According a number of The Bachelor spoilers, Rachael Kirkconnell may very well win Season 25 of this beloved ABC franchise.
She is clearly the front-runner.
However, while Matt James could getting down on one knee and proposing marriage to this 24-year old graphic designer, a great number of Internet users have been offering up a different kind of proposal for Rachael Kirkconnell.
Hey, they are saying, why don’t you go ahead and die?
Awful, we know. And yet this really is what’s been happening.
A family insider has spoken to The Sun and relayed to this publication that Kirkconnell has been receiving death threats for weeks now.
They stem from old social media posts that recently resurfaced, many of which are racist in nature and paint Kirkconnell in pretty terrible light.
There’s an Instagram post, for example, Liked by Rachael that prominently features The Confederate Flag.
There are also other times Kirkconnell Liked photos of stereotypical Black costumes and/or people in MAGA hats.
Elsewhere, a former high school classmate of this aspiring wife has wife has claimed Rachael used to bully people of color, while we’ve learned that Kirkconnell attended a plantation-themed ball in college.
Why on Earth would such things even exist, right?
Following a week of intense social media scrutiny due to these resurfaced photos and TikTok videos, the aforementioned source tells The Sun Kirkconnell is “not doing the best.”
Says this person:
“It’s taken a huge mental toll on the whole family. She’s getting a lot of death threats.
“Her parents have been contacted constantly because the TikTok videos posted their names publicly.’
Kirkconnell has not yet issued any statement in regard to these allegations of racial insensitivity.
But she’s also still on The Bachelor, of course; she has likely signed an NDA until, at least, the season is over.
“As a collective unit, [the family is] getting a ton of hate. We tried our best for the longest time to keep all the hate away from Rachael,” reports The Sun insider.
“It got really hard when people started coming to her page because she had to mediate her Instagram comments and of course to do that, you have to be aware on what’s being said.”
Last week, Kirkconnell disabled commenting on her Instagram and her mom deleted her account entirely.
But we can still see some of the remarks.
And one of the violent messages sent to the contestant says that someone out there “hopes Rachael gets skin cancer and dies from tanning so much.”
We wish we could say we were surprised.
But the Internet can be a horrible place.
“It’s devastating and has taken a huge mental toll on her. She won’t even watch herself on the show. She’s mentally drained and in a very bad place,” says The Sun source.
What does James have to say about all this controversy?
“I have not spoken to anybody since the show ended, but I would say that you have to be really careful about what you are doing on social media,” James told Entertainment Tonight on February 2.
“Rumors are dark and nasty and can ruin people’s lives. So I would give people the benefit of the doubt, and hopefully she will have her time to speak on that.”
One day, she likely will.
James is mostly gonna wait until that, time, too, he added last week.
“There’s a lot of stuff going around about the women that were involved in the show,” The Bachelorr said last Tuesday.
“I would just give them a chance to kind of [say] their piece, whether that is someone who was gone night one or someone who went home last night.
“Everyone has a story, and I would just be receptive to that.”