The internet-driven “feud” between Olivia Munn and Ms. Rachel this week seems to prove we’ve completely lost the plot—and women in the public eye are under an unsustainable level of scrutiny.
Look, the internet isn’t a friendly place in general. Especially if you say the wrong thing. But in 2025, even the most benign comment can be twisted and misconstrued to lead to an avalanche of backlash, and it seems like it’s getting worse.
Let’s make one thing clear: Olivia Munn and Ms. Rachel have never been in a fight. Munn never actually said anything critical about Ms. Rachel specifically. What she did do was make a pretty innocuous and relatable comment about programming for kids.
Munn, who has two young children with her husband, John Mulaney, sat down for an interview with People this week and made a comment about how she couldn’t stand kids TV. As an example, she cited Ms. Rachel, a popular children’s entertainer on YouTube who also has a show on Netflix.
“I know kids love [Ms. Rachel], but the thing is, if I can’t watch it, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life going crazy,” she said. “These kid shows drive me crazy.”
She also said she couldn’t stand Blue’s Clues, saying the only show she doesn’t mind is Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood because it helped her son, three-year-old Malcolm, prepare for the arrival of his new baby sister, eight-month-old Mei.
Not only did Munn make the comments as a lighthearted conversation topic and not as a serious critique of the programs, but hating kids TV is pretty common among parents. It’s a frequent discussion on parenting message boards or at the playground, and any parent you ask probably could rattle off which shows they don’t mind and which make their ears bleed (I’d take Gabby’s Dollhouse over anything on Nickelodeon any day).
But almost immediately, Munn’s innocuous and relatable feelings were twisted into something ugly. People titled their original article “Olivia Munn Doesn’t Let Her Kids Watch Ms. Rachel. Here’s Why,” which some took as a sign that Munn was specifically saying she hates Ms. Rachel, not making a more generalized statement. And the backlash was swift.
The problem, though, isn’t just that Munn’s comments were taken out of context. It’s that women in the public eye are walking a tightrope that is getting ever narrower. If they make one wrong move, from misspeaking to doing something even slightly negative, they face the potential of getting excoriated online. And it’s not just being criticized—they are subjected to violent misogyny, unrelenting hate, and in the case of Munn, even death threats.
Once the words were out of Munn’s mouth, they were twisted by the internet into something completely different and out of control. The narrative went that not only did Munn attack Ms. Rachel both personally and professionally, but she was actually a terrible person for depriving her kids of her programming. Predictably, she was cast as the dreaded “bad mother,” too selfish to put aside her “own needs” for the “good” of her kids.
Munn attempted to stop the deluge, writing that she never meant “to diminish the joy, comfort and impact [Ms. Rachel] brings to so many families,” but it made no difference—neither did the fact that Ms. Rachel herself asked people to stop.
“Please be kind to Olivia & her precious family! I don’t believe in hate, attacks or hurtful comments,” she wrote on Instagram.
Then it went a step further. Ms. Rachel is a vocal supporter of the children of Gaza, a choice that she, ironically, has also faced her own barrage of criticism and threats about. Apparently, some people on the internet decided that what Munn was actually doing was making a thinly veiled critique of Ms. Rachel’s activism, and thus herself did not support the cause.
If this seems like a rather large and ridiculous leap, that’s because it is. But Munn soon became the target of a campaign of hate on social media, with people flooding her comments to call her a supporter of “child killing” and threatening her and her kids.
“Breast cancer shouldve killed you, demon [sic],” commented one person on a video Munn had posted about her battle against the disease.
The hate got so intense and frightening that Mulaney publicly pleaded with the public to stop. Writing on Instagram, he said that both Munn and their kids had been specifically sent death threats.
“The people doing this are so wildly out of line and so unhelpful to any conversation,” he continued. “You took a nothing comment to a dark and dangerous place. This kind of behavior isn’t activism.” The threats got so bad that People took the unusual step of removing the article entirely, saying that there was “no excuse” for the “abhorrent” attacks on Munn.
In case it’s not obvious, this whole ridiculous non-scandal has nothing to do with either Munn or Ms. Rachel. It’s part of a larger pattern of misogynistic vitriol toward women more broadly, which means any woman in the public eye is poised to become a target at any time.
It’s a pattern we’ve also seen before. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, internet bullying toward both influencers and celebrities also increased in intensity, with influencers telling me at the time that they were receiving violent threats at an alarming rate and sometimes for no reason at all. The most likely explanation is that as the world in general becomes more stressful and uncertain, people seek an outlet for their rage and anxiety. It’s easier to write hateful comments to a celebrity on Instagram than it is to sit uncomfortably with what’s going on in the world right now.
Couple that with an alarming increase in misogyny in both politics and the culture at large, and women in the public eye are at constant risk of accidentally provoking these types of hate campaigns. And yes, it is almost always women. When was the last time you heard of a male celebrity facing this, even when they actually do something worth criticizing?
It’s a disparity that Ms. Rachel herself pointed out, saying that the whole thing was fabricated in the first place because of another misogynistic trope.
“I know some outlets would love to cover a feud between two women, but guess what, that doesn’t exist,” she wrote on Instagram. “Her and I have been in touch and we are both choosing kindness.”
If only the internet would.
The post Why the ‘Feud’ Between Olivia Munn and Ms. Rachel Is Even More Ridiculous Than It Seems appeared first on Glamour.
