I was standing in Terminal 4 at JFK far away from the impatient scrum of people waiting near my gate for a Delta agent to announce it was their turn to board. As I watched passengers who’d arrived on other flights step around this pool of people buried in their phones, so desperate to be sitting on the plane instead of standing inside the airport, I thought about a review of William Gibson’s 2012 book of essays called Distrust That Particular Flavor, a book I’ve never read.
In “Distrust That Particular Flavor,” Gibson pulls off a dazzling trick. Instead of predicting the future, he finds the future all around him, mashed up with the past, and reveals our own domain to us as a science-fictional marvel…
I glanced up from the pages of this book and surveyed the street-side around me, I felt as if I were wearing Gibson-glasses. Cars lumbered past like ponderous elephants of rusty steel, not so different from the cars of 30 years ago, and seemed not to belong in the same world as the tattooed kid punching code into his laptop nearby. Under the spell of this book, I suddenly understood my surroundings not as a discrete contemporary tableau but as a hodgepodge of 1910, 1980, 2011 and 2020. -Pagan Kennedy, NY Times
I am several steps removed: I was remembering reading a review of a book published 12 years ago that was filled with writing previously published in magazines decades earlier. I could have easily downloaded a digital copy of the book on my phone and started reading the source material, but instead, I searched Google for the most pared-down version of what I wanted to remember from Gibson’s writing, that single quote that encapsulated what I was thinking at that moment:
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
The night before my trip, my phone buzzed and the Delta app offered a tantalizing deal: a few thousand miles to move from the 22nd row of the Main Cabin to Delta Comfort+, one row behind First Class, where I knew there was enough room to cross my legs like I’m on a park bench or extend them as if at home sitting in a recliner. I looked at my phone from my bed and moved my left leg. I felt my knee pop. I hit the button and ordered the nicer seat. “The future is now!” I thought as I rolled over, then checked my 2-3 more times that the alarm on my phone was set correctly before finally falling asleep.
I was flying to visit my family in North Carolina, where I would ride from the Charlotte airport to my parents’ house in a fully-electric SUV, stuck the whole way behind gas-powered lowrider motorcycles and one massive Ford that billowed black smoke from silver exhaust pipes sticking up like goalposts on the back of the truck’s cab. All the while, I’d see how developed the suburbs of Charlotte were becoming, whole blocks of houses and high-rises popping up like dandelions, covering what used to be open fields. I’d watch the Uber app on my phone continually update me on the status of the route, reestimating our ETA every few minutes as we sat in traffic. I would spend the ride glancing from my phone to the map on his dashboard, and wonder how we ever survived before GPS. Between the airport and our destination, we made all but 3 turns.
Before any of that happened, though, before any of the thoughts about watching the future blossom all around me while the past angrily revved its fossil-fueled engines up and down I-77, I had to survive the flight from NYC to Charlotte.
As I scanned the bright open space at JFK, I saw a freckled woman my age sitting alone covered in a yellow blanket. She appeared to be on the verge of tears. Since I was about to take my own emotionally taxing trip, one to see my sick father while his pain was still somewhat manageable, I considered asking simply if she was OK. Then I saw her take out her phone to text someone, and suddenly I couldn’t gauge if she was sad or severely hungover. I remembered that airports (outside the Midwest) aren’t for chatting up strangers. She was in her own little world and didn’t need a man’s halfhearted prying. Everyone in the airport was in sweatpants and pretending they were in their living rooms, pretending to be alone on the couch instead of sitting in a wide room with a hundred other miserable tired people. My attention turned to the black toddler in a green shirt stomping on the bright white linoleum and laughing. He was in a better mood than any adult I could see from my vantage point. His mom called him and said it was time to get on the plane.
We idled at the gate for twenty extra minutes after everyone was in their seats. I read a book on my phone and smiled to myself when I realized the plane door was closed, meaning no one else would be joining me in my row, hence the desperate offer from Delta the night before asking if I wanted a seat for much less than the price when I had originally bought the ticket. This was going to be the most comfortable flight I ever took. The only issue was that several people had left their window covers open, and the Sun was starting to heat up the cabin. A child directly behind me complained to her grandma about her discomfort, a baby cried from the back of the plane, and the toddler I had seen earlier, sitting on his mother’s lap three rows back, was wailing. The mother of the toddler was also traveling with her ailing mother who I’d seen pleasantly thanking the Delta staff earlier for bringing her to the plane in a wheelchair. They were both Southern black women wearing beige sweats from head to toe, and until this moment had spent the holding period at the gate pleading with the kid to “come on and be quiet now” and insisting to passengers around her that he usually doesn’t act this way on planes. I heard people around her say “It’s just fine” and “how old?”
