Jen Hatmaker

[Anonymous]

The only money Jen’s gotten from me so far was her 7 book/workbook when our mega church used it for their summer women’s Bible study. But I kind of want her cookbook. I do enjoy her humor sometimes. Not her sarcastic mocking humor but her irreverent kind.
Oh well, I guess at the end of the day she’s living her “best life.” While I’m still in my husbands 3X t-shirt/no pants scraping stuck waffle off the waffle iron. Perhaps my real issue with Jen is the way she keeps on “winning at life” and I’m jealous. I still despise her deceptive ways and her angry social justice tirades but she’s enjoying her life and living it on her own terms. Maybe narcissists really do have a gift for saying, “screw yall, I'm gonna do what makes me happy.” While us “Bible thumping” family focused types eschew our “best life” for the one that puts our responsibilities above our personal pleasure. I was taught that’s maturity but sometimes it feels like martyrdom. Then again I may be lost in the haze of Jen’s image crafted BS after seeing the back of her cookbook with its celebrity endorsements. That woman has favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is an irony in a woman creating a me course on how to deconstruct then reconstruct one’s faith when she has devolved into a shilling machine completely disconnected from any genuine accountability.

There is. Can’t stand the constant selling. But I’ll admit that part of me has some sympathy for the fact that Brandon probably financially ruined them. The ‘in the know’ folks who have pointed to a gambling problem (along with the cheating and drinking) would explain why the constant shilling ratcheted way up right around the time of the divorce. Multiple kids in college and a couple more to send I bet those bills were calling… I still think it’s gross. But in the panic of the moment I bet some financial agreements were made…

I would have more sympathy if they both went to work - and I mean REAL WORK - to get back on the right track. As it is, we see them both taking extravagant vacations and living the good life when we have seen nothing from either of them of much value since Jen released her Fierce book at the beginning of the pandemic. (And I say that has value because I know she put a lot of actual work into that book, regardless of if it's actually good or not). Then you have Jen encouraging people to go to some $20k per week resort in Tennesee and taking ME camp trips for a month, etc and it makes me sick. She KNOWS people can't do this. People are struggling to make ends meet. Even those of us with full-time actual jobs - whose income can't keep up with inflation. Then she wants us to buy things through her social media so she can make MORE money off our backs. No, thanks. So disappointing and infuriating to me.

So, to both of them, get back to me when you actually humble yourselves to do some real work like the rest of us. I think it's a PRIDE thing - and neither of them were truly ready to give up their lifestyles - and are opportunists who found ways to make money off of other people's backs to save their own asses.

Hell if I’d go back to “real work” if I could make $1,000,000 + fancy vacations doing what she’s doing. GImme a break. She’s living the dream.

And I’d rather see her shill that stuff than shill Jesus like she used to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Regarding MLMs…I highly recommend a book called Cultish. It speaks to how companies use language to recruit people and it also talks about influencers. After you read it you’ll begin to notice how Jen will say things like Hello dear ones or Hello loves. That language is intentional and is her way of getting you to think you’re in her inner circle so you’ll buy what she’s selling.

I just finished reading this and almost mentioned it once or twice because I think it brings a new perspective to why some of her language makes my spidey senses tingle a bit. (Like the branding of her ecourse as 'ME Course.') I also have a friend who is SUPER into an MLM right now and reading her FB posts is like reading pages out of the MLM section in the book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only money Jen’s gotten from me so far was her 7 book/workbook when our mega church used it for their summer women’s Bible study. But I kind of want her cookbook. I do enjoy her humor sometimes. Not her sarcastic mocking humor but her irreverent kind.
Oh well, I guess at the end of the day she’s living her “best life.” While I’m still in my husbands 3X t-shirt/no pants scraping stuck waffle off the waffle iron. Perhaps my real issue with Jen is the way she keeps on “winning at life” and I’m jealous. I still despise her deceptive ways and her angry social justice tirades but she’s enjoying her life and living it on her own terms. Maybe narcissists really do have a gift for saying, “screw yall, I'm gonna do what makes me happy.” While us “Bible thumping” family focused types eschew our “best life” for the one that puts our responsibilities above our personal pleasure. I was taught that’s maturity but sometimes it feels like martyrdom. Then again I may be lost in the haze of Jen’s image crafted BS after seeing the back of her cookbook with its celebrity endorsements. That woman has favor.

