The History
The year was 2023 and the world felt like it had been turned upside-down and left that way. A walking corpse was President of the United States – but if you dared to question his competency, you were a wild conspiracy theorist (until everyone agreed a few years later). Two comically contradictory movements were at their peak – one screamed “no uterus, no opinion” in regard to the abortion discussion. The other shouted, “Men can become women, get pregnant, and become birthing people!” And oddly enough, the same group of people seemed to unironically embrace both ideas. The theatrical man who had accurately predicted much of 9/11, Epstein’s Island, and the fact that chemicals in the water were turning the frogs gay had been right one too many times for comfort – people were on edge and justifiably questioning reality as told by the elites. And then we met Tiffany Gomas.
The TMFINR Incident
On July 3rd Tiffany Gomas boarded her American Airlines flight alongside dozens of other passengers. A short while later – prior to the plane taking off – Tiffany was captured by cellphone video in a panicked state as she sought to exit the aircraft. She was recorded by several camera angles telling the aircrew that no matter what, she was going to get off that plane and she begged the staff to, “stop the plane”. Then came the infamous quote. Tiffany stormed towards the front of the plane, paused between first class and coach, turned, and said, “there is a reason why I am getting the f**k off and everyone can either believe it or they can not believe it. I don’t give two f***s but I am telling you right now that mother f****r,” Tiffany paused for a brief moment, shuttered, and pointed back to where she had been sitting, “that mother f****r back there is not real. And you can sit on this plane and you can f*****g die with him or not, I’m not going to.” After that, Tiffany turned and deboarded the aircraft. With that quote, Tiffany earned her internet nick-name of TMFINR Girl [that mother f****r is not real].
I still fly commercial quite a lot and I used to take cross-country trips even more frequently. Planes are not particularly intimidating to me, but I can tell you that if I heard a woman saying that while looking as terrified and sincere as Tiffany does in the video, I would be concerned. The aircrew and airport security definitely should have been concerned, but they didn’t seem to care much. We will get deeper into that topic in a few minutes.
After getting off the plane, Tiffany was recorded in the airport, where she said things like, “I don’t care if I never fly with y’all again, I want to know what happens to this flight right here." As security approached her, Tiffany began sobbing and through tears, she can be heard saying, “Don’t let that flight leave. Do not let that flight leave. I’m being dead serious.” She repeats herself multiple times before saying, “That flights not gonna make it to Orlando. It’s not going to.” When security is escorting Tiffany out of the airport, they tell her to keep walking and Tiffany answers, “Oh yeah, until y’all see that flight blow up.” Officer body-cam footage shows a cop saying that Tiffany is being a “headache” but that they will not detain her.
Let’s pause right here before we continue any further. Now is a good time to acknowledge that no matter what was going on – drugs, alcohol, some kind of an attention seeking act, or something more sinister and unknown – the reaction from the aircrew and security team seems oddly cavalier and lazy. I was 8 years old when 9/11 happened and in a post-9/11 world, I was raised to refrain from even saying words like bomb in the airport and was similarly warned against making jokes in public about a plane not making it to its destination. I’ve worked with military security teams, have observed law enforcement friends and family at their practice, and am a regular flyer – I feel quite well qualified to say that the things Tiffany was warning against and the accusations she was overtly making about the guy on the American Airlines flight were not to be taken lightly. She functionally said that someone who had been near her on the aircraft had, in some unknown manner, made her so terrified that she dropped all her plans, insisted on losing time and money, and deboarded the plane. After she was safely off, her focus turned to the remaining passengers who she feared were about to blow up. The law enforcement response – or lack of response - seems strikingly underwhelming. If I am ever a passenger on a plane and one of the occupants claims it is about to blow up, I sincerely hope that the individual will be seriously questioned in a manner which seeks clear detail prior to takeoff.
The official incident report claims that Tiffany was denied boarding and refused to speak to officers and left the area. All of these claims appear to be patently false, as Tiffany spoke to the officer and airline employees a lot - they just didn’t seem to care about what she was saying. Tiffany did not simply “leave the area” she was told that she had to leave by the officer. I have seen no evidence that Tiffany was ever denied boarding. Tiffany initially boarded without incident, then chose to get off, and does not seem to have ever attempted to get back on.
As the story unfolded, Tiffany was walked outside, casually asked a few questions which focused on a man she pushed out of her way rather than the apparent bomb threat, and then off she went. Comedian Carrot Top, who happened to be a passenger on Tiffany’s flight, explained that the flight was delayed significantly. As for the alleged imminent threat and the relevant witness – Tiffany – the topic does not seem to have been addressed in detail.
