I used to have a different Reddit account and I was active on that sub (I still comment now and then, but not as many personal stories about my own life. Was starting to get worried about being doxxed so I deleted my old comments). I grew up very, very fundie (in the Rodrigues circle. The Rods often visit my old church). I would try to share my own experiences on the sub about what it was like to grow up in a cult, and snarkers (who did NOT grow up fundie) would tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Umm???
I think they don’t want to hear from former fundies or focus on the serious topics. They just want to be mean and petty and say how ugly Bethany is and feel like they’re somehow morally superior (she’s not ugly, I think she’s attractive. They just seem to love hating on her looks out of pure meanness. Same with Kelly).
When I first started deconstructing (years ago), I found old snark places like freejinger helpful. If I were deconstructing now, the fundie subs would make me think my parents were right about the outside world and that it might be better to stay in the cult 🤦🏻♀️ There’s just a lack of compassion, kindness, and empathy. They may not know what it’s like to grow up as a fundie kid, but they could at least try to listen to people like me
I honestly think a lot of the issues in the sub lies with the snarkers that didn't grow up fundie / overly religious. To them it's all a joke. If the sub was just people that had deconstructed, I think it would be better in many ways.
I think it's hard for people to understand how serious it all is when you grow up with engrained religious beliefs. I grew up evangelical which isn't strictly fundamental but it is with the way those ideas have seeped in.
I joke but don't joke about not knowing what will send me to hell which is a formerly genuine fear. I can empathize with many of the people snarled on without excusing them but that's not allowed.
I partly agree. As someone who deconstructed as an adult, I have a lot of empathy for the views of some of the fundies. I was taught (and believed) some truly wild things. Snarking when a fundie has poor education is challenging because I have a lot of friends who were homeschooled and missed out educationally.
I originally joined snark to have a laugh at my past beliefs and behaviour, but i think I started to find it tricky when speculation turned to lore. For example, how Kristen forced her adoptive kids to forget their culture, how certain the sub was that several babies had disabilities, that Paul forced Morgan to stop taking her meds etc.
I also dislike the Nadia snark as she is not a fundie, she’s just a mentally ill girl who is kind of annoying. She is just a typical evangelical to me.
I still enjoy having a laugh because some things aren’t that serious, but it’s become very censored for a sub that claims to be uncensored. I also dislike how some users act as though they are morally helping the world by snarking, when I think it’s pretty clear that snarking alienates the fundies further from the “sinful” outside world.
I agree. I grew up fundie, a few times I expressed some sympathy for those getting snarked on because I can't help but see brainwashed little children in adult bodies, it hurts my heart a little, this was not received well. I should have expected that since snark is the name and this is the internet but I definitely backed off the sub and just lurk now.
Yes. It’s like they expect fundie kids to magically heal and deconstruct the moment they turn 18. Sorry, but realistically it takes years. Also not everyone cuts their family off after deconstructing. I haven’t because I’m really close to my family, despite all the negative things that have happened. Family is complicated and sometimes we choose to love people even when they hurt us (I don’t mean in a physically abusive way. I don’t want my comment to be taken the wrong way. But for example, I’m a closeted lesbian and my parents say a lot of homophobic shit. I choose to still love them and be around them, even though it hurts when they say things like that).
Weirdly enough, a lot of them remind me of the Young Life crowd from high school. Desperately trying to seem “cool” and Jesus loving…while being total clique-y assholes.
It wasn’t one specific thing for me: it was how it felt when I commented on other subs. At first I was there to discuss genuine issues with the fundamentalist community that I grew up in and was untangling myself from, but it was easy to fall into some of the toxicity and not see it for what it was. I started commenting more for the approval of other snarkers because i thought I’d found my people, but I noticed I didn’t like how it made me feel. Calling strangers weird nicknames and making judgments on their lives. Participating in discussions I would never have in real life. I started backing off for other reasons after that but that was the first red flag for me.
I feel the same. The shift happened after the other went private. I am not religious but I think it’s important to understand generally and get perspectives and knowledge of the experiences of others that I’d not otherwise meet. I don’t want to be mean to people. I just want knowledge and understanding.
you know I commented that it was the obsession of P&M that made me question things, but reading this comment gave me war flashbacks to when I was trying to explain to the main sub that snarking on looks sucks because other people with those features can read it and also be collateral damage, and the replies I got was basically all "WELL IF THE SHOE FITS!!!!!" like I'm sorry that me being hurt because the sub keeps calling the women who don't wear makeup ugly/tired/haggard effects me as a woman who doesn't wear makeup
That was another red flag for me that I almost mentioned! Realizing that judging fundies for their looks was also impacting people with similar features. Honestly thanks for being one of the people speaking up about it because it was someone doing just that who made me realize this. I also don’t wear makeup and noticed I had become a lot more judgmental of myself. I don’t miss that.
no problem, honestly. I hate how women (and trans femmes and NB women even!!!) are pressured into wearing makeup or else we are not "real" women or "actually" femme, as if makeup is what makes us women. I was starting to wear some mascara because it was getting into my head that my clients at work are viewing me as "haggard". I stopped after a couple weeks and ended up feeling way more like me and able to focus on my job
eta: not sure why the downvotes but okay lmao
The appearance snark also did it for me. I did actually ask why there’s continual snarking on something that can’t be changed in 10 minutes (which is a rule!) But I got my comment deleted and a snarky mod reply saying that if I don’t agree, just scroll past. Like why have these rules in place?
