Taila Rouse, a travel content creator, was recently on a flight returning from her trip to Puerto Rico when she saw the passenger beside her sending some offensive text messages.
In response, Taila decided to record herself confronting the passenger. "I want you to know that I saw your text messages and I think you're disgusting. ... You don't have anything to say to that, right?" Taila said to the passenger in the now-viral TikTok video.
So how did this situation unfold? The passenger in the middle seat beside Taila had his phone in plain view as he texted his family members. Taila initially noticed the words "huge black woman" on the passenger's phone screen, which made her continue reading.
"If you're going to be bold enough to pull your phone out in the middle seat of an airplane and freely talk disrespectfully about Black people, then I'm going to be bold enough to say something to you," Taila wrote in the video's caption.
During the confrontation, you can hear the passenger pretend not to know what Taila was referring to, asking, "What text message?"
"I didn’t expect him to deny any knowledge of the issue, but I was not surprised by his response. I was upset that he would try to gaslight me after I saw him being so bold amongst his family, but we both knew what I saw, and I decided not to let it go. Truly, I was prepared to repeat all of the messages for others around us to hear if he denied further, but chose not to because I didn’t want to make other people feel uncomfortable too," Taila explained.