One of the news reporters who covered this story shared her opinion that we all need to hear from the man Tiffany was sitting next to and apparently was complaining about – I agree! We never did. Was he questioned or searched? Did he have any opinions about what caused Tiffany to become struck by fear? We may never know the answers to these questions. Multiple videos which claimed to show the man emerged and some TikTok users said they were the man in question – but nothing was ever verified. My takeaway from this chapter of the story is simply that Tiffany seemed genuinely panicked - she was even willing to leave her baggage behind. Her conduct seemed like that of a terrified person while the conduct of the professionals on site seemed troublingly dismissive. This could simply be a case in which a woman had a mental breakdown and a poorly trained team mismanaged the situation.
As we go down the rabbit hole, per the norm, the story gets increasingly strange. Multiple sources, including Howie Mandel and Carrot Top (who was present for the incident), say that they saw Tiffany claim that she witnessed a shapeshifter, which caused her panic. Tweets from Tiffany’s original Twitter account seem to support this claim. The original Tweets have since been deleted but have luckily been partially screen captured. I have no idea what to make of this aspect of the situation, but if you read through the available Tweets which seem to have been initially posted by Tiffany, they are quite unsettling and strikingly different from the story we would later be told.
Police footage alleges to show Tiffany attempting to explain that the man one seat over robbed her, then could not or would not speak. She appears shaken and tries to collect herself and continue explaining her side of the story but a cop cuts her off multiple times, causing her to become visibly frustrated. In the footage, Tiffany reiterates that the flight is, “probably not gonna make it” and she is “waiting to see what happens.” Then the footage ends.
The *alleged* Return of Tiffany G
The vast majority of videos about Tiffany Gomas show an overwhelming amount of skepticism in the comments surrounding her situation – and with good reason. Though Tiffany clearly appeared in her infamous American Airlines video, she could not be publicly positively identified and located for several weeks after her incident – not for lack of trying, as she had taken the internet by storm. When she did re-emerge, the list of questions grew rather than shrinking.
Virtually every piece of her social media content which pre-dated the plane incident had been scrubbed from the internet. To this day, you can look for Tiffany on YouTube, X, or Instagram, and you will find a mountain of content – but almost nothing from before the incident. Her X feed of media now starts with a strange apology video – as though she had never been active on social media prior to the viral TMFINR video.
One of the first times Tiffany was publicly on camera after the incident, she was interviewed by TMZ at an airport. The interview was brief and nearly everything about it seemed unbelievable. In the piece, Tiffany says that she is trying to “lay low” but when watching the video, this claim seems comical since it is delivered by a woman who appears to be cosplaying as Tiffany Gomas. The outfit, hair style, and earrings which Tiffany chose to wear to the airport when she was about to fly again after her national incident were almost identical – and yet, she was trying to lay low? Tiffany understood very well that her look was fairly recognizable, since she threw a Halloween contest and challenged people to dress up as her. Taffany says that the TMFINR moment was not like her and it embarrasses her that it was caught on camera. But she chose to wear highly similar clothes – like wearing a costume – to the airport for her next journey while laying low. Try to apply this thinking to yourself for a moment – picture that your biggest freak-out, drunken melt-down, or emotional outburst was caught in public and on camera. Imagine that during the incident, you were wearing a very specific outfit consisting of combat boots, a yellow vest, and a baseball cap. Then, in the next few weeks, you have to go back into the public to travel in the same way that you had been traveling when your embarrassing video was captured. You want to lay low and avoid further embarrassment. Is your next move to break out the combat boots, yellow vest, and baseball hat so that you can look practically identical to how you did when the video was shot? Do you want to appear like a cartoon character who is easily recognizable because they’re always wearing the same clothes? Heck no!
During the TMZ interview, Tiffany says that she has been told not to comment about what she saw or why she got off the plane – but she emphasizes that she was distressed and was “100% getting off that plane”. In the interview, she does not seem to regret getting off the plane, rather, she simply states that she was definitely going to get off but didn’t need to “make a scene”.
The final weird element of the TMZ interview is simply the question of; who called TMZ? How did they know she would be at the airport in her TMFINR outfit? In a later interview, Tiffany is asked similar questions, which she dodges around by saying that she thinks TMZ just “chills” around LAX waiting for people of interest. She never affirms that she did not call TMZ - talk about a non-answer!
In the months that followed TMFINR, Tiffany quickly pivoted away from the incident and seemed reluctant to speak about it. Any time that she had to address what happened, she spoke in vague generalities. She became extremely active on social media and rebranded herself as a charity-loving, gun-shooting, beer-drinking, right-of-center girl. She did a media-tour which left most questions unanswered and raised now concerns to most viewers.