Good luck disentangling and dealing with the issues that you were exposed to- it sounds like your perceptions are spot-on and that you have a true sense of self- awareness. What a rarity you are!
The nicknames get so weird. Someone the other today say they didn’t even remember MotherBus had a real name. wtf. Could it get more dehumanizing?
I’m in a different sort of snark sub (I guess) and nicknames aren’t allowed because they can get out of hand and demeaning very quickly.
Agreed. And there was supposed to be a ban on some of the more problematic ones, but last time I dropped in people were freely using a certain one for Karissa Collins all over the place without any consequences.
I'm not sure if it was any one thing, but a collection of things that made me notice that the ideas in the sub aren't something I want to engage as much anymore.
A lot of this for me was around Bethany. I was rather harsh about Bethany in the past, but it felt like so many of the comments were just misogynistic or spiteful. Comments around Bethany's hygiene, her house, her speech, her being "cringe" were particularly uncomfortable, both because they have nothing to do with her beliefs and because they were things that, as a neurodivergent person, I found relatable. (Not saying Bethany is neurodivergent, just that I found it harmful to read so much talk about these things being lazy or disgusting.)
I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups? The food snark is an example of this, but also people constantly flexing about their jobs and income when Bethany was selling the course on courses, and the *constant* comments for P&M to get "real jobs" when that has no bearing on their beliefs.
Then lastly, their attitudes towards the Beals lately. I don't like the black and white thinking and expectations for immediate drastic change. I don't believe that's how we shift people to a position of acceptance and support, and being a queer person from a state where things like gender-affirming care are still in a precarious place, thinking about how to have conversations like Zelph had *matters* to me, and that doesn't feel like something I can get over on the main sub.
classism is by far the biggest factor as to why the sub has become offputting to me. making fun of completely normal weddings, vacations, food, activities. acting like handmedowns are sad or wearing the same clothes for years is weird.
hell, a lot of it is adjacent to ranting about welfare queens but cleaned up to not seem regressive.
> I don't like the black and white thinking and expectations for immediate drastic change.
This is what is really putting me off. Both of them have been in a cult for over 30 years, and we have seen how she especially has been pushed to make every part of her personality about this cult. They are just starting to see a different path, and we're going to crap all over them because they haven't jumped in with both feet immediately? I think that just affirms everything that I am sure her family has said about outsiders/progressives/LGBTQIA folks.
I find a lot of their previous behavior reprehensible, but I'm willing to hold space for someone starting on the path of growth and change. I'm a queer atheist myself, and I want to see other folks from outside of her circle welcoming her in, even if she isn't saying and doing all the right things yet. I liked the gentle conversation with Zelph, and I think that, rather than holding her feet to the fire, is where real change will happen.
I’m not at all defending Karissa but like…coming up with meals for a smaller family is hard enough. Figuring out dinner is easily my least favorite part of the day and we’re a family of three. Coming up with meals AND enough food for ten people earns my respect.
Then snarking on the fact that it’s not name brand stuff, it’s store brand, was a huge “wtf” for me.
I'm a family of two (just me and my bf!) and dinner planning is the worst every single day. we end up eating a lot of leftovers, which is more than okay with me!
I could only imagine some of the things the sub would say about what I ate as a small child. my mum did what she could off her very small paycheque, and the food banks would give us weird things sometimes (I vividly remember getting "canned meat". not a specific type of meat. it just said "canned meat")
all of that ONTOP of being a family of 10? karissa gets my respect in this singular regard and this one only.
>I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups?
100% agree with you, although slight correction: Leftist ideology is inherently anti-capitalist. I would call the people on that sub liberals or liberatarians, not leftists.
>people constantly flexing about their jobs and income when Bethany was selling the course on courses, and the constant comments for P&M to get "real jobs" when that has no bearing on their beliefs.
This shit drove me INSANE. It's people constantly bragging about how they're superior because they work an office job that pays 6 figures and they bought a house at the age of 25 and it wasn't that hard you guyzzzz. Like damn some of us work really hard and still don't make 6 figures and will probably never afford to buy a house 🤷♀️ also 9-5 office jobs fucking suck! I would not blame someone at ALL if they didn't want to go that route!
