Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan may be making nicey-nice in their last week as morning TV co-hosts.
But for their respective fans on Twitter, it’s a whole other story:
Snarky-snark.
“Counting the days until Friday the 13th,” @instabucher tweeted last week. Considering the string of hashtags that accompanied it — #TeamRipa, #TeamKelly and #LiveWithKelly — there was little doubt the barb was aimed at Strahan, whose last day on “Live with Kelly & Michael” is Friday.
On the other hand …
“Nobody likes ugly or angry,” @brinaburd had tweeted the obvious dig at Ripa, along with the hashtag #teamstrahan, a few days earlier.
Strahan’s surprise announcement last month that he was bolting “Live” for a fulltime gig on “Good Morning America” — immediately followed by Ripa’s surprise absence of several days from the show she’s hosted for 15 years — has had experts weighing in on everything from on-air “chemistry” and workplace politics to who is or isn’t being a “diva.”
On Twitter, though, the battle lines are more clearly drawn.
You’re either #TeamRipa or #TeamStrahan. And you mean business .
“Tell @michaelstrahan to leave @KellyandMichael now,” @Melissa0817 appeared to get the whole #TeamRipa ball rolling on April 20th, the first day Ripa didn’t show up to do “Live.”
That same day, @joalmoore threw out the first equally strong #TeamStrahan take, tweeting,”This is not a friendship! This is business! Kelly is behaving like a middle school chic who got her heart broken.”
Since then the back-and-forth has been about as impassioned as you’d expect for fans of a former soap opera actress (Ripa) and an ex-NFL star (Strahan).
But not even, not by a long shot. Strahan may have won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants, but by late Monday, #TeamStrahan (28 tweets) was being completely overrun by #TeamRipa (222 and still climbing).
But there’s still four days to go.
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