Newcomer here, I don’t post on Twitter, just read it. I’ve kind of been amazed to watch this unfolding. Sorry, long post coming…
context - I’m a left leaning (would previously have said very left wing) man who has worked in care homes and with vulnerable/disabled kids in poor areas, and have been living hand to mouth most of my life, but now am in a much more fortunate position - I reckon this maybe gives me a bit of perspective that a lot of those who follow Jack and are used to being well off don’t have?
anyway, I’ve never really been a “fan” as such - I think if someone asked me what I thought of her before yesterday, I’d have said “oh, she seems fairly decent, though I think she’s a rich person’s idea of a poor person, and I didn’t ever really relate to her when I could have done with cutting costs”. I might have added that her non-binary identity raised an eyebrow and gave me slight vibes of (before knowing she still claimed poverty “ah, now she’s not vulnerable due to poverty, she’s found a way to still be vulnerable“ - and I‘ve met plenty of those types in my life, where every anecdote they have is a hard luck story, and every falling out they’ve ever had was a great betrayal by someone else.
so, when I saw the Awfully Molly thread yesterday, after initially getting a “hmmmmmmm“ spider-sense tingle of bullshit from Jack’s blog, it was quite a rabbit hole.
(one thing that is working against that thread though - while starting with the origin story makes sense narratively, it meant the first few tweets were kind of disposable noise about class identity, the good stuff was after many floating voters might have noped out)
but the craziest thing is not the shit storm it turned into, but the reactions of her apparent friends and supporters. To me, it’s irrelevant whether Awfully Molly is Katie Hopkins, Jacob Rees Mogg, an automated bot, a “TERF” or whatever. It’s just that it’s glaring that whoever pointed it all out, her friends shouldn’t be validating her behaviour and celebrating her ensuing meltdown, but recognising what is actually happening. Again - I had no dog in this fight and I’ve been catching up on these threads and been fascinated. But my interpretation - knowing a lot about ADHD, task avoidance related to it, combined with financial insecurity - is that Jack has basically got herself into an almighty mess. I imagine those who have been here long term would say different, but it’s likely to me that at least some of her intentions, at least some of the time, were good, but that the easy option - especially once there’s a passive income, celeb mates, and self categorisation into several brackets that are untouchable among progressives - week to week, day by day, was to bullshit and believe herself that she’d sort it later. Then escalation happens, she loses track of lies, spends money for the buzz of it and that’s when the shit hits the fan, and she revisits the “I’m in poverty” identity. So why the hell are those who should be phoning/dm’ing/visiting her to stage an intervention upon realising that whatever the motives of the person revealing it, there’s clearly something not right, instead just doing the most superficial “be kind” stuff and not even acknowledging that they’re looking the other way? Rihanna Pratchett for example, literally saying “yep, seen the thread” as if that’s that then, no need to say “and I was unconvinced by the screenshots because…” - just blatant reality denial. Like until there’s a front page headline in a Sunday tabloid, the narrative can be controlled.
the reason I don’t post on Twitter is because I can argue til the cows come home and would get waaaay too drawn in, and this makes me glad I dont. I could understand defenders saying tenuous stuff like “ah, but the reason the gin thing isn’t contradictory is because when she’s writing her recipes she uses a bit of licence, you can’t use that as demonstrating meaningful lies” - but they’re just flat out acting as if Jack’s “I don’t need to dignify this” really is a response. It’s like behind the scenes a few well placed blue ticks/high profile accounts have agreed “what we;re going to do is go with the ’dont give it oxygen’ line, so please nobody actually get into actually defending her against specifics, because it’ll look crazy. Don’t defend it at all, and then there’s always the chance that there’s a great defence in Jack’s head that she just doesn’t have the spoons to post”
anyway, apologies for long post, but on my catching up I’ve seen a lot of people wondering what impact yesterday is having on newcomers: suffice to say, if Jack’s blog yesterday hadnt been so hamfistedly transparent then out of “I remember poverty” empathy, I may well have actually pinged her a fiver. Instead I’ve ended up with the suspicion that added to my morning routine will be daily checking progress on whether the grift really gets noticed, and she’s held to account,