Book endorsements are set up by the publishers and the endorsers are paid. Including Christian books.
If Jen endorses a sarah Bessey book, jen gets a check.
Would they endorse it for free? Ha.
If they have integrity they actually read the book and turn down the endorsement if they aren’t impressed.
But that’s a big fat if.

[Anonymous]

My opinion as a former Jen friend:
I don’t think she is a narcissist, as in actually diagnosable NPD.
She definitely has narcissistic tendencies. Many. And she’s selfish and loves the smell of her own farts.
But she’s not malignant or vengeful.

I have an ex-friend who truly is NPD and they just don’t compare.

[Anonymous]

THANK YOU op’s Re the influencer info. I’m gobsmacked..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
THANK YOU op’s Re the influencer info. I’m gobsmacked..

PP’s - dumb autocorrect

[Anonymous]

SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY FELLOW BIBLE THUMPERS 🤜🏽

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in marketing and PR and influencers are part of our marketing strategy. They make a lot of money. Payment is based not just on follower count but engagement rate and other metrics. You sit there and watch an entire reel that Jen posts? Like her posts? Comment? All of these things increase her engagement rate metrics. A lot of influencers have people who are negotiating the rate for them and the companies they’re working with usually have an agency working on their side to negotiate the rate. Based on Jen’s followers and the amount of sponsored posts she does, she could be earning millions from this a year. Even the micro-influencers I’ve worked with are making a lot of money. I asked one micro-influencer to hint at what she made and she said that she had a 9-5 job and that her influencer gig was considered her passive income because she only worked at it a few hours a month. She said she made $300,000 from it and was feeling comfortable enough with it to soon quit her 9-5.

Before I worked with influencers I used to regard them with disdain but now I love them. Most of them work really hard to represent the brand they’re selling and take the job seriously. I’ve done every single type of advertising possible from tv, radio, online, billboards blah blah and nothing has ever killed it like influencers. I used one micro-influencer to promote a place and the feedback was they had never in twenty years of business seen the kind of traffic they saw after her posts went up. They quadrupled sales from the same weekend the year prior and eventually sold out of stock. I see this across the board with influencers. People react and buy based on what they’re talking about like nothing I’ve ever seen before and I’ve been doing this a long time. Every big and medium sized company is working with influencers.

Regarding MLMs…I highly recommend a book called Cultish. It speaks to how companies use language to recruit people and it also talks about influencers. After you read it you’ll begin to notice how Jen will say things like Hello dear ones or Hello loves. That language is intentional and is her way of getting you to think you’re in her inner circle so you’ll buy what she’s selling.

I'd be curious to know how you feel about influencers who just jump from product to product, no long-term sustainability with a brand. Is this indicative of anything? This makes me think of Heidi Powell, who promotes so many different products and never stays with anything longer than a reel and often times never tags a sponsor. I know this is a Jen thread, but just curious about the strategy/metrics of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My opinion as a former Jen friend:
I don’t think she is a narcissist, as in actually diagnosable NPD.
She definitely has narcissistic tendencies. Many. And she’s selfish and loves the smell of her own farts.
But she’s not malignant or vengeful.

I have an ex-friend who truly is NPD and they just don’t compare.

Agreed. I’ve not sensed a DSM-IV narcissistic personality disorder with Jen, but there are many overlapping symptoms.
I’m wondering how many ex-friends she has scattered around out there. We only hear about the ones who embrace making her queen.

Btw a true narcissist would have screamed detailed dirt on Brandon during the divorce. Unless it would have hurt her charity and brand then she’d hide it for narcissistic reasons. Hard to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is an irony in a woman creating a me course on how to deconstruct then reconstruct one’s faith when she has devolved into a shilling machine completely disconnected from any genuine accountability.