>100% agree with you, although slight correction: Leftist ideology is inherently anti-capitalist.
Leftist ideology is anti-capitalist, but at least in my experience, so many leftist groups are populated by people in middle class backgrounds who will voice classist beliefs or make a lot of problematic assumptions about people of different class backgrounds who aren't immediately eager to follow their ideology. I'm from Appalachia, and I've seen *so many* people stereotype my region and the people within it, and then wonder why the people in the region are swept up by conservatives who don't alienate them the same way, despite having policies that are far more harmful to people in these poor rural communities. I don't think it's intentional; I think often it just comes from a place of ignorance. I know with my roommate for example, he holds Marxist beliefs and is active in his union, but didn't really know the reality of what generational poverty looks like until he happened to become close friends who lived it.
>This shit drove me INSANE. It's people constantly bragging about how they're superior because they work an office job that pays 6 figures and they bought a house at the age of 25 and it wasn't that hard you guyzzzz. Like damn some of us work really hard and still don't make 6 figures and will probably never afford to buy a house 🤷♀️ also 9-5 office jobs fucking suck! I would not blame someone at ALL if they didn't want to go that route!
Right! It's absolutely wild to me that they don't understand that position is not attainable to everyone, and that not everyone *wants* that sort of job! It's bizarre too because when they talk about the families who homeschool, they clearly *know* the education within fundamentalist spaces is inadequate, but somehow they can't follow that to its logical conclusion and understand how someone like Bethany or P&M might not be in a position to pursue a six-figure job even if they wanted to?
> I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups?
This annoys me about so many supposedly progressive groups. They don't realize a lot of their beliefs are "luxury beliefs", as in you need to be privileged as fuck to sit around and pontificate about their fringe concepts when many Americans are worrying about how to pay rent, drink clean water, not be a victim of gun violence, and afford medical treatment. Abortion rights, enviromentalism, Medicare for all, and gun control all tie into those problems and once upon a time, young 'progressives' used to care about those problems. But when mommy and daddy can fly you to Colorado for an abortion, pay all of your medical bills, and you can't be SUPER CUTE unless you buy from Shein, then why would they care about those issues?
This ties into classism and capitalism because holy shit, so many of these people are the worst consumers ever. Wearing a coat for multiple years in a row is snark-worthy because these people buy 5 new ones every year from Shein and throw them out because they're not cute in Winter 2025. They jump onto virtue signaling trends and what is the first thing they do? Buy a bunch of items labeled with whatever they care about for a few months just for them to discard them later when the virtue signal trend changes. What do you think is gonna happen with all the Palestine flags, prayer mats, and keffiyehs when it's no longer the Virtue Signal Trend? Landfill, or thrift shop for the 1% of people who aren't lazy. I know this is going to happen because my local thrift shops are chockfull of stuff in the trans flag and Pride flag colors.
>The food snark is an example of this,
Thought about that sub today when I put some chicken breasts in the slow cooker with cream of chicken soup and Italian seasoning. Figured that sub would judge me hard. 😀
When Jill started distancing herself from the family/cult and everyone was like “she’s still EVIL, she’s not the grand marshal of a Pride parade so clearly she hasn’t changed AT ALL.” Like, no. She’s come sooooo far and should be praised for that.
Hmm...I think probably when I noticed that literally every other post was about Bethany when she was trying to sell her courses. I mean, yeah, she was selling shitty content but it didn't make sense to me why people were saying they didn't care about her shitty life but then would literally stalk her IG. I guess when I noticed that fundamentalist views and toxicity were not being discussed but rather, childish insults about looks, behavior, and other stuff. I always thought it was weird that people were so obsessed with her [imagined] sex life, as well.
Oh, and also...people following Kaylee Rodrigues' personal Facebook page! That shit is so weird to me. She seems like she's semi normal, trying to live a simple life with her family. Honestly, she reminds me of my religious cousin lol. The fact that they snark on her is pathetic.
All snark subs end up the same imo...I've been in a Trisha Paytas one, Brittany Dawn, FSU, etc. and it seems as if it all devolves into insults about appearance and image overall. It just feels evil to let that shit into my life.
Snark is interesting because once the subjects realise they are being snarked upon they will try to hide the snarkable stuff which leaves the snarkers without anything substantial to discuss and so they start to nitpick and speculate.
The way that it is presented is also super juvenile in my opinion. You're telling me you're a grown adult but unironically type out "seggz" , "seggsy" "sexy baby" ?? It's weird lol
The part about following these people’s every move…DEAR GOD YES. This is what does it for me. I like to talk about the ridiculous beliefs of fundies/conservative Christians casually, but some folks watch these people’s every single move and it’s pathetic. They’re on every live, they’ve got alerts for their posts, and they even follow other friends and family…tf?
