An airline taking off from London’s Heathrow has experienced some trouble with an embittered passenger. The middle-aged woman, who arrived late to the boarding gate, wound up missing her flight. When an airline worker attempted to explain that regulations won’t allow passengers to board after the allotted time, an altercation occurred in which the woman verbally attacked the gate agent.

In similar fashion to Marvel’s Team Iron Man and Team Captain America debate, the original content creator who uploaded the video (below), posed the question of Team Lady or Team Airline to the comment section. Thankfully, with one small step for TikTok and one giant leap for humanity, fellow TikTokers rallied together in full support of the airline worker.

During the exchange, the gate agent explains that they aren’t permitted to allow passengers through security at a certain time. The woman responds by attempting to convince the worker that they arrived on time. The latter replies, “No you weren’t, you’re still here,” motioning to their place in an overflowing line.

The passenger doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer, so she raises her voice for the next reply: “Oh my god, we were. Don’t you dare call me a liar. That’s not true.”

In a display of solidarity, the comments took the side of the gate agent. Some TikTok users merely wrote “Team Airline,” whereas others said, “You weren’t at the gate by the cutoff time. We aren’t sitting around waiting for you,” or simply, “Team worker. Always.”

There’s a moral grey area here, but it does seem fairly obvious who’s right and who’s wrong.

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There’s nothing as special in this life as having a friend, nothing can bring a smile to your face faster than knowing you’ve got someone on your team, acknowledging that someone has your back. In the same breath, there’s nothing more heartwrenching than feeling like you’re going through life without one, and the idea of going through life without friends has been the talk of social media through the last week after the vulnerability of a kid who was brave enough to ring a doorbell.

In a viral TikTok video, Shayden Walker approached his neighbor’s home and asked the people there if they knew of any nearby kids he could hang out with, and the reason behind his asking will bring tears to your eyes.

“I just wanted to see if you knew any kids around like 11 or 12, maybe because I need…I need some friends like really bad,” Shayden says to the man who answered the ring doorbell. After learning that there are kids of similar age nearby, Shayden reveals that those kids have turned into his bullies, and he doesn’t feel comfortable reaching out to them.

It’s not just the fact that he’s been bullied; the defeat in his face and voice as he explains it pulls on your heartstrings. We’ve all been there; kids can be cruel, but the devastation in his presence as he opens up is enough to ignite a fire in your heart; and his pleas for a friend reached someone who is determined to help him out of his current situation and into a realm where he feels confident enough to say hello and make a new friend, without worrying about the past and the hurt he’s been caused.

Rener Gracie felt compelled to get in touch with Walker’s family after the video reached him on social media, and there’s no one better to set out to help him.

You might recognize Gracie from his stint on Shark Tank, where he showcased the QuikFlip and made a deal with Lori Greiner. Gracie also has a Kickstarter open now for his next creation, the Sleeper Hold, and we think it’s safe to say that jiu-jitsu isn’t just in his blood; it’s at the root of everything he does.

Another thing at the root of what Gracie does is helping children, especially by building confidence and skill; sometimes, that makes all the difference. It’s hard to put your best foot forward when you’re not feeling confident, especially at the age of preteen awkwardness and the stage of life when you realize that there are social circles and sometimes not everyone you meet will necessarily be your close-knit group; it can be challenging. As adults, we too can face challenges when it comes to navigating our identity within social groups, despite having fully developed brains.

At the age that Shayden is at, friends are one of — if not the most important thing, and realizing that he’s just one of many kids who walk around and feel that loneliness daily is heartbreaking. It might sound cliche, but in becoming a parent, you acknowledge that a piece of your heart walks around in the world every day, but it doesn’t take being a parent to feel hurt when a child deals with bullying and isolation.

Sharing the same video to his own TikTok, Gracie offered to send Shayden to Torrance for the bullyproof summer camp he’s hosting and send the family to Disneyland.

“He needs help. We’ll fly this kid to Torrance for the Gracie Bullyproof Summer Camp (July 31 to Aug 4); all expenses paid (+ tickets to Disneyland) if anyone can connect us to the family. BullyproofSummerCamp.com — This is what we do.”

The camp helps kids learn the art of jiu-jitsu and how important it is to stand up for yourself. Gracie remarks that every kid will be bullied sometime in their life, which is true, and his camp helps to prepare children for what to do when that happens and have the skills to stand up for themselves if things escalate.