As time passed, Tiffany shifted (or was directed to shift) the narrative. She began stating that she did not see anything on the plane and ‘that mother f****r is not real’ was simply “an expression of speech.” But that doesn’t make any sense at all. If her newest narrative were true, then why did she say she couldn’t talk about what she saw? If you saw nothing, then there is literally nothing to talk about and you can say as much for both legal and PR purposes. In an interview which aired on Fox, Tiffany says that she is not suing the man who sat near her and he is not suing her, but for some reason, she legally can not speak about what happened. That does not make sense. Most importantly, though, if Tiffany was merely using an expression of speech akin to saying, “Oh, come on, be real” then why did she also say that the plane would not arrive safely at its destination? Why was she sobbing as the plane prepared to take-off? Why did she expect the aircraft to blow up?
Inside Edition did an off-putting, controlled, and sanitized puff piece on Tiffany in which they showcased her purses and her beautiful home (I’m not kidding) and briefly touch on the plane incident while being sure to provide leading questions which focus on the idea that Tiffany did not actually see anything and her words were merely a poorly presented expression of speech. Tiffany seems stiff and stressed for the duration of the video.
Due to the details which have been shared to this point, many individuals who follow the tale of Tiffany Gomas believe that the public has been lied to. Was the TMFINR incident a brilliantly planned marketing scheme by an aspiring social media influencer? Or was it something darker and more destructive in nature? We may never know – but I think we can know that we don’t know the truth. As Rumsfeld has said, in life you have known knowns – things that you know you know. You have known unknowns – topics you know exist but do not know much about. And then you have unknown unknowns – things you don’t even know exist, and thus, you also know absolutely nothing about them. The TMFINR case fits neatly into the second category – we may not know the whole truth, but we are aware that we do not know the whole truth.
The situation seems to be that Tiffany Gomas saw something which deeply unsettled her and was not detained or arrested after claiming that she knew of an active threat which would lead to the plane she had been on blowing up. The man she pointed out similarly does not seem to have been arrested or detained. Her story has shifted drastically over time and a well-established behavioral analyst believes she has lied about several details. At the 45:00 minute mark of this video, it is shown that her story has changed to the point of being outright contradictory over time.
A few other details which are potentially noteworthy are the following: The airport footage shows Tiffany claiming that her father is a cop, but the man who seems to be her late father appears to have been a business owner and investor. There appears to be no police gravestone marker located at the resting place of her father and no mention of law enforcement in his obituary. More details are needed to verify familial ties and make this point iron-clad, but it is potentially another big hole in the story. A GossipNextDoor webpage which used to contain information about Tiffany’s life and family structure has been deactivated. In an odd interview introduction, Alex Perry claims to have known Tiffany for many years – for the first portion of their talk, both Tiffany and Perry overemphasize that the woman in the airport video was definitely her. It’s just a very off-putting and unnatural conversation – it seems like two people going out of their way to support a story, not like a conversation between two old friends. When was the last time you started off a chat with an old college buddy by saying something akin to, “Hey man, we go way back. Everyone else knows you as something else, but I know you as my friend from ten years ago. That video everyone else has seen kinda looks like you, and at first I didn’t think it was you, but now I know that it is definitely you. My old friend. The guy who I have known for a long time.”? This awkward interview doesn’t prove anything, it’s just plain weird.
I tried to compare photos from the incident with recent photos of Tiffany and facial recognition software rated the similarity between 30-60%, offering a ruling that they were not photos of the same person. For reference, this same tool rated a collection of photos of me taken through the span of 4 years as 90% similar and affirmed that they were shots of the same person. This could be an imperfect tool producing imperfect results, but it is noteworthy.
When it comes to scrubbing old photos, somebody did a thorough job. A PPAI article from 2017 which talked about Tiffany’s status as a young professional used to contain photos – a screenshot can be seen in another article which was posted after her airplane incident. However, if you view the original PPAI article, it looks exactly the same – minus the old photo from 2017. It seems to have been edited out of the piece. In fact, all the photos have been removed from the article - almost like somebody said, “Hey, get rid of her photo, and as a matter of fact, get rid of all the photos so that the absence of hers doesn’t stick out.” Pure chance? Perhaps.
Closing
So, what happened to that woman in July of 2023? Both Carrot Top and the official incident report claim that the plane was delayed and re-screened. Perhaps security found something significant, prevented a crime, and decided that telling the public would cause too much drama. Perhaps Tiffany was far-gone mentally due to some form of substance abuse – even though she told Alex Perry that she had merely taken a pain killer for her back issue hours prior to the incident. Maybe something weirder and darker than we could possibly imagine happened, or maybe it was just a sting of mistakes, little white lies, and coincidences. As in the case of another famous Tiffany - Tiffany Dover - all we can do is speculate and acknowledge that while we may not know it all, we know enough to establish that we have been lied to. The unsettling question is; why?
