Bachelorette contestant Chad Johnson bought domain names of his reality show cohorts and rerouted them to his Instagram as part of his evil plan to become Jojo’s one true love—or something like that.
“Haha yes! I bought the domain names,” Johnson wrote to the Daily Dot. A former marine and a real estate agent from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Johnson said he bought the domain names, because “that’s business!” and “it’s hilarious!”
On Tuesday, Mashable senior tech correspondent Christina Warren made the first finding when she tweeted out a screenshot of a domain search result for robbyhayes.com, a domain that reroutes to Johnson’s Instagram account and is also the name of Bachelorette contestant Robby Hayes, the 27-year-old sales rep/model from Florida.
ZOMG @1ChadJohnson bought URLs for some #TheBachelorette guys & fwded them to his Instagram https://t.co/73il2PpaAZ pic.twitter.com/h9Ic34vOcY
— Christina Warren (@film_girl) May 31, 2016
The search result revealed that the domain was created April 21, about a month before the show’s season premiere, and is owned by a Brian Johnson from Oklahoma, who is also, coincidentally, Chad Johnson.
Johnson, who has so far been characterized on the show as the Trump-like villain of the Bachelor Mansion, vaguely replied to Warren with a tweet of his own, “[insert evil laugh here] hahaha.”
The Daily Dot found that chasemcnary.com, alexwoytkiw.com, and derekpeth.com all reroute to Johnson’s Instagram account, too. While the domain search results didn’t prove they were owned by Johnson, GoDaddy hosts all the domains, which were created around the same time robbyhayes.com was and which expire after one year.
In his correspondence with the Daily Dot, Johnson revealed that he also owns domains for two other housemates, lucaspell.com and danmaguire.com (though the latter URL was offline at the time of publication).
Johnson also confessed to owning jjhlane.com, which is the Twitter and Instagram username of Bachelorette season 11 contestant JJ Lane. According to another domain search, Johnson bought the domain just three days after Lane called him a “fucking dickhead” according to US Weekly, and one day after Lane tweeted that Johnson and contestant Daniel Maguire are “dumb, mindless muscle.”
https://twitter.com/jjhlane/status/737459086057459712
(For context, a few veteran Bachelor Nation fans told the Daily Dot that Lane was “the Chad of last season.” Lane also co-owns the website villainsgottavill.com with fellow season 11 bro Clint Arlis. Take from that what you will.)
As a self-proclaimed web entrepreneur who also flips websites and sells domains, Johnson said he owns more than 100 domain names and always reroutes them to whatever he’s working on. This time, it’s his Bachelorette Instagram persona.
“I figured these might as well not be parked and should instead be directed to a page related to what people were originally looking for,” Johnson said.
Though a domain search reveals that a few of his fellow contestants’ URLs remain unclaimed, Johnson debunked even the most earnest of fan theories and said he only bought the domains that were still available. “If you know of one still available let me know lol,” he replied. (Hard pass, Chad. Do your own sleuthing.)
So, any chance Robby, Chase, Alex, Derek, Luke, Daniel, and JJ will have the opportunity to get back the URL namesakes that are (kind of) rightfully theirs?
“I will gladly sell the domains back (at a price lol),” Johnson said.
TheBachelorette/Facebook
