Luke Pell's Very Bad Day

Photo credit: ABC

As we've discussed before here at Writing The World, the main reason for going on The Bachelor or any of its sister shows is to get famous. Some participants hope to do well enough on their first appearance that they're chosen to star in the next season. Some are hoping to go on to more media fame, as Ali, Jillian, Melissa Rycroft and others have done. Some just want to attract enough followers to make money shilling ridiculous products (Sugar Bear Hair???) on Instagram.

For Luke Pell, who made it to the Hometown dates episode on JoJo's season and was in the running to be the next Bachelor, it almost worked. He thought he had the Bach gig, having signed a contract, packed his bags and even checked in for his flight to Los Angeles to being filming, only to be bumped at the last minute for Nick. He did get famous, however, at least in the ecosystem known as Bachelor Nation, with 523,000 Instagram followers and the beginning of a career as a Country singer.

Then, starting Wednesday, it all came crashing down, and Luke is now experiencing the downside of fame. It has to do with women he either did or did not date, starting last summer when he thought he would be the Bachelor and continuing into this year. Reality Steve, who has never been a Luke fan, gleefully lays out the details in a blog post from Wednesday (read it here) and a podcast posted yesterday (listen here.) If you go to Google News and type in Luke's name, this is (some of) what you'll see:

At Cosmopolitan: Former "Bachelorette" Good Guy Luke Pell Reportedly Planned Out...
At Screener: A Bachelor Nation in mourning, as fan-favorite Luke Pell turn out to...
At Bustle: "Bachelorette" Star Luke Pell Rejects Cheating & Ghosting Claims...
At The Stir: Luke Pell Would've Been a Seriously Shady "Bachelor" -- Here's Why
At Blasting News: Reality Steve calls out "Bachelorette" alum Luke Pell
At OK Magazine:  "Bachelor" Reject Luke Pell Is Secretly A Major Player & It's Seriously...

Confession: I'm feeling some sympathy for Luke this morning. It looks like he did treat these women badly and that's indefensible, but he's clearly in over his head now as he tries to clean up the mess. He initially responded to Reality Steve with a snarky tweet that appeared to play the Veteran card, but the backlash, from Bach fan Possessionista and others, was sharply negative and he eventually deleted the tweet.



He also did a segment for Entertainment Tonight, with guest host and former Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky, which didn't go as well as it could have:



Granted Luke isn't on the level of a presidential candidate caught in a sex scandal, or even a big movie star going through a nasty divorce, but he is trying to build a career in the public eye as a singer and even a mini-scandal like this can hurt. In particular, men behaving badly towards women is a hot button issue right now, not one a male singer wants to be on the wrong side of. Seriously Luke, get a good PR/Crisis Management guru to help you navigate this. And one more thing: Give up the dream of being the Bachelor. Don't go on Paradise, don't hang out with (or date) other alums, don't get into Twitter spats with Reality Steve. It's over. Let it go. Move on.