Viral video causes debate on airplane etiquette

Air travel can test even the most patient person, but one British travel influencer has sparked a massive debate over a very ordinary airplane annoyance: chewing with your mouth open.

British travel creator Risky Regg, who has nearly 200,000 TikTok followers and more than 330,000 on Instagram, went viral after confronting a fellow passenger over the way he was eating.

The video, posted July 22, has now racked up more than 14 million views.

Risky Regg was eating rice with a fork on a flight believed to be traveling to or from Nepal when he noticed the man sitting beside him chewing with his mouth open.

“Excuse me?” he asked. “Could you eat with your mouth closed?”

He then exaggeratedly mimicked the chewing before asking the man how old he was.

The passenger’s response wasn’t audible, but Risky Regg eventually gave up, put in his earbuds and muttered in frustration before returning to his meal.

Some people applauded him for saying what they were thinking.

“Saying it is one thing, but then doing the noise and face back to him is absolutely hilarious,” one person wrote. While another added, “People defending open mouthed eating definitely don’t know table manners”

But other social users thought the influencer was far more irritating than the person chewing.

“I hate noisy eaters but there is no need to be this rude,” one commenter wrote.

Another argued that filming a stranger without permission was worse than having bad table manners. One commenter wrote, “As annoying as that is – recording someone without their consent, then posting it, again I without their consent is wild for the internet to ridicule them is not okay.”

And this isn’t the first time Risky Regg has found himself at the center of controversy.

Earlier this year, he faced backlash over a video filmed with a Chinese woman in Xi’an that was titled “Winning Over a Chinese Girlfriend.” He had previously claimed during a livestream that he could meet and successfully pursue a Chinese woman within 24 hours, prompting criticism that his comments were misogynistic and insulting to Chinese women and culture.

The woman involved reportedly defended the friendship and said she had chosen to spend time with him.

What do you think of Risky Regg’s TikTok video? Let us know in the comments section.