Any UK person that has lived through Lockdown and used Twitter knows who Jack Monroe is. Maybe she’s most famously known for suing Katie Hopkins for half a million pounds (24K went to Jack, the rest Katie had to pay in legal fees), forcing Katie to sell her Devon home and to move into a rental north of Barnstaple. Maybe you know of her cheap meals where she proudly shouts about feeding her family with Smart Price pasta (as if this is a triumph, when in reality most of us do it), or maybe you know her for her tireless work in helping people, that is posting inaccurate links, recipes that are free (free recipes, she’s so kind), or donating to charities that have never heard from her.
Let’s make this clear. This is an opinion piece. It’s not based on absolute fact, more on the feelings of someone who’s upset they fell for this, but this article is based on fact and has all the evidence you need. @AwfullyMolly has spent countless hours (not 100 per week like Jack) piecing together every tweet, every piece of misinformation and every lie ever told by Jack Monroe and we love them for it. Why did she/he do it? Well, that’s the best bit. Jack Monroe could see a complete end, could be completely cancelled, all because @AwfullyMolly became annoyed when Jack promoted a book about Georgia that was NOT about Georgia. This recommendation made AM suspicious and got him/her digging deep into Jack Monroe’s twitter account to see what else was duplicitous. The results are incredible. I’m invested and you will be too as soon as you read the article.
Why Are People So Angry At Jack Monroe?
Jack Monroe has now cancelled Twitter, she claims it’s over the posting of her mother’s Aunt Bessie’s insipid roast potatoes and the insults she received as a result, however this may just be one more of her lies, as she’s facing a lot of questions she can’t answer, a lot of people asking for refunds and a lot of suspicion as people realise that she’s the not so poor girl who cried wolf.
People are angry as she’s exploited those in real poverty. Her followers are on the breadline, due to the content she posts such as Feed a Family for £20 a week and rants about the injustice of heating tariffs. She claims to help all those who need to use food banks while feigning a bond with them by retelling the story of how she was so poor she sold her son’s toy dinosaur.
This would all be fine-ish, as by indulging in Twitter rants and posting free recipes (they’re FREE) she’s not really harming anyone, some could even say she’s helping, however, in her eyes there’s one person that’s worse off than any of her followers, one who deserves money and help more than anyone else, one that doesn’t care if you raid your child’s piggy bank to shout her a strong black espresso, her. This is why she’s so fond of splashing the donate button (to her personal PayPal) on every single FREE recipe page.
In addition to this, whenever a follower that’s signed up for her Patreon, or donated for more content asks where the content is, JM’s army of followers attack them for bullying while Jack stays silent and lets the hounds do the work.
Jack Loves Labels
Jack loves a label, so much so she attaches many to herself. From memory only, she’s a heavily tattooed, working class, autistic, disabled, poor single mum in recovery, not quite sure if she’s pulled out the gender neutral or metoo tag yet. It’s coming. The labels grow every time she feels she’s losing public sympathy with the autistic one being a more recent addition.
Those labels used to mean something but when people like JM and other influencers use them for clout, likes and donations it has an impact. We stop believing. The people who need real help stop being so important as mistrust grows. We become desensitised to the labels as we see them everywhere. We lose empathy. We’re human. As JM spreads misinformation such as, “I’m autistic, it’s impossible for me to lie,” the great work people have done to raise awareness of the never-ending autistic spectrum is erased.
Now, this is why I’m so angry and feel free to skip to the next drop cap. I hate labels. I hate defining people by class, status or wealth. A person is not their disability or mental health. It’s labels that put us all into boxes and stop us mingling as a whole. We used to define ourselves with personality traits, happy, bubbly, [insert more generic words here] yet now we define ourselves with afflictions, personal problems, and we want the whole world to know. I agree, there should be a bigger spotlight on the treatment of disabled people, the real poverty in the UK, addiction and mental health but is labelling oneself with these, and showing them to a world of strangers really the answer? Surely these are discussions you have with a friend that’s becoming close, your doctor, your family?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s incredible that Jack has brought a spotlight to poverty and to food banks and the work they do, I just don’t believe she’s done this selflessly and I don’t believe she’s ever known real poverty.
I’ve known real poverty as have many of my friends, which is why I despise what Jack is doing. This is why the Jack Monroe saga has upset me as I’m really not sure she is in poverty yet she claims 90% of her income goes to her rent and she doesn’t have enough to live on.
We’ve also donated to Jack Monroe. Just like many others too. Why?
Well, she tells such a tale of the 100 hour weeks she’s working to help us all, working with the government no less to make a change, that when she pleaded poverty and said she couldn’t afford the rent, I felt she needed our help. Yet when you scroll up from those begging tweets you see she boasts about £30,000 in savings and being ready to buy a half a million pound house. (Thanks again AwfullyMolly for pointing that out).
She also talks of a partner, but is still a single mum and then goes on to describe her childhood summers in the back of mummy’s Landrover, have you seen how much a Defender costs? This is not the origin of someone who is working class.
Minor Celebrities Use Their Offspring for Clout
Now this is something that’s been grinding my gears of late, minor celebrities, authors and the Twitter famous using their offspring for clout. From those who parade their gender neutral kids, to Jack Monroe telling us tales of her son being upset at not having bread and jam. STOP.
It’s not fair on the child, they didn’t ask for the spotlight, and it’s not fair on the audience either, as only a few cold hearts could ignore the plea of the very young. It’s exploitation and quite frankly, disgusting especially when it discusses the child’s mental health. They are not toys, they have their own voice and, when they’re old enough, that story is theirs to tell. Not yours.
Disclaimer, or something: I'm not a TERF. However, I do not agree with forcing an alternative gender onto a child before they've hit puberty. I wanted to be a boy until I turned 12. I would HATE my parents now if they'd given me puberty blockers and made me see it through. Let them live as the opposite sex but leave their small developing bodies alone.
Why Has Jack Monroe Lied?
When you pull together every tweet, every claim and every beg it’s quite easy to see what’s happened and the type of person Jack Monroe is. I don’t think she set out to scam, far from it, I do think she genuinely wanted to help people but she’s lying again if she says she didn’t want to profit from that help.
I’m not sure how many of Jack’s tweets are drunken tweets, many if us spout a lot of bull when under the influence (there’s help here if you are struggling with any addiction), and this, combined with a Twitter profile could account for a lot of the nonsense however I think she’s got her diagnosis wrong.
I don’t think she’s autistic. I think she has ADHD. She’s bitten off more than she can chew. She’s so desperate for a regular hefty income that she’s started multiple projects, put her fingers in many pies, and not really seen any (bar her book) to completion as she struggles with knowing which one will produce the highest profit margin.
This hyperactivity is laced with constant inconsistencies, with her 100 hour week leaving her with no time at all to tell her son she’s sold his toy dinosaur. (Which is probably why she used fewer words and told him she’d had a clear out instead).
She’s backed herself into a corner, and now the only way out is to hide or tell the truth.
How Can Jack Monroe Recover From This?
She’s lost the trust of many people but there are a lot that will still back her, and she could begin to rebuild that trust by focusing on one project at a time and telling the absolute truth. She got overwhelmed, she became scatty, she got lazy with customer service, she didn’t want to disappoint, so kept going, and lying.
However I fear, if she does try to recover it will be through other means. I hope I’m wrong, yet she seems to be the type of person who lives off sympathy, she loves to be pitied, and wants people to feel sorry for her while smashing that donate button. The devil on my shoulder is telling me she’ll recover by using a new excuse, one we haven’t heard before, a new label to add to the list, and that would be a real shame, but the very woke will fall for it!
