Jack Monroe again

[scabbers44]

Has anyone seen the recent tweet about her pawning/selling three diamond engagement rings? Aibu to think if you are pleading poverty and asking the general public to donate money one week and then showing off pictures of three massive diamonds you own the next, it's never going to go down well? Especially when you are already being challenged on lying and grifting?

For a long time I thought JM was nothing but a force of a good but I can't understand how she can be so tone deaf. It can't be deliberate but equally how can she not realise how it looks to produce three huge rings just a week after claiming she's so skint she needs handouts.

Apologies if there's already a thread on this.

I assume these are engagement rings from a grandma or relative who has passed on? That’s very different to pawning rings from a failed relationship. Why would you want to keep multiple engagement rings from broken relationships?

Well, using up soap instead of wasting it is common sense. What doesn’t make sense is claiming you can’t afford shower gel or shampoo so you have to make it from soap, when the soap itself is right there and usable as soap! Plus shower gel and shampoo are very cheap to buy unless you’re on the absolute bones of your arse, in which case the food bank would be the place to go.

I disagree with the assumption that she necessarily gets a good income from being an influencer. It's not as if you can buy a Bootstrap Cook carrier bag to go to the food bank and most of her recipes are online so her income mainly comes from donations from people who can afford it.

@nettie434 800+ Patreon followers at a minimum £3/month…sounds decent enough income to me just as a baseline.

Well someone just quoted the prices for the membership thing she has, which means a good income even if everyone signed up at the cheapest price.

graphtreon.com/creator/jackmonroe
This suggests a regular monthly income from patreon alone of between $2,000 and $11,000.
With other income sources added in it doesn't look like removing the lightbulbs was a necessity. Jack has however been open that she struggles with health conditions and these can make life more expensive and more difficult.
I think shining a light on poverty is a good thing to do. Nobody is perfect and the world is not black and white.

She said cheap rice was gone from her local Asda (even though other people were telling her it was in theirs) and a week later she declared Asda had restocked their basic ranges everywhere.
Because that’s now supermarket stock takes to sort out, a week.

Vimes Index doesn’t exist - emperors new clothes. Everyone talking about something that isn’t there.

Also, she blocks anyone who she doesn't follow or mention from replying to her tweets - which is always a very sure sign of not wanting your faithful followers to see any negative critique of your antics that might ruin your chances of them sending you money. I'm sure Jack would say it's because she doesn't want the grief on her tweets, but she clearly goes looking for the grief herself given that she actually tweets about what's being said about her and sits back and waits for her followers to say how terrible people are for being anything less than 100% complimentary about her. 'Celebrities', eh?

Much as it pains me to defend Jack Monroe, I would imagine there are fees associated with receiving money through Patreon just as there are in using sites like Paypal or JustGiving to send money.

So she will not be receiving 100% of everything people send. But still. It's not an insubstantial sum of money.

She was on PM a few weeks ago and I thought it odd that they chose her to talk about the cost of living given the many inconsistencies in her lifestyle.

She is slightly socially inept and she really wears her heart on her sleeve when it comes to airing her laundry on Instagram. I think she may well be on the spectrum and doesn't really have guidance herself.

@nettie434 Then she needs a better agent!

I disagree with the assumption that she necessarily gets a good income from being an influencer. It's not as if you can buy a Bootstrap Cook carrier bag to go to the food bank and most of her recipes are online so her income mainly comes from donations from people who can afford it.

She definitely had an online shop at one point.

I think if Jack spent even half as much time giving people details of organisations and qualified professionals who can help people, than they do talking about themselves and making ill-informed statements (the duff energy advice being most recent), there wouldn’t be so much criticism.

but as it stands the engagement ring photo and subsequent snarking at anyone questioning it is just the latest in a long line of Jack benefitting Jack first and foremost.

There's a difference between living in poverty...and just spending all your money!

I knew a guy who claimed to be hard up. Driving an Audi, skiing every year and a kid in a n independent school....

Sure he had very little money left at the end of the month I'm sure, but he's not poor!

I feel sorry for Jack a bit.

Her tweets are inconsistent and she doesn't possess the resilience and mental state to handle social media well. It comes across a wee bit sad at times and I don't think she's trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, I just think she's not made for the platform and celebrity status. She clearly struggles with even marginal success and every other day there's an aggressive tweet responding to trolls who she says every other day mean nothing to her.

Personally why doesn't she just get a job like the thousands of other single mums who quietly get on with it....

@perimenofertility the rings were not inherited, they were from failed relationships and the tone of the tweet was that getting rid of them was a 'moving on' strategy. If she was truly as poor as she makes out surely they would have been sold or pawned yonks ago not when she felt ready to let go. People in actual poverty often have to sell things they love in order to eat. This is not that.

And the fact she posted a photo of three massive rocks is just vulgar. Honestly I don't know how people can still defend it.

Because she works 25 hours a day 😂

I believe that Jack is well intentioned in her food poverty campaigning however her personal behaviour just serves to reinforce the idea that those ‘claiming poverty’ are feckless with money, rather than genuinely struggling with circumstances beyond their control.

I grew up poor and experienced long periods of poverty when I brought up my own family so just don’t recognise her version of coping with the reality of it.

I’d never, ever have gone asking strangers for money. In my experience those trapped in poverty are proud and endlessly resourceful by necessity. JM ‘s behaviour undermines this.

She's a proper little Tommy Robinson type. Zero authenticity and a character to play that brings the limelight

In her replies she even says there’s another one “somewhere”. In genuine poverty she would tear the house apart looking for a lost diamond ring to sell.

Whatever I might think of JM as a person, or how she chooses to represent herself, she gives a voice to a lot of people who are genuinely struggling. People who are relying on food banks to survive aren’t being invited onto tv news to challenge politicians. JM is and does.

It’s between 5 and 12% plus some other fees depending on the source of the money.

She’s doesn’t give them a voice though. It’s all about her and her ‘situations’ are not indicative of people who actually are in poverty

I honestly don’t think she does represent those people though. I would love to see a breakdown of her fans, I bet the majority of them are not those using food banks or on very low incomes.
I would prefer to see actual food bank users or those on ground running them every day on the TV, the young lady who runs our local food bank has been on various news shows both locally and nationally.