HowSoonIsFrau
New member
Intermittent lurker extraordinaire finally joining you marvellous lot for lols and detectivery 
after my head exploded this weekend watching the Spite Chaos (POOR KARL! POOR DR RACHE! POOR SAM!) and I came for a gin and a demi-grunk...
TLDR: ooooh what is she like?! I thought the pickled radish was skin. Keep up the good work, fraus
It’s a shame because sometimes she can pull it out the bag and make useful points – like on Politics Live in March, where she sounded prepared, awake and focused on the right issues. I’m not sure she really has her own unique thinking/deep takes on stuff but she’s clearly capable of digesting info from other people and articulating it in a meaningful way, it’s just that doesn’t seem to be the priority very often. In fact one of the things that first got my snidey senses tingling was noticing her tendency to suddenly burst into tweet with some ‘raging’ hot take cobbled together from people better informed than her and lap up the JTribe praise for her bravery as though she’s a tardy solo warrior tackling inequality with nought but a broken shoe and an arthritic shopping trolley to lean on. Half the problem is a lot of her followers are just regular folk who aren’t that clued up about politics so she seems like a true radical when she’s basically a brand. Either way it’d be better if she could stop stuffing her made-up selves into every talk piece like a distracting rinsed hoop in a dolma.
Jack’s biggest problem is that she’s created Jack MonroeTM on the back of social/cultural capital that she pretends she’s never had and won’t recognise is propping her up now. If you read early interviews (eg in Psychologies) alongside those with her dad you get a shared picture. I reckon those are the closest to the ‘real’ backstory: not posh but not poor; very normal move up the ladder with inherited wealth. Both of them talk about the family sharing what they had. Food was there to share. Now she’s saying they were destitute splitting like one baked bean between 6 and her dad had to hitchike 30 miles to work. It’s intriguing that Jack went from 27K p/a (worth £36,500 today) to poverty blogging so quickly – that’s a decent salary: was there not a dime in the house the second the salary stopped? Her family were OK financially by then and most people wouldn’t disconnect from that social capital without very good reason (but she says they are great) or something going very wrong…
Most people’s identity has elements of stability and change but Jack can’t decide what she was never mind what she is or wants to be. Now she’s subtly wafting povvo tropes about and seemingly oblivious to the fact of her enormous social capital via celebrity friends, middle-class connections, huge platform of apparently solvent supporters, stable and supportive close family... Anyone with an ounce of nous about the mechanics of class and social inequities would just shut the fck up about this (NOT) terrible plight and tap into the bounty of security around them then crack on with advocating properly for those without such privileges and lending their whopping platform to genuine working-class voices.
She’s getting away with it because most people don’t give enough of a shit to notice blurred lines that don’t directly affect them and (as very many of you wise fraus have pointed out) her audience are largely well-meaning non-disruptors who just want to feel like they’re helping. People really don’t like being conned but even more than that people don’t like to admit they’ve been conned – so there’s mahoosive cognitive dissonance going on among those Jack stans. But the austerity legacy and extending economic crisis mean she’s fast becoming a recognisable problem: she’s getting in the way of what really needs to be heard. I actually feel for her a bit because the twats who helped build up her brand are not helping her reign it in so her endless attention-seeking, self-aggrandising and over-egging of the eggy bread mean it’ll be her alone who faces the backlash. <cue music from Countdown>
after my head exploded this weekend watching the Spite Chaos (POOR KARL! POOR DR RACHE! POOR SAM!) and I came for a gin and a demi-grunk...TLDR: ooooh what is she like?! I thought the pickled radish was skin. Keep up the good work, fraus
It’s a shame because sometimes she can pull it out the bag and make useful points – like on Politics Live in March, where she sounded prepared, awake and focused on the right issues. I’m not sure she really has her own unique thinking/deep takes on stuff but she’s clearly capable of digesting info from other people and articulating it in a meaningful way, it’s just that doesn’t seem to be the priority very often. In fact one of the things that first got my snidey senses tingling was noticing her tendency to suddenly burst into tweet with some ‘raging’ hot take cobbled together from people better informed than her and lap up the JTribe praise for her bravery as though she’s a tardy solo warrior tackling inequality with nought but a broken shoe and an arthritic shopping trolley to lean on. Half the problem is a lot of her followers are just regular folk who aren’t that clued up about politics so she seems like a true radical when she’s basically a brand. Either way it’d be better if she could stop stuffing her made-up selves into every talk piece like a distracting rinsed hoop in a dolma.
Jack’s biggest problem is that she’s created Jack MonroeTM on the back of social/cultural capital that she pretends she’s never had and won’t recognise is propping her up now. If you read early interviews (eg in Psychologies) alongside those with her dad you get a shared picture. I reckon those are the closest to the ‘real’ backstory: not posh but not poor; very normal move up the ladder with inherited wealth. Both of them talk about the family sharing what they had. Food was there to share. Now she’s saying they were destitute splitting like one baked bean between 6 and her dad had to hitchike 30 miles to work. It’s intriguing that Jack went from 27K p/a (worth £36,500 today) to poverty blogging so quickly – that’s a decent salary: was there not a dime in the house the second the salary stopped? Her family were OK financially by then and most people wouldn’t disconnect from that social capital without very good reason (but she says they are great) or something going very wrong…
Most people’s identity has elements of stability and change but Jack can’t decide what she was never mind what she is or wants to be. Now she’s subtly wafting povvo tropes about and seemingly oblivious to the fact of her enormous social capital via celebrity friends, middle-class connections, huge platform of apparently solvent supporters, stable and supportive close family... Anyone with an ounce of nous about the mechanics of class and social inequities would just shut the fck up about this (NOT) terrible plight and tap into the bounty of security around them then crack on with advocating properly for those without such privileges and lending their whopping platform to genuine working-class voices.
She’s getting away with it because most people don’t give enough of a shit to notice blurred lines that don’t directly affect them and (as very many of you wise fraus have pointed out) her audience are largely well-meaning non-disruptors who just want to feel like they’re helping. People really don’t like being conned but even more than that people don’t like to admit they’ve been conned – so there’s mahoosive cognitive dissonance going on among those Jack stans. But the austerity legacy and extending economic crisis mean she’s fast becoming a recognisable problem: she’s getting in the way of what really needs to be heard. I actually feel for her a bit because the twats who helped build up her brand are not helping her reign it in so her endless attention-seeking, self-aggrandising and over-egging of the eggy bread mean it’ll be her alone who faces the backlash. <cue music from Countdown>