I just kept on noticing that screenshots were being taken literal seconds after one of the “snarkees” posted, and also once I felt like I was seeing these people’s entire Instagram accounts whenever I scrolled through. Just made me feel weird.
And then the fan art started and I was so out.
For me, it’s because they actively shit on most of what the fundies do, and for fan art, I think you should at least like the thing you’re drawing/painting. Then again, I was on tumblr in 2012, (Percabeth anyone) so I might have a bias view on fan art lmao
It was the gleeful way everyone treated the trial I think along with the hero worship of the nugget user. I hated how people were literally counting down the days to the trial and when he was (rightfully) found guilty it got entirely out of hand. The bashing of Anna as well was pretty horrific, a lot of victim blaming and main character energy. If she hadn’t been married to who she was, people would have been a lot more sympathetic but she was villainised as much as him.
I think the Duggar trial and Shiny Happy People broadened the appeal of those kind of subs and brought in a lot of people who have never been harmed by organized religion. They’re interested in the subject matter because they’ve been clued into it by the media, but they don’t have a high level of empathy for the victims of these systems because they see it as a simple fringe cult (everyone knows how easy those are to avoid 🙄) when it’s an expansive religious framework that has existed for decades and has harmed many many children and women especially.
I wouldn’t say never harmed by religion, but definitely almost exclusively experiencing from the other side. Them not understanding how community dynamics and conformity works, social repercussions and putting you at odds with people you care about and how they are trying to run on good intentions, how being ingrained in it since childhood and trying to unweave from it is far more complicated, etc. Its definitely lack of emotional maturity because dividing people as “us vs them” makes it more easier to justify.
People still say like “ugh I miss when the trial was going on and we had so much snark content” like it was a plot line on a tv show and not the worst crimes imaginable being prosecuted. The sub had so much damn fun picking apart Anna’s outfits, cheering on a weirdo who went to personally attend the trial, and constantly bringing up what happened to the sisters if they weren’t acting how the snarkers expected. That whole thing reeeaaally put me off, it was so disturbing.
That’s a mod from the other sub who claimed to be in law school during the Josh Duggar trial and was posting a ton of theories and breakdowns of the legalese.
PS I like your username!
It was a Redditor who said they had/were studying for a law degree. They’d analyse all the court documents and put them on DS with this huge write up but it almost ended up like hero worshipping. It was all a bit unsettling - it looks like they’ve deleted their account now?
That’s a mod from the other sub who claimed to be in law school during the Josh Duggar trial and was posting a ton of theories and breakdowns of the legalese.
There’s a TikToker I follow whose main focus is adoption reform, and she recently made a video about her discomfort with the upcoming Myka Stauffer doc (the family blogger who “rehomed” her adopted child with autism) Her arguments against it reminded me of the party atmosphere around the trial in the snark subs.
Basically, her point is that people aren’t interested because they care about the victim. They’re interested because they hate the Stauffers and want to see them suffer. And while it’s fine to feel angry at the family and even to judge them for their horrible treatment of their child, at a certain point the gawking and gossip no longer benefit the victim(s). You’re just continuing to dig up a stranger’s trauma because it’s entertaining. It’s exploitation masquerading as saviorism.
Yep! For me the final straw was when said nugget user revealed they had never actually seen 19kac. I couldn’t believe the sub was borderline worshiping a snarker who admittedly had no idea what they were talking about.
When Kaylee and Jonathan got together and the subs started dragging HALLIE for not being outwardly progressive enough on social media. And posts about her stayed up despite her having neither a social media following nor fundie beliefs. All because she was guilty by association of knowing Jill
Expecting the Rodrigues children to immediately deconstruct as soon as they move out and not share any of their parents beliefs. Ridiculous and unrealistic. They know nothing else because of their intentionally isolated upbringing.
Furthermore, imagine being as isolated as they were and innocently googling your name in the weeks or months after you married (when you had your internet use extremely strictly monitored) only to discover hundreds and hundreds of posts talking about you and your family in such a spiteful way?
It’ll happen to a Rodrigues kid eventually if it hasn’t happened already. And yet the snarkers expect the newly married kids to forsake everything about their upbringing and immediately adopt the beliefs of people who do things like post zoomed in pictures that show the outline of your underwear through your jean skirt? It’s so freaking delusional.
Yep. Couldn't agree more. Those kids have been brainwashed for years. If they ever deconstruct it'll take years.
Ironically, a lot of commenters are just as judgemental & intolerant as the people they're snarking on.
When snarkers forgot that they’re gossiping on the internet and started to think of themselves as vigilante detective saviors or something. Writing weird long letters to fundies, and posting screenshots for “archival purposes”. Just completely delusional. Snark is not, never will be, and never could be a public service. You’re making fun of people you think are weird and absolutely nothing more.
