It's not fair to say that all of Instagram is toxic. I've managed to curate an Instagram feed that is almost 100% jewelers and watchmakers - about as toxic as I get is Diet Prada.

But when you get points for being pretty, toxicity will certainly be created.

The internet has taken the social influence people have on each other and magnified, intensified and filtered it so grotesquely.

Is it net evil? Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable? I'm so grateful there are still smaller places (like hubski!!) where that magnification is less apparent and influential.

On a lighter note,

A friend of mine worked as a flight attendant and told me to just treat the ground staff well and politely ask for an upgrade (rather than fraudulently demand one) but it hasn't paid off for me yet.

I did get an unrequested upgrade on a short haul flight to Hong Kong once. Business class was about 50% occupied and it was so pleasant to just get randomly bumped like that.

I love the influencer bullshit because it's basically a bunch of attention whores leveraging the fact that manufacturers and vendors have no fucking clue how advertising works anymore. MVMT, kickstarter whore brand of bullshit watches that was purchased for $100m by Movado, spends fuckin' $30m a year on influencers despite the fact that all evidence is that influencers accomplish exactly fuckall. Nonetheless, they have an InstaWhore pipeline directly on their page.

A million dollars for this:

That said, some guided speculation from the article:

"- Did Ng fabricate the email?"

Whelp, based on this passage:

In response to this email, Ng made a crucial mistake in her self-advocacy mission. Not only did she not provide the requested information, she told the executive that she failed to see “the relevance of this request.” Then she announced that all further communication should go through her own legal counsel.

I'ma go with yeppers!

"- Did she accidentally email an incorrect address, where the recipient played an elaborate prank on her? If so, how did they get the real name of an actual airline employee?"

Ms. Ng professes to be a former employee of Cathay Pacific's parent company:

I moved to Hong Kong to work for Swire Resources as a Brand Manager in June 2018. I resigned from the role in November 2018 on my own self-accord. You can see that both my employee profile and reviews were extremely stellar and I received strong recommendations from my Director/HR. You can Google my background to also see that back in Canada; I won the Top 20 Under 20 National Award, given to young Canadians who have shown innovation, leadership, and achievement in society. The above speaks to my character.

I would hypothesize that she forged her boss' boss' email because she was formerly internal and is now external. In other words, she knew enough as to what she could get away with, but not enough to know she wouldn't.

"- Is it even possible, as Ng thinks, that the airline sent her the email and then later claimed it was a forgery? What would they gain from this?"

This is a woman who moved from Canada to Hong Kong for a job... that didn't work out after four months. "Left on my own self-accord" is the over-elaborate phrasing of a person who doth protest too much.

"- Did the person who sent her a response go rogue, and then deny it when the company asked for clarification? Why would the company claim the email didn't originate from it's servers in that case?"

Occam's razor doesn't cut along the grain on that one.

"It does seem like the company overreacted by banning her from the flight - a forged email that says "we might give you a business class upgrade if one is available" doesn't even seem like grounds for fraud investigation unless the company never does that or the gate agent knew the person who had supposedly signed the email and followed up with them."

...but it sure seems appropriate for a company that invited part of their social media crew to find another job only to have that former crewmember forge credentials to score a business class upgrade on a transpacific flight.

Is it even possible, as Ng thinks, that the airline sent her the email and then later claimed it was a forgery? What would they gain from this?

This is the impression I got reading the article. You'd have to be a bit wild to try and board business class with only a fake letter to back you up. I feel that somebody screwed up at the airline. Maybe somebody deleted it on their end to avoid losing their job because they upgraded someone without doing research?

The security team would have to go through a lot of email accounts and even find potentially deleted messages. And who knows if this influencer has the tech skills to extract embedded data from email messages.