News outlets are interviewing most of the fellow passengers and most of them back up the airline - most state that he was yelling (yes, in Arabic), pumping his fist in the air and generally causing a scene. So...at this point, I’m inclined to believe the airline. Between the others passengers and his history....yeah.…

their entire goal was controversy and page views, goood job giving it to them

If you make a career out of crying wolf, no one should bat an eye when you get eaten.

He’s 21....he is by law an adult.

About 18 months ago, Lindenwood University student Michael L. Johnson was convicted of the Class A felony of “recklessly exposing another person to HIV,” which in Missouri carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

“especially given that he never actually infected anybody”

No, he deserves to be punished. This is reckless endangerment. He gave someone HIV without informing them that it was a possibility. You can’t do that. I know that there are great meds now and viral loads can become undetectable but he still has HIV now for the rest of his life and has to take all of these drugs…

Please forgive my stupidity, please, but if the guy had HIV and didn’t tell his partner, then proceeded to have either protected or unprotected sex how is this not reckless endangerment? Why would this conviction cause outrage among LBGTQ advocates when this:

I am confused, we are opposed to him being held liable for intentionally not informing his partners of a lifelong serious disease he infected them with? I didn’t sleep well last night so maybe i’m missing something here, but it sounds to me that he should definitely be punished. Or is this a Chelsea Manning kind of…

This is far to harsh of a sentence for this crime but still people you gotta tell people you’re fucking that you’ve got HIV.

The 20 people thing is throwing me off. How loud was he being if 20+ people ( because I don’t think everyone would complain)heard him talking to his mom and his friend.

The difference is that I’m not using my bias as some cudgel against random people I’ve never met and don’t know anything about. I don’t pretend to know what people are thinking or doing based on them wanting to not be in some dudes video.

I agree, they are embarrassed for the guy because hes a fucking idiot.

Exactly. How many of those people on the plane sat there thinking “Kicking a man off a plane for speaking a foreign language is wrong, but I recognize that man from his YouTube videos, so this might actually be a shitty attempt at a viral prank. I’m going to keep quiet.”

Except the people on the plane may have actually known exactly why he was getting kicked off the plane because, you know, they were there. I don’t know what that reason was, but I wouldn’t be surprised, given his “profession” that it isn’t the reason he is saying.

Precisely. When this video first popped up in my FB feed, my first inclination was to believe it, despite the fact that it was not a white man in the video.

Now I am inclined to disbelieve it. The race of the person making the video hasn’t changed. The fact that he is a known “prankster” is new information (to me)…

The video starts with him saying, “I’m uploading this to Facebook.” I’d imagine people don’t want to be in some dudes viral video. Your projections are always just reinforcing your own world view. Many people just don’t want to be on some yelling dudes internet video.

I appreciate this sentiment, but when your career is predicated on deceiving people in loud, public ways, and you have a history of fabricating hoaxes extremely similar to this, you should expect skepticism.

Yes: both the young man and the airline have questionable credibility here, based on previous documented behavior.

... I mean, The Boy Who Cried Wolf is still a well-known fable because it’s still remarkably relevant to modern society. When someone has done tons of “pranks” in the past that involve lying about something happening to him (including one specifically about being racially profiled for being Muslim), I think it’s…