A flight attendant, who I’d recently watched serve booze to everyone in First Class (why not, It’s 10:30 AM somewhere), warned over the loudspeaker that the routine demonstration on plane safety was about to begin. I always feel rude for continuing whatever I’m doing while another human being stands in the aisle showing me how not to die. Remembering to keep my seatbelt fastened during turbulence or to put my oxygen mask on before assisting others could save my life, and yet I sit there, fully ignoring the speech even as a member of the flight crew uses the plastic cover directly above my head to demonstrate how the yellow mask will flop down as we’re all screaming and crying and can’t remember our training. The flight attendant held the mask with both hands inches from my face and I kept reading. This dismissive attitude toward the safety speech is all the stranger when I remember that my biggest fear is dying in a plane crash.
I was once on a JetBlue flight that hit some rough air. I distracted myself by watching Marvel’s Iron Man 3 on the back of the seat in front of me (this was before I became a professional flyer and brought my own screens with me). There’s a scene in the movie where Tony Stark’s house is destroyed by a helicopter. Right before Stark successfully shoots down the flying assailant, the movie jumped abruptly to the next scene. JetBlue doesn’t edit anything sexy from in-flight entertainment, but they will cut anything that reminds you of your potential fiery death in a plane crash. When I noticed what had happened, I laughed to myself. How silly to think people would be scared by a Marvel movie. Then I thought, “maybe they cut those scenes because crashing is so common and they want you to forget. Why would they cut the scene if it weren’t an actual event that happens all the time?” I worked myself up over not seeing a plane crash in a movie while I was on a plane. I panicked over the absence of a frightening image. That’s how nervous I get on airplanes.
We were at the step where the flight attendants walked the entire aisle with one hand sliding against the white plastic covers of the overhead compartments to make sure they were secure when the woman holding her crying toddler walked up to my 75%-empty aisle.
“I think if he had a little more room, he’d be fine,” she said to the flight attendant who already had her hands up defensively. “Can we take these empty seats if no one else is coming?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to the people who paid to upgrade.” The flight attendant shook her head as she spoke.
“Well, can I upgrade?” The woman asked.
Sternly, the flight attendant said: “It’s too late for that.”
The woman turned to go back to her seat, and in a huff said “I’m never fucking flying Delta again. Fuck this shit.” As she sat down in her seat, she claimed loudly “if I were a white woman, they’d give me that seat.”
Her mother sitting in the seat next to her backed her up: “I know that’s right.”
“Excuse me,” I said to the flight attendant, she leaned down, all teeth and painted eyebrows.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“I’m happy to switch with her if it makes things easier.”
Before she could answer, the white grandma behind me objected “Yeah, nuh uh! - no, thank you!” Without looking in her direction, I put my hand up to block her face from my peripheral vision and thought “Adults are talking.”
I continued: “I understand not giving her a seat, but if I’m fine with it, it’s OK to swap, right?”
The flight attendant, with a smugness that reminded me of my Third Grade teacher, said “We don’t reward bad behavior.”
I’m sure that’s not Delta’s official policy on customers asking to upgrade without paying but to be fair to the flight crew, the lady and her mother were talking serious shit about the airline. The important part, in my opinion, is that none of that anger was directed at any particular person. She announced to anyone who was listening that flying sucks in general, but Delta specifically, sucks the most. Who could disagree? Delta’s insistence on using Boeing jets alone is enough for me to approve of her vitriol. I did not agree, however, that this was some racially charged incident that needed to be resolved with some special concession, even though on its surface, the white crew was telling a black woman she couldn’t sit at the front of the plane. It wasn’t wrong or unjust, but it was awkward and uncomfortable.
What happened next was more fraught. The flight attendant checked in on the two ranting passengers, and rather than trying to alleviate any tension, asked passive-aggressively if they “needed help buckling their seatbelts.” The mother, crying child still on her lap, put a hand up — much the same way a certain someone three rows up had done to the woman behind him trying to butt into a conversation earlier — and said “We don’t need any help from you.”
That was the last straw, apparently. Minutes later, the captain announced that we’d be held at the gate so agents could remove an unruly passenger. We sat and watched a 1.5-hour standoff unfold, listening to a woman cry that she never “threatened anyone” and gathered witnesses who could verify exactly what she said. Some of those people nodded in agreement, but mostly, I heard the people around me sigh and mutter things about “entitlement” and how much they hated people who “acted this way.” I did the calculus in my head of what stepping in again might accomplish and decided the answer was “nothing.” I watched two black Delta agents argue with her and insist that booting the woman from the plane had nothing to do with race.
The clash finally ended when the captain said “All right, we have to deplane everyone now so grab your things” and the collective groan, the booing from the back of the plane, the “Jesus Christs!” from the nice southern folk was enough social pressure that the family finally removed themselves voluntarily.