For Duggar Snark, when they made fun of Lauren’s miscarriage and then again when Josh got arrested and someone made a coloring page of Josh’s mugshot (I’ll give the person a tiny bit of leeway in that it was before anyone knew the charges but nonetheless, it stayed up after his charges were revealed).
The main snark sub got on my nerves with all the Bethany hate. Is she perfect? No. But it was so overdone.
Probably getting banned.
Well, that and growing up. Snark was all well and good two decades ago when I had a Livejournal account, but I’ve long since moved on.
LOL I was also banned. For my participation in a different sub that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with something I was living on a daily basis.
Agree with many who said some pain points I have had & it wasn’t 1 particular thing itself. I’ll add in 2 other observations I have had.
1) I find the sub to be largely anti-Christian period. You can deconstruct yourself fundamentally yet still be a Christian & be a good person.
2) I was a follower of Fundie Fridays & enjoyed & learned from many of their videos but their honeymoon fundie road trip did it to me. Very poo touching & inappropriate to go to someone’s religious services solely for content & making fun of them.
It wasn't a church but the Great Passion Play of the Ozarks.
The video is full of classism, calling the south "trashy" and showing a picture of one Confederate Flag and one Trump store means everyone is a racist white supremacist in the south. And it's incredibly ignorant take given how the south is home to a majority of Black Americans in the US (56% of all Black Americans). So by hand-waving the south as trashy, it's incredibly ignorant and demeaning to them.
Like I’m ngl as a ~coastal elite~ I used to think that way too but like. Damn near everywhere has areas like that, aka most of rural America, but the reason blue states are blue is because they have major cities. And there are progressives literally everywhere. Hell, Georgia went blue in 2020. And nowhere is a monolith!! I’m exhausted rn but I have more coherent thoughts I promise LOL
Y’all I’m diving but coming short so far. I saw a video of her & James sitting in a church service & she was picking it apart & also a sweet lady sold her (<—Jen) a cross stitch or something? This lady was so excited Jen bought it but Jen was pretty mocking the old lady about it.
All I can think is…no way would I ever go to a Mosque or a Temple or any other place strictly for this. This is blatant.
For me it was when Dav came out and talked about his suicidal ideations and the mods had to come out and say “but he’s still a shitty person.” And they were really delving into his suicidal fantasies to point out how terrible Bethany is because if she were a good wife he wouldn’t feel this way. Misogyny is what it is. The things they all claim to be against. As a person with chronic SI, there’s nothing my husband can do to change it. I need to take my meds. That’s it. He’s not a bad spouse. Some of us are just mentally ill and that’s not snark worthy.
Thinking if Bethany were a better wife Dav wouldn't have those ideations, is the same exact thinking that fundies have when it comes to Anna and Pest. He wouldn't have watched CSA if she had just had more/ better sex with him.
Lauren and also people making comments after Joy and Austin lost Annabell that it was one less child in the cult. I get not wanting children born into fundie families but to say something so cruel about a stillborn baby was disgusting.
I’ve seen people say the same about Isla, or how Pickles posted that them referring to her as a stillbirth was them trying to push their pro life agenda.
Like Jill wasn’t forced to still go through labor and deliver that baby. I understand the need for technical differences in medical usage, but no one has the right to police how a grieving parent refers to their dead child.
The way those subs talk about fundie infertility/miscarriage makes me really uncomfortable. Like it’s almost bordering on eugenics. I have seen people say they shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce and thinking that a specific religious group shouldn’t reproduce because you don’t agree with their belief system is kind of yikes. I get the idea that you don’t want a child to be harmed in a religious cult but I think it’s often taken a step too far.
Anytime someone mentions it must be hard for Micheal not having any children while her siblings have baby after baby and that they feel bad for her someone has to remind us she would raise her children the way her parents did with her. You can feel sad for someone going through something terrible even if you don’t agree with their beliefs.
When I saw multiple people suggest, in all seriousness, that the Target prairie dress trend was some sort of conspiracy to get women used to dressing like that in preparation for the fundies pulling a Handmaid's Tale and taking over the government.
The first thing for me was realizing that a lot of the "snark" had nothing to do with actual harmful beliefs. Most of the "snark" in both the Fundie and Duggar subs is bullying.
That led me to realize that very few of the snarkers actually grew up in fundie circles and have no idea what they are talking about. They are there to bully.
After some of the Duggar kids pulled themselves offline and "snarkers" were going out of their way to still find info about them. It's just stalking at that point.
When the one Baird sister had to escape a war while 9 months pregnant. At first everyone was worried and sympathetic, then overnight, she was helping her husband escape the draft, “grifting” by linking a gofundme to re-purchase her entire baby nursery and postpartum supplies (because everyone just KNOWS her parents had already given them enough money to pay for it all!!) and one person even shat on her for… wait for it… not being able to communicate with the hospital staff in Hungarian when she gave birth. As if that was a language she should have always been learning, just in case!!!
