The curator of the account, Shawn, is a former flight attendant of seven years who has also worked as a police officer and a paramedic. She told Vox Passenger Shaming receives around 300 submissions a week.
"One thing that I find really interesting is that all of the content I used to get was from crew members," she said. "Now 99 percent are from passengers because they don't want to sit next to these people. They're like, 'I'm calling these people out for this bulls**t behavior.'"
Shawn said a lot of the content is foot-related, arguments, people eating things like hard-boiled eggs or tuna, and clipping their nails. Changing dirty diapers is also a common theme.
She attributes the surge in this type of behavior to the fact that people have been cooped up and want to get out. "Maybe they go to the airport and there are delays and things take longer because now they have to go through all these different processes and wear masks. It was a s**tshow before, and now add everything else on top of it."
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"I am friends with a lot of flight attendants and pilots, and a lot of them were furloughed for 8 or 12 months and are just going back and dealing with this," Shawn said.
"When I was a flight attendant, 99 percent of the people I ran into were awesome. This is just a really small percentage of people that we highlight, but I always like to make sure people know I’m not some angry, horrible person running around hating everybody."
Even though there's a constant stream of pictures and videos flowing to Passenger Shaming, Shawn doesn't post everything.
"I never shame anybody based on weight, their appearance, anything of that nature. It's behaviors only, which I think is a reason why it's really successful."
A lot of Passenger Shaming's posts are also based on news stories.
"I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything wrong, per se. Things may have developed in addition, so I’ll go back and edit a post with new information," Shawn said. "But I do try to vet things that people send in."
If Shawn finds out there's something completely off base or incorrect, she just removes it or does a follow-up.
"[One time in 2021], I had somebody send me a picture — you will not see it on my Instagram because Instagram pulled it down, which is so annoying. It was just a guy laying on the floor sleeping in the gate, and he had his hand under his belt."
"Multiple people sent it to me. So I would ask, 'Oh, did you take this picture?' One person would be like, 'Yep,' and another person’s like, 'Yeah this is such and such airport,' and I'm like, 'Actually, no, it's in Atlanta, because the person who sent it to me originally gave me all the information.' He had posted it in a pilot and crew forum."
