My thoughts on WE NEED TO TALK
Josie is clearly a very black and white thinker. She has been held to account by comments on the lockdown and sustainability (i.e. social issues affecting everyone) and rather than addressing them in a calm and mature way, has decided to mobilise her Aga Army into defending her.
Some observations:
Firstly, she confuses accountability with negativity. She has little capacity to recognise that most of the recent comments - the ones I’ve certainly seen - have actually been made in the spirit of constructive criticism. It IS reckless to mix households during a global pandemic. It IS confusing to her audience that she promotes the constant consumption of plastic clothes yet publicly shames Amazon and Waitrose for using excess packaging. Ironically, constructive criticism is the very thing she endorses as an acceptable form of commenting on her channel (see point 4).
Secondly, she lazily jumps on the
‘haters gonna hate’ bandwagon to deflect her bad behaviour and shut down accountability. This is, of course, picked up by her Aga Army who have come out in force with basic drivel about negative commenters being ‘haters’ or ‘trolls’ who are always ‘sad’, ‘rude’ or ‘jealous’. Back to that black and white thinking I was talking about. In fact, I’m going to research the academic literature on how influencers deflect accountability by hiding behind the
“haters gonna hate” narrative. It’s a clever tactic and one I think is also adopted by Meghan Markle.
Thirdly, she thinks people who hold her to account on social issues of great importance have nastiness inside them. She seems to think that she makes us feel negative and that causes us to be negative towards her. Like she’s my negativity conduit or something….? No Josie, you have a platform designed to influence people. You have a responsibility to act in a sensible and law abiding way. You have been breaking lockdown rules. You are being disingenuous and dishonest and breaking the law. You deserve to be held to account. That is not nastiness.
Fourthly, she says she is happy to receive constructive criticism if she has said something stupid or done something stupid. She says she’ll acknowledge it and wont delete the comments. Well, we clearly have different views about what stupid is
because she has been utterly stupid by breaking lockdown rules.
Finally, on the topic of the pandemic and her breaking lockdown rules: living with a pandemic isn’t about making decisions that are the best for your family and loved ones, as she says. It’s about making sacrifices so we can help others who are less fortunate. It’s about having care for everyone, not just yourself. Her attitude reeks of privilege. I won’t go on.
on the ball. Being bullied by being called a hypocrite or acknowledging certain things not being right is right on the ball. Im sorry we shouldn’t ever have to voice our hurtful opinions. You don’t deserve that. I’m sorry you haven’t experienced waking up each day scared for your life because someone has decided on the daily to destroy you character, accuse you of false things, impersonate you so badly that you’ve gotten death threats and even at a point contemplating suicide. So glad your definition of bullying is so simple. I’m so happy you are happy.