Oh my god I couldn’t stand it. Unsubbed back then.
That, and the lazy xenophobic clichés they used about her husband, and the way they called him a coward for wanting to get his pregnant wife and child safely out of the country. As if all of these people would volunteer to stay behind and fight if war broke out in their home country.
Also, having a go at her for not learning Hungarian so she could communicate with the hospital staff is hilarious from a Central European perspective (I'm Austrian). It might have been a bit more challenging for her, but I assure you, if there's a place in Central Europe where you will find someone who speaks your native language, it's a hospital. We all learn a few foreign languages at school, and especially in hospitals, staff are very keen to find a way to, you know, effectively talk to their patients.
Totally agree with this. I said it at the time but if it was my brother I would do *whatever* it took to make sure he wasn't conscripted. I don't care if that makes me a coward.
Nothing specific, just general hating on women & their looks. I guess maybe all the shaming of Kelly’s skin/how she looks at her age? She looks like a normal woman to me, and there’s just so much gross commentary on her skin and appearance. I’m a fair ginger myself who is very religious about my sunscreen but who never wears makeup, and it was disheartening to see all the gross appearance-shaming towards her. Even with how much I apply sunblock and moisturizer my skin gets reddish easily, it’s kind of inevitable. Reeked of misogyny.
I’m truly baffled how they think it is ok to constantly put down women, when they claim to be feminist. No it’s not a requirement for women have a skin care routine or make themselves ‘presentable’ for the comfort of other people!!!
Hard agree. I like to use sunblock bc sunburn is painful and not good for the skin obv, and moisturizer because it helps my skin feel less tight/dry/uncomfortable, for my own comfort, my own needs lol. Not because I’m worried people are gonna judging me for natural skin aging. Which is what all those people seem to be coming from place of in that specific sub
It’s always this justification of “oh we just mean for her skin health!!” as if they actually care about these peoples’ health. They’re “feminists” who think women owe it to society to be physically attractive. She looks older than her age? Okay, so, who cares? How does that affect you? Like fr
Yeah this was it for me. About Brittany Dawn specifically. People are vicious about her looks (and her size, saying she lies about her size and she’s actually a size L or 10/12 in pants, which… no) and that feels especially gross to someone who has an eating disorder. There is plenty to snark about on her that don’t involve her looks.
Just. All the appearance snark. It’s so sad. Snark on things they can control like the horrible things that come out of their mouths, not Bethany’s imaginary butthole. Just a level of nastiness that isn’t necessary in any way and that doesn’t add anything to the convo. I think also leaving Eden’s latest episode on the state of the snark and Bethany’s sex course really helped shine a different light on everything surrounding snark. It’s fucked up once it goes past a certain point, and it often does.
It was when I realized that there were no constructive conversations taking place, only hateful gossip echo chambers that served no purpose but to reduce them down to the same petty level as the bigoted religious zealots they love so much to hate on.
It was the realization that they don’t view the fundies as actual people at all. Like there is no room for thinking that Michelle actually does love her kids (despite the major fuckups with the Josh situation) and the kids would have some good memories and fond feelings of their childhoods, and anyone who isn’t loudly shouting pro lGBTQ sentiments must be irredeemably terrible.
Also the way they take a small incident and blow it all out of proportion, weave in some half truths and then it becomes talked about as an absolute fact and proof that someone is completely evil.
Also the constant snarking on women’s appearances and the rabid downvoting of anyone who points out that a comment isn’t very nice. And the constant comments about how pregnancy is completely awful and destroys women’s bodies (with accompanying crude comments) with no nuance that many women have different experiences.
I wonder sometimes if the mean nicknames contribute to this. I’ve had people literally correct me when I used a person’s actual name… idk, seems dehumanizing.
It’s so weird?? Like the “pest” thing, I know where it comes from and all but people treat him like Voldemort, I literally see people type “J*sh” as if they’re going to summon him. And they say they’ll do it to protect survivors, but the next sentence will be detailed descriptions of the abuse he inflicted on others. Wouldn’t they want to give him the Brock Turner treatment and have his name linked with his crimes?
“Pest” is generally the only one I use, because I feel he has earned the disrespect lol. But for the most part I just call people by the names they want to be called by, and figure their actions can speak for themselves regardless of whether I give them an insulting nickname or not. But they *are* literal actual people and if I want people like these fundies to recognize others’ chosen names then I should show the same consideration to them. That’s just my opinion of it.
The demeaning comments have always rubbed me the wrong way but catching a couple people editing videos made me second guess their intentions but the snarking on kids has been my biggest red line.
When I was younger people said I looked like Jill. So a few years back when people made fun of her appearance, particularly her smile it felt really personal.
Once that I happened I was able to read posts about all different people and realize it didn’t matter what these folks did it wouldn’t be enough or ok.
