The newlywed wife to the heir of a billion-dollar tree service family deleted her Instagram profile amid backlash after she allegedly bullied a user with the same name to buy her account handle.
Katherine Asplundh, formally Driscoll, shut down her account after other users mercilessly mocked her and created multiple accounts with different variations to her Instagram account, @katherinedrisc and the one she sought after @katherineasplundh.
Asplundh went viral when a woman with the same name shared the messages she received from the influencer requesting to buy her username.
“Hi just wondering if I could purchase your username from you. Just got married and this is my new name,” the newly read wrote, according to screenshots of the conversation posted to the NYCInfluencesnark sub Reddit.
“Hi congrats! That’s my name too. I just googled and it said selling my username would get me banned from Instagram.”
The out-of-the-blue message caught the real Katherine Asplundh, who goes by Kate, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, off guard and made her nervous after doing some research.
After Kate’s claim of buying accounts being a bannable offense, Asplundh asserted that it’s a common occurrence for people with high social status.
“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,” the newlywed said.
After not getting her way, the entitled wife made the bizarre claim that Kate was pretending to be someone she wasn’t because a Facebook search didn’t show anyone living in America with the same name.
Kate is not from America, according to the messages.
“I was open to giving her my username,” Kate told the outlet. “I just didn’t want to sell it because that would get me banned. After I replied to her, her messages came off snarky so I told myself, ‘OK, this isn’t worth it.’”
Asplundh deleted her account with 14,600 followers.
The most recent posts on the account before it was deleted featured photos and videos from the April 27 wedding between the influencer and Cabot Asplundh.
Cabot’s father, Chris Asplundh, is the current CEO of the Pennsylvania-based tree service company Asplundh Tree Expert Company.
After sharing the messages, Kate found support from Instagram users who flocked to the site and created multiple accounts similar to Asplundh’s names so the influencer couldn’t get her way and get an account with a name she wanted.
The internet sleuths also dug up an old TikTok post from Asplundh where she mocked wives-to-be who were overly excited to change their social media user names.
“Something that low key bothers me is when girls get married and it’s not even like 10 minutes after they do their vows and they’re like “Oh! going on my Instagram! Let me change my last name already,” Asplundh said in a now-deleted TikTok, according to the Daily Mail.
