‘The Bachelorette’ star Chad Johnson admits to buying domain names of fellow competitors

Depending on who you are, you probably have two different reactions to Chad Johnson buying up the domain names for contestants on “The Bachelorette” this season, and then linking them back to his own Instagram page: It’s either kind of funny, or incredibly awful. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Some of the names that he’s bought up are pages for people like Derek Path and Robby Hayes, and speaking to People Magazine about the purchases (which were first unearthed by Reality Steve), Chad claims that he did it for two reasons: “That’s business, and it’s hilarious.”

If we were Chad (not that we necessarily want to be), here’s how we would handle this. If his goal is to just garner as much publicity, congratulations for succeeding on that! You’ve had your fun with your little prank, and you’ve successfully trolled many of the other guys on your season. At this point, though, we’d give them over to the guys from your season and just say that it was a little prank; if you’re really holding out to get these guys to pay you for these, that’s pretty terrible since you probably got them for a pretty good deal at the time.

Ultimately, we had to put ourselves in the position of one of these guys before coming up with a final opinion on the stunt: If someone snatched up our own domain and used it for self-promotion, we’d feel pretty annoyed and frustrated at the end of the day. If they gave it over to us for free (at least for however long the license lasts), we’d shrug it off as a bit of silliness.

Want to preview Monday night’s new “Bachelorette’ episode even further? Then head over here to see a sneak peek! Also, sign up over here to score some other TV news via email courtesy of our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)