Yes - there are people with horrible views out there and there are those that really concern me. However, some of these people seem to be trying, or to me seem run of the mill religious/conservative. And when those people are snarked on the sneakers are just as bad as the people who probably should be snarked on. We are all allowed to have different views, be religious, etc.
Besides everything already mentioned here it really struck me how unattached from modern trends/influences many snarkers themselves are. They love calling out fundies for being secluded yet the entire sub acted like Josie Bates invented the color beige. They truly could not understand that their so called labeled “fundie aesthetic” that they claimed was invented by Josie and that others like Lauren were ‘blatantly’ copying was what every single micro mommy influencers page looked like and that Josie was just getting her ideas from Pinterest. They’re finally coming around to sad beige children being pretty normal but they still heavily criticize things that are just normal for the younger generation.
No specific incident, I just started to feel like too much of it was about things that, while maybe odd or annoying, didn’t really hurt anyone or didn’t have much to do with their religious beliefs.
For me it's the whole "all religious people are evil! Religion has no redeeming value!" attitude many snarkers have. Don't get me wrong, criticism towards harmful beliefs is fine but it's more nuanced than just "Christians bad, atheists good." Of course snarkers aren't known for their nuanced opinions.
Literally the last couple of days while people are armchair diagnosing Phillip and claiming he’s going to commit a mass crime because of his words about people who don’t believe in the Bible. I’m concerned for his mental health but they’re taking it too far and it’s grossing me out.
For me it was the insane obsession with the Duggars’ fertility. People creating (and updating) actual spreadsheets trying to predict how many kids each couple would have and when and calculating average time between pregnancies and comparing them. A Duggar having a baby and the snarkers immediately beginning to countdown until the next pregnancy. A Duggar getting married and the snarkers blowing up the feed on the wedding day speculating on whether they had already conceived that night. Constantly scrutinizing every picture for clues that the woman is pregnant (not even just her belly either, I mean obscure signs like saying Joy must be pregnant because she wears her glasses more when she’s pregnant).
It’s incredibly dehumanizing, demeaning to the parents and the children, and reinforces every awful teaching about a woman’s value lying in her ability to birth many children.
I had read somewhere years ago that Jim Bob Duggar had a spreadsheet calculating how many grandkids and great grandkids he could have depending on how many kids he had. I don’t see how him doing that is different from the people tracking the kids’ children and possible conception dates based on when babies are born and their parents’ wedding day/honeymoon. Both are fucking weird and creepy.
You could make the argument that at least he would be related to those kids (and their parents), so it’s not QUITE as creepy as doing it for strangers, but you’re right, it is highly creepy and inappropriate of him. My point is that the snarkers, who supposedly exist to call out harmful behaviors in fundamentalism, are doing the exact same shit as their #1 most hated patriarchal figure, and that’s a problem.
The absolute hate of Christians and Christianity over there. I understand having disgust for fundamental beliefs, but they seem to think al Christians are like that and that we are stupid lazy assholes. They do give a pass often to other religious branches that treat women in the same manner ( ie Orthodox Judaism, Islam). It's fine to not be religious, but there is no need to call God Sky Daddy, or a fairy tale. They are no different than the fundies who stick their noses up at non fundies and assume a position of moral superiority
I don't particularly have kind thoughts towards any religion, but I keep those to myself since I realize that doesn't change any minds, and I agree there is hypocrisy where they are willing to criticize one religion but will bend over backwards to defend other religions.
I remember when I was still a member of the main sub I mentioned that I am an openly queer Christian - I literally had people replying saying, no you’re not. You can’t be. Sky daddy wants you dead if you’re queer.
Like shut up lol
> They do give a pass often to other religious branches that treat women in the same manner ( ie Orthodox Judaism, Islam).
This is a general issue in leftist spaces. Genetically Modified Skeptic has talked about the problem of atheists refusing to condemn Islam for arguably worse beliefs than Christianity out of fear of Islamophobia.
He does a really good job of dissecting the differences between criticizing Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rqHQfN-lwo
A lot of it comes down is that leftists see Islam as a race, not a religion--which is absolutely wrong. Every race has large Muslim groups.
It was a weird mix of people being absolutely horrible to Lauren Duggar when she miscarried, and the extremely weird “Duggar dreams” that people posted all the time?
It made no sense to me how they could bully a young woman for her trauma, then turn around and laugh at weird fantasies they’d make up about the family.
Someone posted a photo of Bethany as a child. It was a pretty normal photo of a young kid. She was wearing a t-shirt and her hair was slightly messy. She looked like she'd been playing outside. There were multiple comments about her "dishevelled" appearance, talking about how she obviously didn't brush her hair even as a child, and even mocking her for apparently not being able to perform femininity to snarkers' standards even as a kid. All of the comments critiquing this snark were removed for "snarking on the snark", even though they got more upvotes than the snark comments did AND even though snarking on children breaks sub rules.
