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Journalism of Courage
In this social media-dominated era, every post is meticulously curated and every follower coveted. As millions of users carefully put together their online personas, a tale that gripped the online community unfolded. At the core of it is an Instagram username for a wife.
Katherine Asplundh, originally Katherine Driscoll, newly-wed wife of Cabot Asplundh, the heir to the billion-dollar Asplundh Tree Expert Company, found herself at the center of a storm after a seemingly innocuous request to secure an Instagram username escalated into a saga of entitlement and backlash.
Eager to reflect her newfound status as a wife on her online persona, Driscoll decided to acquire the Instagram handle @katherineasplundh. But, to her dismay, the handle was already claimed by… yes, another Katherine Asplundh.
Without any delay, the former, who’s a wife slid into the latter’s Instagram inbox with a message. “Hi just wondering if I could purchase your username from you. Just got married and this is my new name.” The latter, known as Kate, was taken aback by the sudden request. “Hi congrats! That’s my name too. I just googled and it said selling my username would get me banned from Instagram,” she responded, trying to navigate the unexpected situation.
Undeterred by Kate’s hesitance, Driscoll persisted, “I purchased my username in the past actually that’s not true. Celebrities do it all the time that’s how they all have their handles as their full names,” she wrote to Kate in another message. Kate stood her ground, refusing to bow to the newlywed wife’s demand. “I was open to giving her my username,” Kate later recounted, “I just didn’t want to sell it because that would get me banned.”
Frustrated by now, Driscoll resorted to questioning Kate’s authenticity. She wrote, “I didn’t mean to offend you, but I did some research and it’s not a common name at all. I even looked on Facebook and there’s nobody with your name in America.”
As the dispute escalated, Kate shared the exchange on social media.
The climax
The Instagram exchange between the two Katherine Asplundhs went public, it sparked a wave of outrage against Driscoll, and support for Kate. Many Instagram users, annoyed by Driscoll’s entitlement, rallied behind Kate. To make things extremely difficult for Driscoll, furious Instagrammers claimed almost all the variations of the username she wanted.
In a final act of defiance, the newlywed Katheriene deleted her Instagram account, abandoning her 14,600 followers and disappearing from Instagram. Reports say she is active on TikTok.
