Kelly Clarkson, a Brooklyn Curiosity Shop & a $15,000 bird named “Molly” sounds like the beginning of an incomprehensible joke. Instead, it has become the internet's latest drama around customer service, celebrity privilege, and the (perhaps unintended) consequences of taking a grievance public. I mean, really, Clarkson's ongoing dispute with the Brooklyn boutique, Art of Play, has all the markings of any absurd viral moment of the past few years. It has everything — Twitter rants, internet dogpiling and a Pretty Woman reference. But the crazy price tag and the competing accounts of what really happened leave a less amusing inference: who has permission to be messy on the internet, and who has to live with the consequences?

The spat started with Clarkson tweeting about her trip into Brooklyn to visit Art of Play, a self-described “modern wonder emporium embracing the power of curiosity”. Amongst its collection of curiosities lived “Molly”, a mechanical singing bird with a (reported) $15,000 price tag.  Clarkson alleged that she had been made to feel as though she couldn't afford the piece, drawing a comparison to the iconic Julia Roberts shopping scene from Pretty Woman. Naturally, Art of Play disputed Clarkson's account & challenged the high-profile callout, dubbed by Art of Play as an “attack”, maintaining that Molly was a display piece rather than an item available to purchase, and that an alternative bird had been offered.