“It’s No Longer Water Cooler Chats”

@carrieunderwood

Carrie Underwood isn’t the biggest fan of the negative, internet discourse.

The world wide web was invented to connect all of us together. It didn’t take long for the invention to become villainous, and most point fingers to the advent of social media. I’m sure we’ve all had experiences or run-ins with hateful comments online. Even the beloved Carrie Underwood has had her fair share of negative online interactions, and from her perspective, they’ve only gotten worse and worse as time has gone on.

In an interview with Cody Alan on Sirius XM’s The Highway, the “Jesus Take The Wheel” singer touched on the hellscape that social media has become for artists and American Idol contestants. She recalls that even when she was on the singing competition series back in 2005 (when she was crowned the winner of the show’s fourth season), there were message boards that are comparable to the feedback that American Idol contestants get through social media in the modern day:

“I mean, it’s evolved over time. My time on ‘American Idol,’ you know, we kind of had like message boards and things like that, and it was kind of the beginning of just meanness online, I guess. And I feel like they have to deal with so much more of that now.

And we just kind of are in a world right now where we forget that we’re watching human beings do things, you know, and it’s so easy to talk about that. But it’s now, it’s so easy for them to see that. It’s no longer like water cooler chats I never would have known about what people were talking about in school or whatever, and now you can just say it online. So, that’s a thing that everybody’s got to have to navigate.”

Yeah… many people argue that social media – and having the ability to say whatever you are thinking in real time and it going out to the entire world – is something that we humans were never meant to experience. There’s a good case for that being true.

And as Underwood went on to say in the interview, navigating the rough waters of social media can be exhausting. Mole hills are made into mountains on a daily basis on platforms like X, and one example of that hitting close to home for Carrie Underwood was the internet’s assumption that her and Nikki Glaser, the female comedian who guest judged on American Idol last month, did not like each other.

It wasn’t surprising for Carrie Underwood when she saw that fan speculation taking off online:

“I’m very used to that. Because I feel like if you have two ladies in the same room together, somebody’s going to try to make something of it. And she was wonderful. And I think she did such a great job because it’s not an easy thing to come sit behind that desk and try to think of constructive things to say. And I don’t know, I feel like she did everything wonderfully. But no, there’s no beef. I have no beef.”

The only beef Carrie Underwood has is probably with social media in general.

Of course, since her performance at Donald Trump’s Presidential Inauguration in early 2025, she’s been branded as “MAGA” by a ton of people on social media. Even her looks and makeup recently made headlines for being akin to the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face.” Twitter trolls gave the post below a whopping 28,000 likes… but as they say, empty cans make the most noise.