Why We're All So Invested In Toxic Mom Group Drama
When Ashley Tisdale wrote about her experience with leaving a “toxic mom group” in The Cut, she started a storm.
Comment sections (both hers and those of other celebrities allegedly involved) were filled with questions about the so-called drama, pop culture influencers made TikTok videos breaking down the details, and sites from Parents to Business Insider published essays in which other moms detailed similar experiences.
It started with a November 2025 blog post on Tisdale’s blog titled “You’re Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group,” in which she opened up about experiencing “mean-girl behavior” in a group of moms. That was enough to pique the interest of some of her followers, and The Cut, which then led to the match that started the fire: a January 1 essay titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group.”
Soon, social media was flooded with speculation about who was involved and why.
Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor were instantly identified as potential members of the group. Tisdale’s rep denied this, only for Duff’s husband, Matthew Koma, to as good as confirm it with a savage response that appeared to label Tisdale “the most self-obsessed, tone deaf person on earth.” The tide then partially turned on Tisdale when some accused her of being a Trump supporter, a claim her rep also denied. Koma, meanwhile, stayed out of that one.
Not all celebrity scandals are created equally. Some come and go without generating any major reaction, some create ripple effects that last for years, but some—like Tisdale’s one—seem to just strike a cord that feels so familiar that we can’t quite pull ourselves away, no matter how seemingly petty the drama may be.
“This wasn’t just a random mom group,” says Amanda Christine, a pop culture and celebrity gossip influencer whose videos on the mom group drama amassed hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok. “It was one made up of celebrities that my largely millennial following grew up with.”
“Every day brought a new update, which kept my audience coming back for more,” she adds. “Some followers even left comments saying it felt like they were watching The Real Housewives of Disney Channel.”
Celebrity gossip, however much it is looked down upon, has always served a social function, as does gossiping in general. “You cannot live in a social world as a social being without knowing about people, and gossiping,” says Megan Robbins, an associate professor of psychology at The University of California, Riverside
Robbins hypothesizes that gossip, whether it’s about celebrities or not, is all about social learning. “Knowing about celebrities doesn’t necessarily teach you things that you need to know for your own social life, but through gossip about celebrities, you can still communicate what your values are,” she says. “You can learn what other people value by how they judge certain behavior. You can learn about norms even though that celebrity’s life is not connected to yours directly.”
Whether it happened in high school or in your mom group, going through a friendship breakup is something most of us have experienced. Gossiping about one, even if it’s not your own, may be somewhat cathartic or a means of ensuring the person you’re gossiping with views things the same way you do.
“Sometimes it feels like celebrities live in a different world of glitz and glamour, but whenever there’s a story that ‘humanizes’ them and reminds audiences that they’re people just like us, it tends to capture far more attention,” says Amanda Christine.
Perhaps our obsession with Tisdale’s toxic friend group drama was a means of navigating our own.