Jack Monroe #52 Am I awful and nobody has ever told me?

[Begborrowsteal]

 

[Pocahontas]

Congratulations to @acca00 for your second thread title. Winner with most reactions.

Recap of #51
This thread saw Jack Monroe get back in touch with her Greek roots, and she produced a delightfully edible looking feast that looked, literally, too good to be true.

She also produced a Trainspotting-style list of what she deemed were divisions of rich and poor in terms of classy and trashy.

She then posted an two-page short memoir about her grief for the kitten (and possibly for the relationship that is no longer). She deleted it.

She went for a walk with her friend and didn’t fall in the lake.

Lastly, the cabal were made aware through cleverly coded messages that an account named ‘Chaz[and numbers]’ appeared to be following accounts that are possibly associated with members of the cabal. Interestingly, ‘Chaz’ has now deleted their twitter account.

The plot thickens ...

 

[colouredlines]

A friend of mine lost her granddad a couple of months ago. The funeral was on Zoom, and apparently involved a lot of older couples watching together, accidentally turning on their microphones and making comments like "Oh hasn't Maureen put on weight?" or "God, Ronan's not got much hair left."

It cheered her up a bit, to be honest...

 

[Anonymous One]

It's absolutely astonishing. More telling the more I think about it.

1. Why on earth do you care this much about what a (relative) handful of people think about you in a (relatively) small corner of the internet that you're creating anon accounts attempting to track them down?

2. How much control over the narrative do you feel you need/deserve to do this. Whether it's to try and shut down perceived overlap on Twitter, or actual nefarious triangulation, it's a deeply twisted thought process.

3. Is there nothing better you could have done with that time? Was this before, during, after you were nursing then mourning that poor kitten.

4. Just OMG.

I suspect the reason Jack so desperately wants/needs to control the narrative is that she lost control of the narrative a long time ago. She’s told so many different stories (her own fault because she can’t control herself) & I have absolutely no doubt that she’s well aware that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Which is fine as long as nobody scrutinises it. She stops people publicly scrutinising her narrative by blocking critics, guilt-tripping people into being scared of criticising her, claiming libel (the KH success means people believe she’ll be successful) and generally making it so chaotic that your head hurts even thinking what the actual timeline/narrative is. I think she hates the fact that she can’t control/stop this forum.

She hates the fact that the vast majority of the people on this thread are intelligent, articulate people who have the measure of her. Many are in her target market & many previously liked her. Many have suffered with some of the many disorders she has claimed to have. Previously she could just delete all her social media posts & forget them but now they’re immortal.

I think it would be easier for her if this forum was abusive to/about her (I wouldn’t be on it if it was). As it is, she effectively has dozens of eloquent people analysing & critiquing her actions with genuine concerns for the welfare of her, her fans, the people triggered by her actions and those around her. Those aren’t the actions of ‘nasty trolls’ & she knows it.

She could, of course, just think twice about what she posts & we’d inevitably get bored and stop keeping the receipts & discussing her but that would take effort on her part. She seems to want to manage us in the same way she manages everything else: in a combative way. It’s not really working because there’s no genuine libel on here & nobody’s going to take her seriously if she has a tantrum about the anonymous people calling her food slop™️.

 

[LavaFlake]

She's acting as though she spent an idyllic childhood in Cyprus before she was dramatically exiled to Southend. Double mention of lemons fresh from the tree too, interesting for someone so invested in not actually ever cooking with them.

"A tree that's been uprooted"... you're bloody third gen from a white European country and you and your Dad grew up in Southend! She's do desperate to pigeon hole any sort of identity isn't she?! This is absolutely doing my head in! I'm third gen southern European, and while I am proud of my family heritage, go to community meet ups still, and love the recipes my Nonna and Nonno shared with me etc, it absolutely doesn't define me as a person and I certainly wouldn't call the country 'Motherland'. It's actually completely laughable.

 

[colouredlines]

The Greek thing is ridiculous. My parents come from two different continents, and I was born and raised on a third. My dad was the son of immigrants himself, which throws another country into the mix.

I lived in a few places growing up, and now I am settled somewhere completely different. It means that my background is quite complex to explain (and actually extremely triangulatable, because I have a lot of rather strange countries in there!). I don't have much of a concept of "home"; anywhere I go, I'll be foreign - although I feel very welcome and happy where I live now.

Ultimately, though, I'm the product of my own experiences. My granddad left his home country to work on the railroad - I don't feel a rush of genetic nostalgia when I get on a train.

Jack has lived all her life in the same town, apart from when she was in London with Allegra. She speaks with an accent that is undeniably English. Even her wistful talk about her Greek name...Melissa is a lot less obvious than, say, Ianthe. Oh well. I suppose her Greek phase is less offensive than when she was torturing cats.

 

[NorthernSoul]

Then the icing on the cake

This is just , I can’t believe she still has this up there!! ‘Keep me ticking over’ “struggling to keep my head above water’ WTF with all her expensive items (Dyson, Cotswold furniture to name ONLY two)in the house and last minute weekend away to Edinburgh
Plus the most recent update on the site is from April 2018 She sure seems to take her Patreon followers for granted. She has over 190 current members

 

[MellowD]

New thread title...The Patreon Saint of Perpetual Victimhood

 

[crystaleyesd]

Vlad is distinctly unimpressed with Jack's casual usage of the term 'Motherland'

 

[MooBelle]

Spoiler: ED talk

Why does her language around food set off red flags for me? I don't have much experience of EDs in the sense of denying oneself food, more the opposite - have worked with a few people that ate to excess, sneaking foods, eating inappropriate foods etc. But the greedy/scoffing/snaffling/wolfing down/food coma type of terminology sometimes feels to me like someone protesting too much? Or am I reading too much into that?

