I don’t think it’s the tattle gods, but possibly the samsung gods?
A bunch of things. First - I love food and I love food writing; I’m the kind of person who will read recipe books in the bath. I love how food is political and cultural and personal - at one end of the spectrum you’ve got writers like Nigel Slater who bring all of those things together in one way and at the other: well, you’ve got JM, whose writing is just as telling but in a way she hasn’t intended. The Slopalong really has it all - the forensic examinations into why the duck has she done that to the recipe? What did she intend? There’s something so telling about what JM means for British class and food culture at this point in time.Question for those of you who have been here a long time: how does she not just depress the duck out of you to the point of despair? I’ve been active for about 6 or 7 threads and i’ve had it with her. It’s not good the soul; I feel I need to switch off from her. You are all way more resilient than me! I’m a weein the grand scheme of it all.
I can't believe she stole a recipe...
I forget sometimes just how bad she is. Like even in the midst of how dreadful she is being at the moment, I actually think this here is even wild. The hair and the posing, the fake whitened teeth, the earrings
Her mum is a crazy cat lady so hopefully he will have gone there to be loved and cherished, or he will have moved himself to a neighbours, he won't be short of offers
BIB I'm sure it was a stack of 10,000 cards and was not at all a single layer of pennies on top of a big cushion situation as you suggest.
Yes back in the day of the early threads here there was NO overt criticism of Jack on twitter. Certainly not of her grifting and lying. I remember times when the odd times literally one most oblique tweet was spotted eg something like 'anybody else fed up of a certain attention seeking cookery writer' and we'd all excitedly speculate about it - 'ooh do they mean Jack?'I found it more frustrating in the early days I think. She had zero criticism from anywhere, if anyone did try and say the slightest thing negative about her they just got piled on and hounded off twitter. It was just us, spotting all the lies and bad behaviour and everyone else just labelled us trolls/bullies/mavens etc (I'd forgotten about mavens
) and stuck their fingers in their ears. Now it's different, and yes it's still depressing at times, but when you look back, there's been huge progress. Plus when it gets frustrating that she's being given more undeserved opportunities and she's giving it Billy big balls toot toot - take heart, she'll run away with herself again and duck it all up! She does every time. And each time, more people see her for what she is, and that's where we are now.
BIB - OMG this. I also find influencer culture weirdly fascinating, from those who have been wildly successful with little to no discernible talent (EssieButton/EsteeLalonde), to those grubbing around at the bottom end (Katie Hayes).
I don't get to the point of proper despair very often because I believe that we all get our just desserts in the end - the scales of justice are weighted to good and all that. I also have quite a lot of faith in people's ability for reform, and I do genuinely think that Jack has the potential to do something meaningful with her life if she decided to just stop being a great shining turd and work on her incessant need to tell lies.Question for those of you who have been here a long time: how does she not just depress the duck out of you to the point of despair? I’ve been active for about 6 or 7 threads and i’ve had it with her. It’s not good the soul; I feel I need to switch off from her. You are all way more resilient than me! I’m a wee
"WE WERE ON A GRUNK!"
I would love it if you did a PhD on this. I can't supervise as it's not my areaThis is a good question and we’ll each have different answers to it.
for me, the reason I’m not depressed by it enough to disengage is kind of divided into two things.
First, Jack herself. I knew her a bit for a while, and I know plenty of people who have known her since. It doesn’t depress me that she’s never going to have what she really truly wants, which is popularity and respect. When I knew her she was (and I’m sorry because I know this is going to come across bitchy but I’m TIRED and don’t have the brainpower spare to parse it in a non-bitchy way) a social reject, desperate to be part of the popular crowd, desperate to be seen/accepted as a creative. Southend had and still has a thriving arts and music scene, which Jack was always trying to wedge herself into but failing because she wasn’t any good at what she wanted to do, and she wasn’t nice/likeable enough to be accepted into that scene despite having no real talent in the fields, like moi and certain other friends who were also lacking in that sort of talent or skill. What we lacked in creative ability we made up in humour or warmth or whatever. She didn’t get a pass for any of that because she didn’t have any of that. She’s never evolved past wanting to be popular, but nobody else cared about popularity in the first place never mind now. I’d probably feel sorry for her if she wasn’t grifting so much money out of people. But however much money she’s grifted and spunked, it won’t make her happy, and she hasn’t got it in her to actually do the hard work - reflect and grow and become a good (and happy) person. She’s just going to continue pretending about everything in her life, instead of living a real and genuine and worthwhile life. It’s sad. But also, she’s a bleep so it’s more “look at what a sad example this is” than ”oh I feel sad for her”.
Second, and I know I do go on about this aspect a bit but bear with me: the phenomenon of Jack Monroe, how she arose to this level of fame (and stuff like how she was ever considered credible enough to give “evidence” to Parliament ffs) is just absolutely bloody fascinating. The media didn’t create her but they grew her. Journalism and social studies and whatnot is so far out of my wheelhouse that it might as well be in the Antarctic, but regardless I’m thinking about pitching a PhD on the topic of Jack Monroe and the wholly distorted media lens on social class that magnified her to his extent
Of course I’d have a challenge to find a supervisor who wasn’t part of the problem in the first place, never mind funding. (Plus, I’m a bit of a gobshite who sounds kind of like Stacey Solomon, so I’m not really a natural fit for academia. Plus, actual single mum so can’t afford a PhD, but anyway a girl can dream. I won’t be at all upset if any lurkers or Frauen take my research idea forward for themselves!
)
but I bet someone else would. There is already has one article at least about her: https://scholar.google.co.uk/schola...=#d=gs_qabs&t=1673388680050&u=#p=yYbKg1vOZgsJ.Why not. There must be a really interesting psychology around influencers, grifters and how they work. They're not wired the same as the rest of us. Do it!!
Have we ever compiled a proper list of Jack's cringiest moments? This has to be up there at the top. Braiding her hair (she did it herself - I will die on this hill) into a thousand arm/finger crippling, tiny little braids because arthritis (make it make sense) meant she couldn't lift up her arms to wash her hair
. She kept them in all of a week I think. Ahhhh, jeez.That recipe can't be Jack's, it tells you to heat the oil before adding onion
The sport and associated culture I write about is full of bullshitters, with a few grifters and outright con crooks thrown in. The psychology of it is fascinating, especially how it works within a group dynamic. Often, everyone knows the score with a grifter and everyone talks about it when the grifter isn't there. It takes a lot for someone to stick their head over the parapet and say "enough is enough" though. Usually, this only happens when they annoy the wrong person.
It's interesting because you'd think they would use a picture of her most recent book in the article, not the one with the thumb haircut. Why couldn't they use a more recent photo of Jack too? Also, using a picture of SB when he was still an SB to keep up the pretence maybe, or just a very lazy little advertorial pulling pictures from the internet instead?
Probably, but I couldn’t eat a whole one
So no one told you food was meant to be this way..
duck me I'd forgotten how insufferably smug her raquel welch thirst shot was, so did neckbeards come from her originally or was she cleverly aping her trolls with an in joke tweet?
I don't think it's her recipe. I think it was just featured on the same page. Doesn't look or read like hers.
