What Airlines Think Humans Look Like When Designing Seats

What airlines think humans look like:

The meme opens with text at the top stating 'What airlines think humans look like:'. Below this text, there are two identical cutouts of a bald Black man in business formal wear (light blue dress shirt, purple tie, dark blue trousers, black dress shoes) wearing wired earbuds and looking down at a mobile device in his hands. Each man is placed inside an extremely narrow, simplified outline of an airplane seat, positioned right next to each other with no extra space between them. The joke satirizes how commercial airlines design economy class seating to be extremely cramped, as if all passengers are unusually slim, take up minimal space, and have no need for extra legroom or personal space, which is untrue for the vast majority of real travelers.

This meme was distributed via an RSS feed from the X (formerly Twitter) account @WholesomeMeme, a popular account that shares lighthearted, relatable humorous content. The meme taps into the widespread, common complaint among air travelers about shrinking seat width and legroom on commercial flights, which has been a popular topic for humorous critique online for many years.