Twitter Hoax: Reality TV Producer Depicts Imaginary Woman as Terrible

Many people got a chuckle out of the “epic” note passing war on a Thanksgiving flight between Bachelor producer Elan Gale and a rude woman named Diane. It all played out on Gale’s Twitter (and was quickly picked up by BuzzFeed): When a self-centered woman pitched a fit about delays to flight attendants, Gale sent her a glass of wine and a chiding note.

She responded poorly, and he parried with a note urging her to “eat my dick.”

Some suggested that telling a middle-aged woman to “eat my dick” might perhaps be rude at best, disgusting sexual harassment at worst. Others called for an end to the live-tweeting-and-public-shaming two-step. But in a follow-up post, Gale laid it on thick, presenting the story as a neat little morality tale, a call to arms for beleaguered defenders of manners and decency:

Most people are great. And then there are a bunch of Diane’s in the world.

And it’s OUR job to tell every Diane to shut up.

It’s OUR duty to put the Diane’s of the world in their place.

“I’m really glad we had fun today, but I really hope you guys join me, look a jerk in the eye, and tell them to eat a piece of your body, because really, that’s what the holidays are all about,” he concluded with a rousing flourish.

But wait! Just when everyone thought they had it all sorted out, a commenter waded into a Storify of Gale’s tale and spun a counter-narrative, claiming to be Diane’s cousin and that in fact, she was dying of cancer and this was her last Thanksgiving at home. What now, Internet?

Well, hold your think pieces and earnest speeches about not judging a book by its cover, everybody, because it turns out the whole thing was a big pile of bullshit, courtesy of our man Elan. Last night he posted a “photo of Diane,” which was just an empty chair. Psych! He added:

Turns out Gale has a history of social media stunts that are probably B.S.

So, to refresh, dude was bored on a Thanksgiving Day flight (if he was even really on a plane!), so he dreamed up his platonic ideal of obnoxiousness—”in her late 40s or early 50s. She is wearing mom jeans and a studded belt and she is wearing a medical mask over her idiot face”—and proceeded to rake this imaginary woman over the social media coals. This was his big fantasy: Utter victory over a frumpy woman who just wouldn’t shut her big fat trap.

That’s even more messed up than telling a woman you’ve never met to eat your dick. And remember, the Internet thought this was just hilarious.

The punchline, though? Mr. Gale’s gig as a reality TV producer. I’ll watch Real Housewives for hours on end just like everybody else, but let’s be honest, here—what’s reality TV but endless humiliation of women so distorted by editing as to be basically fictitious versions of themselves? This time he just took the form to its logical conclusion and invented his star out of thin air.

Can’t wait to do this all over again in the news lull over Christmas!

Remember The Elan Gale And ‘Diane’ Twitter Fight? Turns Out It Was Fake [Huffington Post]

A hipster humiliates a middle-aged woman on a flight. Twitter applauds – but was it a stunt? [Telegraph]