> But after seeing the TikTok video featured in media reports describing her as an “elderly woman” with a “heartbreaking tale,” she said she “felt dehumanised”.
Not trying to support the tiktoker, who is obviously a douchebag. But it's interesting that the negative emotions didn't trigger until it becomes news.
This doesn't seem to accurately reflect Maree's own description of events.
Given that she said he interrupted her quiet time and then left her with an annoying problem to solve (what do I do with these flowers I don't want?), it's clear that this interaction started with negative emotions.
Just the scale of negative emotions increased when the scale of the interaction increased. Which makes sense - imagine being reminded dozens of times over a period of days about what started as a minor negative experience.
It's not like something changed magically for no reason because humans are weird.