There is. Can’t stand the constant selling. But I’ll admit that part of me has some sympathy for the fact that Brandon probably financially ruined them. The ‘in the know’ folks who have pointed to a gambling problem (along with the cheating and drinking) would explain why the constant shilling ratcheted way up right around the time of the divorce. Multiple kids in college and a couple more to send I bet those bills were calling… I still think it’s gross. But in the panic of the moment I bet some financial agreements were made…

I would have more sympathy if they both went to work - and I mean REAL WORK - to get back on the right track. As it is, we see them both taking extravagant vacations and living the good life when we have seen nothing from either of them of much value since Jen released her Fierce book at the beginning of the pandemic. (And I say that has value because I know she put a lot of actual work into that book, regardless of if it's actually good or not). Then you have Jen encouraging people to go to some $20k per week resort in Tennesee and taking ME camp trips for a month, etc and it makes me sick. She KNOWS people can't do this. People are struggling to make ends meet. Even those of us with full-time actual jobs - whose income can't keep up with inflation. Then she wants us to buy things through her social media so she can make MORE money off our backs. No, thanks. So disappointing and infuriating to me.

So, to both of them, get back to me when you actually humble yourselves to do some real work like the rest of us. I think it's a PRIDE thing - and neither of them were truly ready to give up their lifestyles - and are opportunists who found ways to make money off of other people's backs to save their own asses.

Hell if I’d go back to “real work” if I could make $1,000,000 + fancy vacations doing what she’s doing. GImme a break. She’s living the dream.

And I’d rather see her shill that stuff than shill Jesus like she used to.

She's certainly free to do so. Just as I'm free to not feel sorry for her, to be disgusted by it, and to refuse to let her earn another dollar from me. And that's exactly the main point people like me - who used to gain some value from her writing - are becoming aware of - that the shilling is the main thread through all of this. As she would say, it's all rotten fruit of the same rotten tree. There was never any "there" there. It was all one big shill from the start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only money Jen’s gotten from me so far was her 7 book/workbook when our mega church used it for their summer women’s Bible study. But I kind of want her cookbook. I do enjoy her humor sometimes. Not her sarcastic mocking humor but her irreverent kind.
Oh well, I guess at the end of the day she’s living her “best life.” While I’m still in my husbands 3X t-shirt/no pants scraping stuck waffle off the waffle iron. Perhaps my real issue with Jen is the way she keeps on “winning at life” and I’m jealous. I still despise her deceptive ways and her angry social justice tirades but she’s enjoying her life and living it on her own terms. Maybe narcissists really do have a gift for saying, “screw yall, I'm gonna do what makes me happy.” While us “Bible thumping” family focused types eschew our “best life” for the one that puts our responsibilities above our personal pleasure. I was taught that’s maturity but sometimes it feels like martyrdom. Then again I may be lost in the haze of Jen’s image crafted BS after seeing the back of her cookbook with its celebrity endorsements. That woman has favor.

I’m right here in the trenches with you. But I have to say, I don’t believe she’s living her best life. Social media isn’t real life. She’s only showing us the highlights, and she’s already admitted that (for YEARS), her highlights were manufactured. While she was posting all about her happy, “spicy” family, it was falling apart. We have no reason to believe that she’s REALLY living her best life now. She was faking it before, when she wasn’t trying to sell us skincare and CBD oil. There’s no reason we should trust her now.
Anyway, I much prefer my life of peanut butter stained clothes, snotty noses, scraped knees, and a sweet, faithful husband. That’s real life. 💛

[Anonymous]

I would never trade in my humdrum, struggling, middle class life with two teens at home and one away in the navy and a loyal, faithful, hilarious and sweet husband who puts all of us number one where we haven't had a real vacation in years and we only have one running car between the four of us with licenses at home than a that of someone who might be able to take MeCamps all summer long and never has a care in the world money wise but who always puts on a show and is a fake and a phony and has to keep a huge grifty machine running all the time. That sort of life sounds empty and soulless, if I'm being truthful. I think there might be real blessings in being a humble person living a simple and private life.

[Anonymous]

Maybe narcissists really do have a gift for saying, “screw yall, I'm gonna do what makes me happy.”

See, I think her tendencies are like those of her internet buddies Jamie and Kristin- even their time in the church looked like a contrarian move and not terribly authentic. Jen likes to blast all the ways she is counter-cultural, from playing GNR in her middle school classroom (oooooh) to now distancing herself from those icky fundamentalist Bible thumpers who bought and enjoyed her Bible studies when she was just starting out.

[Anonymous]

SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY FELLOW BIBLE THUMPERS

Present!

And must add that in my Bible thumping devotional time this morning, I was reading Mark and the section where Jesus goes into the temple and the FIRST thing He does is knock over the money changer tables. BOOM. Savior gonna save and clean out the temple.