A “tasteless” woman has come under fire online after being accused of upstaging her best friend’s engagement by flaunting her biggest ring to her followers.
Earlier this month, social media star Joanna Zanella Schaub, 35, who lives in Los Angeles, posted an Instagram Story celebrating her friend’s engagement.
In the photo, the mother of three, who is engaged to former MMA fighter and podcast host Brendan Schaub, held out her hand next to her friend’s so her 70,0000 followers could see their engagement rings.
While Joanna opted for a square cushion-cut diamond ring framed by additional diamonds, her friend Natalie has a smaller princess-cut diamond set in a pave band.
Joanna captioned the photo: “Welcome to the BFF club.”
Joanna Zanella Schaub (left) pictured with her 17-year-old best friend, Natalie (right). The social media star shared this photo to celebrate Natalie’s birthday last year.
In the photo, the mother of three extended her hand next to her friend’s so that her 70,0000 followers could see their engagement rings.
Joanna’s post was later posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, where users accused her of “overshadowing” her friend.
X user Rosey told her 23,000 followers: “When your friend gets engaged, it’s important to make sure everyone knows you have a bigger ring.”
The post has racked up more than 54,000 likes and been viewed by more than 7.4 million users since it was shared last week.
Jumping to the bride-to-be’s defense, one outraged user wrote: ‘The largest ring appears to be set with diamonds, which is the diamond equivalent of a push-up bra. Against her friend’s classic 3 carat solitaire.
In agreement with this comment, Rosey responded: ‘Indeed. Tasteless move, tasteless ring.
“This would destroy some of the friend groups I’m in,” another added.
“The subtle flex is so wrong,” a third agreed. “True friends celebrate love, not ring size,” wrote a fourth.
A fifth added: “I feel like I’m being general when people say ‘welcome to the club’ regarding parenthood, marriage etc, they don’t want them to have their own moment.”
Joanna’s post was later posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, where users accused her of “overshadowing” her friend.
However, not everyone agreed that Joanna was trying to “upstage” her friend and argued that the post was perfectly innocent.
One follower wrote: “Is it just me or does the photo look like a harmless post from my best friend?”
Another asked: ‘Is that what she’s doing or is that what you’re seeing?’
Meanwhile, a third added: ‘I didn’t understand that at all? They just look like two friends celebrating their engagement. That’s a beautiful thing.’
“This is just a case of different tastes,” said a fourth. “The fancier versus the fancier, but they’re both excited to get engaged.”
In a previous post on her Instagram, Joanna paid tribute to her friend Natalie, who she has known for 17 years, on her birthday.
She gushed: ‘The adventures we’ve had, the memories, the milestones and life itself have been better with you by my side. May today be as special as you are and I hope you know that I love you with all my heart.’
Last month, Joanna’s fiancé, Brendan Schaub, posted a video he accidentally took of himself flipping his SUV.
Schaub was recording an episode for his show ‘Tune Town’ on YouTube when he rolled over his Dodge Ram TRX in the California desert.
After spending the afternoon filming footage of him sandblasting and rock climbing, he tried his hand at making some donuts.
But he ended up losing control of the vehicle and it overturned, causing some windows to break. Schaub was able to get out of the vehicle safely, but was heard cursing after his misfortune.