( CNN ) -- Elan Gale , producer of `` The Bachelor , '' is under heat for his live-tweet-turned-hoax aboard US Airways over Thanksgiving weekend . His live tweets about a feud with a disgruntled passenger went viral and garnered him tons of attention and sympathy . Turned out the whole thing was made up . Gale admitted it on Twitter . Should Gale not have made up the woman in 7a whom he called Diane ? Maybe . But then again he 's in the creative industry . He 's a writer . To me , what 's more fascinating is how quick we are to jump on any interesting human interaction . Gale conceived of a short story on Twitter and it was so good that hungry media outlets seized on it and spread the story like wildfire . If Gale wanted publicity , he got it . If the media wanted a good and verified story , it should have done its job of fact-checking . Gale just happened to live-tweet a fiction . But the bigger issue is : Is it OK to live-tweet other people 's conversations ? Based on my own experiences , I 'd say yes , to an extent . A few weeks ago , it was an unusually warm night in Brooklyn . I had a friend in town and we went up to the roof to enjoy the view . More groups of people came up and cluttered the smallish space . Suddenly a couple burst on to the roof . Simply put , they began breaking up on the roof , in front of everyone . It all seemed so familiar to me , the back and forth , the arguing between the couple . I 'll tweet out what they 're saying , I thought . I did n't think too much about it . It just seemed like a relatable situation . The breakup , # roofbreakup as it became known , started to pick up steam , and eventually went viral . I began to receive messages and tweets and e-mails from all over the world , with the overwhelming majority expressing their delight and joy in reading the tweet-sized transcript . But not everyone condones this behavior . Nisha Chittal , a social media content editor at MSNBC , posted an essay on Medium entitled , `` Please stop live-tweeting people 's private conversations . '' Chittal mentions my # roofbreakup , Gale 's airplane feud ( before it was revealed to be a hoax ) , a date someone overheard on Amtrak , and the time where Tom Matzzie overheard former NSA director Michael Hayden 's phone conversation with reporters . Chittal says she believes it to be `` unethical and unfair to regular people to broadcast their lives to an audience against their will . '' She 's right in some ways . However , except in the case of Michael Hayden , the people in her examples are anonymous . They just as easily could have been fiction , as in the case of Gale 's airplane feud , where the characters existed in an invented scenario to evoke people 's sympathy . But there is no harm if a conversation with universal appeal is shared publicly as long as the people remain anonymous . For example , with my own live-tweeting of # roofbreakup , I did n't give any clues as to who the couple were . When sifting through the endless responses sent my way in the wake of # roofbreakup , time and time again I came across `` oh I 've been there before '' and `` sounds like my last breakup . '' The only explanation for the level of exposure that my # roofbreakup got is that people connected with the situation . It was gossiping in the 21st century , except instead of using specifics and pointing out the people , it remained `` guy '' and `` Rachel . '' I did n't live-tweet a couple 's private conversation ; I live-tweeted any two people 's breakup conversation . Technology is quickly changing our lives and we are adapting accordingly . It 's so easy to communicate and share information and knowledge instantly . And now we have to deal with having private conversations in public spaces . But private and public are not always distinctly drawn lines . Sometimes the two mesh and things get blurry . As humans , we 're intrigued with the lives of other people . When other people 's lives parallel ours , we feel less alone in the world . The media knows this . Just as often as you read a headline about a natural disaster , you will see a headline about a personal disaster . Elaborate proposal videos go viral daily . Couples fighting in public get on YouTube . Go ahead and share the story you overheard on the street or cafe , just make sure to not give away the personal identities . A story with no specific names attached is no less fake than fiction . You may wonder : Did the # roofbreakup really happen ? You can believe me or not , but I promise you it did . Had I witnessed the breakup on my roof five or six years ago , I would have told everyone I knew about the crazy exchange . I would have walked back into my apartment and re-enacted it for my then roommates , embellishing and recalling every line I possibly could . But I witnessed the breakup in 2013 , and I communicated it in a way that seemed just as normal as any other . It just happens that I can tell the story to more people . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kyle Ayers .
Elan Gale , producer of `` The Bachelor , '' is under heat for his live-tweet-turned-hoax . Kyle Ayers : " I'm not sure if this was a joke or an attempt to get attention He says there 's no harm as long as the personal identities of the people are anonymous . Ayers : A story with no specific names attached is no less fake than fiction .