldn't "believe actual adults are gleefully calling a child fat and ugly, and bullying them."
She went on to point out that the girl could be acting out because of mental health struggles or problems at home.
When another Twitter user countered to ask what she expected the passengers to have done instead, she replied, "not filmed her. Not laughed at her. Not mocked her to her face."
Others pointed out the girl may have felt threatened.
One tweeter referenced how the girl kept repeating herself, writing, "when people get angry, nervous, or scared… their mind locks into repeating the same phrase."
But some vehemently disagreed given how disruptive and inappropriate the girl's behavior was.
One woman tweeted, "I don’t know why you are all defending that disrespectful young girl. Why is she vaping on a packed train early in the morning?"
"That woman had every right to put her in her place and I would have done the same thing."
It's hard to argue with that.
But filming kids and putting them online is another story, especially as experts have begun warning about "childism" and the inappropriateness and danger of putting children online without their consent.
Maybe we should at least think twice before making kids go viral for the wrong reasons. We are the adults in the situation, after all.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.