It is either an unfolding love story very much of our times or a tale of a demented woman stalking two strangers on a plane and then detailing their private interactions to a social-media world breathless with perverse anticipation. It depends on your perspective.
But no matter how you view the decision by Rosey Blair, a Texan actor, to document in minute detail exactly what happened after she and a fellow traveller swapped seats on a plane, so the actor could sit with her partner, it can't be denied that the Blair watch project set a little corner of the internet ablaze.
Moments after Blair swapped seats on a Dallas-bound flight earlier this week, she said to her boyfriend, Houston Hardaway: "I hope she meets the love of her life."
— Rosey Blair (@roseybeeme) July 3, 2018
— Rosey Blair (@roseybeeme) July 3, 2018
Then a man – a former professional soccer player called Euan Holden, it would emerge later – sat beside the other woman, whose identity remains a mystery. This prompted Blair to let a stream of consciousness flow as she updated a world watching on Instagram and Twitter with snippets from the random couple's conversation.
The strangers – both “sexy fitness buffs” by Blair’s account – flirted even before the plane took off, she said. Neither was wearing a wedding ring. They talked nonstop, and it soon emerged they were both vegetarians, which meant they were able to share their airline food.
And nothing says romance like an overpriced dinner of stringy cheese and salty crackers.
Blair posted photographs of the couple – taken from behind – with their elbows touching, and even detailed their bathroom journeys, taken at the same time. The woman went with her hair tied up and returned to her seat with it down.
Significant? Blair certainly seemed to think so. Although she was at pains to stress she did not believe the pair had joined the mile-high club.
“I can’t make this s**t up,” Blair said as the “romance” intensified. “There is not TV on this flight but there is WiFi and romance!”
She assured those following her thread that she would follow the story to baggage claim. “I will have answers for you!”
The internet loved it. The original post announcing the thread has been liked more than 600,000 times, and people joined in the, um, fun by posting photographs of themselves watching Blair posting photographs of someone else on social media. It was postmodernism gone mad.
The couple – by now possibly aware that a stranger was eavesdropping on their conversation and sharing snippets of it on social media – started whispering to each other, which seemed to infuriate Blair.
She then followed them through the airport, photographing them as they walked.
Blair's interest in the random strangers did not stop at arrivals. And she was able to tell her followers when she got to her Dallas home that the woman in the frame was "a world traveller, both of them are very single. They both appear to be based right here in Dallas. They're going to fall in love and get married and have babies!"
Maybe Blair is right. Sky-high romance happens. The internet is awash with stories of people who found love eight miles high, and one in 10 people admitted – or claimed – to have had at least one fling with a passenger they met while in the sky, according to a survey of more than 10,000 flyers published last year by the online travel company eDreams.
They just didn’t have it all documented in real time by a person with a smartphone and internet access.
