This guy held onto his middle seat, refusing to let a pair of friends sit together. Middle seats notoriously suck. For the most part, no one chooses it as their first option, be it on a plane, bus, or a car road trip.
The perks are rather limited with a middle seat. The window seat gives you a nice view. Plus, you have a wall to lean on to make sleeping easier. The aisle seat is great for those who want a bit of extra legroom since they can stretch into the aisle. It’s also great for those who want easy access to the restroom without having to disturb their seatmates.
And with both of these, you’re only shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee with one stranger instead of two.
The only benefit of the middle seat is that plane etiquette dictates you have the right to both armrests. But this unspoken rule doesn’t always get honored. So you could end up just squeezed in, sitting rather upright between two randos.
In a viral video that has more than 700,000 views, Yasemin (@sarliunlimited) shares that she was traveling with her friend. They each had the aisle and window seat.
The middle seat hack
We’re not sure if this is what the girls were going for, but there is something known as the middle seat hack. If that’s what they were trying to do, it definitely backfired.
This hack is used by people traveling in pairs, basically they book the aisle and middle seat hoping that when other travelers book their seats they won’t pick the dreaded middle seat that’s left between them.
But given how packed flights have been in the last few years, this “hack” could easily backfire.
In hopes of being able to sit side by side, Yasemin and her friend offered the guy in the middle the aisle seat and then the window seat, but they were shocked that he wouldn’t budge for either.
“He said he’d rather stay in the middle seat between us,” the text overlay on the video read.
In Yasemin’s case, the duo still ended up winning. They told the flight attendant what was going on, and voila, they got upgraded.
@sarliunlimited i dont get it???? 🤯🤯🤯 #fyp #flypシ ♬ original sound – goldenbiscuit.tx
Why did the man refuse to give up the middle seat?
Commenters speculated on why he wouldn’t give up the seat.
“They tried doing the plane middle seat hack, but the guy is chaotic neutral and he just wants to cause chaos, I’m here for it!” a top comment read.
“Am i the ONLY one that thinks he said that because he’d like to stay between the two women??” a person said.
“He doesn’t want you guys talking through the whole flight maybe,” another speculated.
Apparently, there are a select few people who actually like the middle seat. Maybe he was one of them?
Some say they feel more comfortable not having to lean one way or the other, so they sit more comfortably.
“There have been times where flying during the day, I like the middle because I’m talkative,” a man told the Washington Post.
“Middle seats have the least amount of responsibility,” a woman told the paper. “I don’t control the window shade and only have to get by one person to get out or go to the bathroom.”
And this isn’t the first time trying to switch seats with someone on a plane hasn’t gone a person’s way. One woman said a dad tried to guilt-trip her into giving up a seat she paid extra for. A man pointed out the person who wants to switch may actually be trying to scam you.
The Daily Dot reached out to Yasemin for comment via email.
