She kept filming. She started narrating. She said, into her phone — like she was in a TikTok — "I am trying to get this man to give up his seat because I am three months pregnant and he is refusing to be a basic human being. You can see he is just sitting on his suitcase like it's nothing. This is the state of this country." I did not respond. I put my earbuds back in. I turned my head. I pretended to scroll my phone. I was, in my head, furious. But I had already decided I was not going to be the viral video where the man argues with a pregnant woman on a train. Even if she was not pregnant. Even if — and I had now

become certain of this — she was performing an entire confrontation for her TikTok followers. She filmed me for, I am not exaggerating, eleven more minutes. She narrated the entire time. She described my clothes. She described the suitcase. She described the fact that I was, in her telling, "asleep" with my eyes closed (I was not asleep, I was ignoring her). At some point a woman in the vestibule — a woman I did not know — said, "Ma'am, maybe just walk up to the next car and find a seat? He's not getting up." The "pregnant" woman turned her phone on her. She said, "Oh, so you're going to side with HIM?" The woman put up her hand and walked the other way.