Travelers Pretend to Be Vloggers to Keep Middle Seat Open on Southwest Flight

While Southwest Airlines will soon be ending its open seating policy, passengers are still being allowed to pick seats on a first-come, first-served basis.

TikTok user named Alyssa Rafael (@alyssarafael) decided to take advantage while she was traveling with a friend aboard one of the airline's open-seat flights.

In order to ensure that both she and her traveling companion had that sweet middle seat space all to themselves, they pretended to be vloggers.

"On a Southwest flight trying to avoid someone in the middle seat so you pretend to be vloggers," a text overlay in the video reads. The duo looks directly into the lens of the camera as they record themselves sitting in their plane seats.

In their row, the middle seat is unfilled, and it appears that they're hoping whoever is boarding the plane will opt to go for another open seat instead of the middle one between Alyssa and her traveling partner.

The duo's thought process seems to be that a person would rather not have to deal with vloggers than sit in this seat.

The man tells Alyssa to pretend like they're "doing a lip sync" to further sell the social media influencer gag. The clip then cuts to her saying, "In the clurb, we all fam," which then prompts the man to snap his fingers and say, "click." She then also pops a pose, snapping her fingers, uttering "click" as well.

He throws up hang-ten signs into the camera as she speaks, "I'm gonna VLOG this whole flight can't wait."

The man picks up what she's putting down, and he riffs off of this saying, "What's up it's me AJ subscribe to my channel!"

Next, she adds to the joke, "This is our podcast and we're gonna vlog the entire flight...it's so fun, yeah we can't wait yeah you wanna be on camera? You can sit right here you can be in the middle," she says into the lens of their recording device.

Alyssa wrote in a caption of the video that "when [they] landed one [o] the flight attendants asked for a photo with [them]."

One of the commenters who replied to the video asked Alyssa if she and her traveling companion's hack worked and that their middle seat was left unfilled.

And while it could've very been that this particular seat wasn't booked for the flight, which is why no one came to claim it, the opposite could also be true. Perhaps the traveling duo's middle seat wasn't populated because of their make-believe vlogging session.

That's because in a follow-up video, Alyssa addressed the inquisitive TikToker, writing that "yes it totally worked" before urging others to try the same thing when they're aboard their own Southwest flight.

She also had positive things to say about Stellar's Maui Monk-flavored pretzel braids.

Several other TikTokers who responded to Alyssa's video praised the inventiveness of the two, but there was one person who said that they wouldn't have fallen for the trick.

In fact, it probably would've gotten them to plop themselves down in the middle seat even more quickly. "Not me sitting in the middle and saying, 'Let’s do content.'"

But there were others who said that the faux vlogging would've had them scrambling to find another seat as soon as possible. "There is a time and place for everything' would immediately make me find literally any other seat."

Another wrote that if Alyssa uses this hack enough times then she would eventually become a vlogger: "If you do this enough you will eventually become vloggers."

And then there were those who had traveling hacks of their own to make people second guess whether or not they wanted to sit next to them.

"Me and my bf do this but we pretend to argue!!!" one person penned. While someone else pulled out old reliable — and by old reliable they meant the bags intended for folks with motion sickness on the plane that they can use to puke inside of.

"I grab the barf bag never fails."

One person's comment suggests that they've been in situations where they've been on the same page with strangers who were after the same thing, and you both acted accordingly. "The best is when you don’t know the person and you just team up for the same goal."

And if you're willing to try and come off as an overly eager creep to get someone to sit next to you, you could try this technique offered up in the comments section:

"I make direct eye contact with every person that walks by while patting the seat next to me with my hand. 10/10 recommend, no one has ever chosen the seat next to me."