As she walked up the aisle, I saw her filming a rant. I tried to find out if she had posted anything already by searching “Delta JFK flight” on Twitter and Google. Instead of seeing “black woman ejected from flight over supposedly ‘threatening’ behavior,’” I saw “Delta flight makes emergency landing after safety slide opens midair.” There were photos of a Boeing plane, now safely on the ground at JFK, with a faulty slide hanging off a wing. I laughed again and felt sweat on my forehead. I wondered if my seat came with a vomit bag.
I don’t think the captain was wrong to defend his flight attendants. I don’t think anyone on the plane could have done more to help other than tepidly agree that the passenger did nothing threatening but also, yes, was being a bit dramatic by saying “I’m about to sue the shit out of Delta!” She was doing something rude, but not wrong or illegal. She was asking for a rule to be bent in her favor, but what material cost would Delta suffer for offering an empty seat? Everyone was having a bad day. Still, a mother and child were crying about a situation that had spun out of control quickly, and all we did as a group was shrug our shoulders and say “I guess the policy of the company says no” even as she wailed in front of us. Once the agents had been called, there was no room for negotiation. Her fate was sealed. Over what? A little sass? It felt like the principal had stepped in to help a teacher on a power trip with a disciplinary issue.
I kept repeating in my head “we don’t reward bad behavior.”
My problem isn’t the failure of us all to stand up and fight The Man. My problem is that none of us in the face of corporate policies or perceived authority could act like adults for two minutes and sort a small issue out for ourselves. It was in our best interest: the kid would stop crying and the plane would take off on time. Give her the seat. Seeing the sheer glee the passengers felt when the woman took her baby and mother off the plane was disgusting. Some laughed and applauded as she left. Others shook their heads and started sharing stories of other flights they’d taken with “crazy people” on board. Meanwhile, I did nothing to help. I didn’t even share my opinion with anyone. I disappeared into my iPad for the rest of the flight, rewatching Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder, a 2003 movie from South Korea about incompetent police officers trying to catch a serial killer.
In the airport on the way home, I picked up a copy of The Anxious Generation. I read the first 70 pages in a bar while nervously tapping my phone to see the time, fearing I’d miss my plane. The author insists that between 2009-present kids became significantly more depressed because of general increases in screen time and particular increases in unsupervised use of social media. Mediated friendships that can be discarded with the push of an unfollow button, the constant promotion of a personal brand before you’ve fully become a person, and addiction to the dopamine released by video games, porn, or Instagram likes are all negative for young people. The book also posits that online activism is much less rewarding than activism done in person, face-to-face, in actual solidarity with other people who support a common cause.
I’m afraid the technological mediation of everything has not only hurt kids but broken adult minds as well. It makes us look through the world as if we’re not part of it. Many of us are at home, following all the rules in our private spaces, watching people take to the streets to fight real-world injustices. We tweet about our solidarity or our less-than-nuanced disagreements with the protestors. Or we, quite easily, shrug off every problem entirely and distract ourselves.
Brave college students across the country are protesting the Israel-Hamas war. They are using tactics my parents’ generation used to stop the war in Vietnam and segregation. All of them are butting up against their school’s authority and policies, local law enforcement, and the president’s official statements. Yes, taking over a building is against the law, taking over the courtyard of a school is against the school’s policies. The simple truth, however, is that there’s a difference between following every rule and doing what is right. The encampments might be against the law, but what the students are asking for isn’t wrong.
Yet most of what I see online and on the news is people celebrating the fact that a bunch of “entitled” kids who don’t know any better were suspended or arrested. It’s disgusting to see students and professors held down by cops only to find out that many people in the media, entertainment, and on social media aren’t appalled but pleased with the results. Many are smug. For every one of my friends I see supporting the students, a hundred people are gloating that the faculty and students got what was coming to them. If they didn’t want to be arrested, they should have voiced their opinions politely and legally, like by writing to their elected officials who would ignore them.
I don’t think the internet made us ignorant, but I do think it made us complacent and angry at the wrong people. The only tangible result of us all having private screens is that it’s now easier than ever to retreat when we feel bored or conflict-averse. It’s easier to embrace our knee-jerk reactions to someone else not following the rules or voicing dissent in an unseemly manner.
I wonder if any new tech will ever help us become more informed or more connected or make the world more fair. I wonder if the ability to see history unfold in real-time in the palm of your hand is helpful at all. I wonder if one day they’ll offer Apple headsets on planes to help people forget they’re traveling altogether, and when they do, if they’ll only be available to First Class passengers. I wonder if anything — resources, comfort, justice — will ever be evenly distributed.
I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. You must have a good one or you wouldn’t have flown down to see him.
We’re all complicit Dan.