No, I make you right, she is triggering and I think deliberately so (just an opinion m'lud)
SPOILER ED (the 3 dots aren't working for some reason!)
I had issues with food up until my 30s (when I started therapy) My mother is a narcissist and just pure evil. My NM hates overweight people. I mean HATES them. When I was a kid she would put me on diets and basically starve me. I'm tall and broad shouldered (old fashioned term would be 'big boned) She used to go off on manic rages and her face would contort with venom and she'd scream in my face for what seemed like hours, spitting with rage. Like all NMs, a child is just an extension of themselves and because she considered me fat, she would blame me for making her look bad.
Of course i wasn't fat, if anything i was malnourished. Probably also why i didn't get my periods until I was older. My meals were also smaller than my brother's and she used to love making fun of me at the dinner table.
As a result i used to steal and hoard food. I actually used to stuff myself until i was sick.
When people (in this case JM) make light of things like this it is extremely upsetting and my ptsd is triggered.
I am getting better and learning to deal with my ptsd and i no longer have food issues. I genuinely love cooking and feeding people. I'm not a great cook, but what i cook is 100% done with love. As many have said before, JM does not like food. Or cooking. Or feeding people. It is actually uncomfortable to read one of her 'recipes'. That's why i think yesterday's greek offerings were HILARIOUS. It looked nice! It looked like some effort had been made!! You don't have to be sn expert to see its been bought from a shop. No handmade falafels/dolmades are that uniform in shape ffs!!

Sorry for the essay Fraus. My normal snippy posts will return momentarily...

 

[Breakdance Badass]

@Harrybosch you’ve got mail....

 

[Marmalade Atkins]

*sets stopwatch*

 

[Stardazzle]

Proof she’s a bloody con artist. I have a Patreon account for something else and so went on to look up Jack. Here are a couple of examples of what you get from her....

 

[MancBee]

What irks me most about her is that she uses all her problems, past and present, not to highlight these issues, but for personal gain. She isn't interested how these things affect others, only how they affect her. Whenever she talks about poverty, it is all about her poverty. When she talks about MH, it is the way she suffer with her MH. Whenever she talks about the benefits system, she talks about the way it affected her. She has to be front and centre.

Even when she produced the Good food for bad days book, it is filled with anecdotes about her. I understand it is her career and she has to make a living from it, but why all the personal stuff that can easily be challenged as to its truth? Why not just say "here is a recipe for a mug cake that is easy to make when everything seems too much"? It is a self indulgent pity party that she expects people to pay to read. She is front and centre in everything she does. She only does something if it is beneficial for her in some way, financially, to feed her ego, get sympathy, or to raise her profile.

 

[HarderFaster]

Thread suggestion:

Jack Monroe #53 - I grift the mortgaged, I often grift the renters too; It gives them a sense of enormous well-being (Jacklife)

 

[HarderFaster]

The title may seem harsh to some but she literally wrote it herself? They're her words.

I get that nobody wants to read their darkest thoughts about themselves but also... don't put these things out on a public profile with a quarter of a million followers?

Sorry if I seem horrible, I just think she's an absolute drain.

On a lighter note, those trainers with those dad jeans really remind me of Homer Simpson in his Assassins...

 

[Flumps]

R Jackie implies that Louisa left abruptly and without warning. That is probably because she is so self absorbed that she was unable to read the signs that Louisa was unhappy.

This is so bang on the nose that it made me do a little squeak. When I left my husband, everyone (except my mum, but let's not approach that horrible feeling I get when I think about that) said something to me that was basically a version of 'WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?' No one had any doubt why I'd left, without even knowing what went on behind closed doors, just how he behaved with me in public. He, on the other hand, was absolutely shocked and devastated. He couldn't understand it. He thought everything was great. He spent actual years thinking I would come back. I couldn't understand it at all at the time, how could he not see what an absolute shit show everything was? But of course, he wasn't thinking about me at all, just him, and he was quite happy with the way things were. The way he talked about our relationship was so strange to me, because it was nothing like the life I was leading. I hope Louisa has friends around her who are keeping her grounded.

Just in case Louisa is reading her account.
You’re 32 Jack, grow up.

I'm a bitch, or at least in a bitchy mood this morning, because the idea of anyone over 16 putting song lyrics on a dramatically sad background and then actually posting it to the world, is making me snigger. What do you look like?

 

[NorthernSoul]

So I just clicked on the Patreon link that she listed on her ‘off Twitter but you can still contact me’ Post.
I can’t believe what I’ve just read!

Erm how many postcards would one person need!? What are they doing with them all?? $14 (£11!)dollars a month

A pack of 6 postcards EVERY month for £18.76, mother of God, you’d be drowning in them if you’d joined a few years ago, although that general feeling of wellbeing would be such a boost for a person

Then for £34.40 a month signed framed photo only one and then all the previous rewards erm a stack of postcards!? Recipes (aren’t those given away fro free? And the sense of well-being, phew at least they have that warm glow every month

For £65.67 a month you can be a whispering sous chef! A personal thanks if your idea is used erm what about actual recognition !!!
I can’t quite believe the gall!!

 

[spirals]

My eyes just rolled completely out of my head.
a) Why do you have nine email boxes? Maybe spend an hour consolidating?
b) what the f are you doing for 20 hours a day/90 hours a week if you're not checking your emails????
Argh.

 

[bananasplit88]

Someone should tell her “this isn’t an airport babes, you don’t need to announce your departure”