Celebrities: They’re just like us. They get stuck in traffic! They wait in line at the DMV! They Instagram stalk their exes and get put on blast in front of the entire world! Olivia Rodrigo is the latest victim of IG stalking-related relationship fails. In her Dec. 7 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Rodrigo confessed that she accidentally followed one of her exes on Instagram after stalking his profile. Oops! She didn’t name the ex in question, but TikTok has receipts that suggest it’s none other than SOUR’s muse, Joshua Bassett.
Rodrigo recounted the horror story with the resigned composure of someone who’s thought about their epic failure way too many times and finally accepted it. “I had this very embarrassing encounter once where I was stalking my ex, as one does,” she began (and she’s so real for that). “I accidentally followed him because I was stalking him. I was just following one person, so it was super obvious that I was following him.”
Rodrigo’s friend ran into her room and told her to unfollow him, but “the second that I opened [Instagram], my phone died. I couldn’t find the charger, so I was just following my ex for a while.” Yikes! Livies were convinced Rodrigo had been hacked (they even reported her account!), and she totally leaned into that narrative at the time. “Yeah you guys, be safe! Get your two-factor authentication!” she joked.
Her follower count went back down shortly after the incident, but even though Rodrigo’s phone was dead, proof of who she followed is still alive on the internet. A July 2022 video posted by TikTok user @youbrokemefirst91 shows that Rodrigo’s following count, which is usually set to 0, had increased to 1. And who was the lucky Instagram user? Her ex and former Disney co-star, Joshua Bassett.Â
The pair reportedly started dating around 2019 or 2020, and Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR is widely rumored to be about their relationship. It seems like the whole world was talking about Bassett when “drivers license” came out in 2021. Rodrigo following him on IG one year later definitely turned some heads! Her Campus reached out to Rodrigo’s team for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Having the whole world know you were stalking your ex is a humbling experience, but Rodrigo’s figured out how to keep the embarrassing incident to a one-time-only status. “I have a finsta now, so I’m safe,” she revealed to Fallon. Finsta stalking might be the most quintessentially Gen Z lurking technique of all time. Rodrigo’s one of us!