The impulse to meme-ify is understandable, of course, and very, very human. We are social; we are nosy; we love to hear—and tell—stories about each other. And in the case of Helen and Euan, audiences were rewarded for their investment, of time and of care, with that rarest of things: a story that seemed to have a happy ending. No regretful, Missed Connections–y fate for our star-crossed lovers in Row 16; instead, over the course of their long conversation, Helen and Euan exchanged Instagram handles (!!!!!). They seemed to leave the airport together (!!!!!!!!!!!), their hard-shell carry-ons in tow (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Which we know because Blair took a photo of their retreating forms as they walked toward baggage claim! Good things can happen, still! There is love to be found, sometimes, and second-hand delight for the rest of us! Yay! And: awwwww.

And the whole thing, once again, might have ended there: a dash of delight during a time when so many people are in need of it. Except, as is becoming more and more clear … it very much couldn’t have ended there. Because the “it,” with every tweet Blair sent about its development, got bigger and weightier. It accumulated. The dynamics of microfame took over. As viewers got invested in the saga of #PlaneBae, they also began, in their own small ways, laying claim to it. Media outlets started writing about it. Ryan Seacrest joked about it. USA Today reported, with the urgent tones of breaking news, that Euan is the brother of Stu Holden, the former United States soccer player and current World Cup commentator. The story of the maybe-couple’s lofty meet-cute had slipped the surly bonds of mirth. It had ceased to be a simple, airy delight. It had instead become a heavy-handed media product, with ads sold against it and eyeballs meant to cling to it and #PlaneBae truthers attempting to puncture it. It had become #content. It had become a commodity.

And, hey, maybe it always was. In the brief frenzy, after all, it also came out that Euan Holden is already a minor celebrity, a former soccer player and current model. (He has now cheekily added “Plane Bae” to his Twitter bio, along with the tag #CatchFlightsANDFeelings.) Rosey Blair, parlaying her own Warholian moment the way people whose tweets go viral might ask new visitors to their feed to sign up for their SoundCloud, shared that she was a comedian and actor, and invited her new fans to write a screenplay with her. She then asked BuzzFeed for a job—saying she’d love “to create” for the site—via a tweet punctuated with a ;). Holden retweeted it.

Is it all a hoax? Is the whole saga—👩❤️✈️, Holden has taken to abbreviating his caught flight-feelings—the work of people simply looking to boost their careers? Is this tale of lofty love, during a time of deep anxiety about what is real and what is not—a time of Photoshop, of “fake news,” of “infopocalypse,” of fake love on The Bachelor, of fake decisions on House Hunters, of fake heroines on YouTube—just another reminder of the fact that, as Vox recently put it, “your reality is an interpretation”?