Gracie’s website shows some of the following highlights that happen when children advance through the week-long camp:

• “Bullies target children who don’t stand up for themselves. By giving your child the non-violent Gracie Jiu-Jitsu techniques to neutralize a physical attack, they will have the confidence to take a stand against bullies before the harassment spirals out of control.
• Verbal harassment is more common and oftentimes more damaging than physical harassment. To ensure your child is ready to identify and overcome these inevitable attacks, we conduct a series of specific role-playing exercises each day of the camp.”

We’ve yet to hear if the family has reached out to Gracie yet, but we have a feeling that they’ll find one another soon enough and that Walker’s story will soon have a very different message; one of overcoming loneliness, finding friends and more importantly — believing in the power of himself. His kindness and compassion for others were evident as he spoke in the few moments long video, and we have a feeling he’s on his way to meeting the kind of people who appreciate all the best things about him.

Here’s hoping we get an update video soon, and in the meantime, may we all remember that how we treat people matters.

WARNING: The following article contains mentions of child endangerment, child death, and vague descriptions of gore.

As if Squid Game hadn’t enthralled us enough in 2021, TikTok has found a novel by Aron Beauregard, a known splatterpunk author, called Playground. Beauregard’s gorefest hit the shelves in 2022, over a year after Korean drama series Squid Game aired on Netflix, and essentially retells the story of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s poverty-stricken free-for-all, but this time with children.

Playground sees a group of dysfunctional families, all of whom are struggling financially, approached to test out some revolutionary playground equipment. With the incentive that their participation will be handsomely rewarded, the families agree to partake and sign their children up. Soon after, the adults find themselves locked in a viewing room and forced to watch on the monitors as their children are brutally slaughtered, all for the sadistic entertainment of Geraldine, the creator.

TikTok seems to have waited a whole other year before discovering Playground, but now that content creators are going ape over one of Beauregard’s latest, all those uncomfortable emotions have come swarming back. Needless to say, Beauregard outdid himself with Playground, and TikTok users are struggling to pry their eyes away. Even worse, some of them can’t make it past the first 40 pages.

As we’ll remember from Squid Game, the participants are presented with seemingly harmless ‘challenges’ to complete, but soon discover that one small slip-up will result in their immediate ‘disqualification’ from the competition.

In the same vein, the children in Playground are tricked into believing that they’ll win a substantial amount of money for the families by simply having fun. They’re forced to make difficult decisions and grow up drastically fast in order to survive when it’s revealed that Geraldine is an infamous child murderer.

If gore churns your stomach, this definitely isn’t the book for you, but if you’ve shamelessly enjoyed Saw and The Human Centipede — or you loved Squid Game — then maybe this is right up your alley. We won’t judge you for enjoying Playground… we promise.

Being a parent is quite a joy; there’s something special about bringing a life into the world, watching them grow up, and having a front-row seat to seeing their personalities develop. When you’re a gamer and lover of all things pop culture, there are times when you’ve got to get a little creative regarding winning, losing, and reacting to both.

Gamer dad and streamer TimTheTatman recently shared a clip on TikTok and gave his fans a masterclass in how to deal with frustration while gaming when his son is within earshot. We have to admit, we’ve tried quite a few interesting ways to hide a specific word from our children’s ears, but this is a surefire way to express some passion while gaming and make your kid laugh!

So what is Tim’s strategy? It’s simple; he yells breakfast food names loudly. When attempting to perform a jump in Fortnite Only Up, he quickly realizes that he’s not lined up for success. That’s when he starts calling out the names of breakfast treats.

“French toast, bagels, give me some waffles, eggs…eggs,” he bellowed, before shaking his head and saying he can hear his son laughing in the background. Not only was he laughing, he had some words to share with his father.

“You’re bad at this game,” he told his dad, and his dad just looked at the screen and shared a laugh that covered his face.

There’s nothing like your own flesh and blood telling you that you’re garbage, especially when you’re censoring yourself for their sake. All jokes aside, we love this dad’s way of gaming, getting his son involved, and making it fun. Plus, everyone knows that talking smack is a big piece of the gaming realm, so he’s already gearing up to be a great sidekick when the time comes.

Maybe he’ll even inspire his dad to get better since he clearly believes he needs it. Cheers to awesome gaming dads whose TikTok videos make our day and inspire us on how to be more clever with our frustration. We have a feeling we’ve got a new one to throw out next time we lose our footing in Mario Kart — Mickey Waffles!

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