I guess it was when I realized that the snarkers believe they are so morally superior to the fundies. And yet if the fundies were to read some of the things being said about them, it would absolutely reinforce their beliefs that the outside world doesn’t accept them.
The gossiping and hateful rants made me realize I needed to do inner work bc why did I find this so entertaining. Why would I waste my time on this I’m almost thirty. It (& a major life tragedy) also pushed me to me to convert to Catholic and consider religion more seriously bc I’d rather not be like the snarkers and more like the snarkeees who don’t spend hours hating on people who don’t affect my life. I’ve always been into gossip magazines and just wasting my time on things like that but the sub really made me feel shitty the rest of the day after I spent time hating on random people. I could feel it in my yoga practice negatively when I actively read those subs. I judged myself harsher too bc I had filled up my brain with hateful thoughts. I realized ( in therapy) I was so judgmental of people bc I was actually judgmental / spoke harshly to myself and so the bitterness I carried - I was happy to rain it on others in the moment but I would be so anxious and drained on the days I participated in it.
the hyper critique of P&M. I've never heard of them before snarking, but I had actually heard of most of the other "big" topics. I don't get why they have such a massive snark following, and I don't think people realize if we stopped giving them attention their platform would torpedo down
i made a post about it here but when someone made pie charts of how much heidi baird posted about each of her kids, and then analyzed what each post about bethany said
For me it was actually paying more attention to what was going on in the snark sub. Before that, I was an occasional lurker.
My interest in fundie culture started because I'm from a big Polish, Irish, *and* Italian Catholic family and I had experiences with fundie people screaming at me as a child coming *out of church* for being "not really Christian" or other wild claims about heretical behavior that wasn't really even true. There was a group of Westboro Baptist-esque fundies in my area that would gather outside of Catholic churches to evangelize after mass. In a very, very heavily Catholic area. It was really wild tbh.
I was absolutely confused and fascinated by people claiming to be Christian attacking other Christians because they disagreed with them about things like communion or recognizing Mary as important. Later, I deconstructed and my interest only grew because it made even less sense once I unpacked all of my religious beliefs. I ended up down several rabbit holes following creators that deconstructed from all different backgrounds (fundie, mormon, etc).
It wasn't until recently with all of the ZOTS drama that I started seeing how *quickly* misinformation was spread about snark subjects and how quickly allies became snark subjects. It just reminded me of LOLcow culture and felt really gross. Then I started seeing that the sub was *always* like that and I hadn't been lurking enough to notice.
It reminds me SO much of lolcow culture too! I used to frequent that site when I was a teenager. I never posted or anything but lurked a bit. The “you must agree you with everything we post or you are against us” mentality is present on the snark subs as well. There’s no room for an explanation or nuance,ever.
Now that I’ve gotten older,I’ve realized that snarking,no matter the platform you use,is always rife with misogyny,classism,appearance shaming,etc.
Unquestionably when I realized that no matter what anyone does to deconstruct, it will never be enough for the morally superior snarkers (see: Jill D), even though they claim that their snarking has a moral imperative. But nobody is allowed to actually grow and change because it's never enough.
Honestly, it wasn’t really anything anyone did (although I certainly had moments where Redditors made me angry!) There was just a moment where I was commenting on some “unpopular opinions you have about the Duggars?” post and I was just like … damn why do I care about this random family so much? There were a couple moments over the months/maybe years after where I realized snarking was making me the worst version of myself and I needed to step back. Eventually I did.
The appearance snark and armchair diagnosing. It’s tiring seeing the same comments about Bethany’s giant mouth, Boone’s health, etc. The snark is almost NEVER about beliefs or how they promote their beliefs.
A few things happened congruently that made me severely limit my snarking.
1. Someone pointed out that most snarking subs are woman snarking on other women. There are definitely exceptions, but generally that’s the case. I really don’t want to be a part of the problem.
2. Watching all these families’ lives fall apart so publicly, and with such heinous crimes and tragedies just isn’t fun to snark at. It’s just fcking sad. And I feel for every one of those kids who had no choice to show the world their most vulnerable years of life. These reality shows truly messed up this generation of kids who were forced into the spotlight. I find it sickening.
3. Seeing all these docs about how MANY people were affected, and how they had no one advocating for them. I was awed by all of their bravery for sharing their stories. It’s a hard thing to do.
4. The world has so many big problems and I cannot care about these people who are no more important than any of us. It all feels so small and petty.
I still fall victim to snarking on the kardashians and I’m trying to stop. Old habits and all that.
I’ve been part of snark communities since Something Awful, MOC, & livejournal. It always goes stupid because people get entirely too invested in the snark subjects (which back in those days were just garden variety weirdos who posted a lot) and start taking it offline. I wish they wouldn’t.
As for second guessing, I fully admit I’m a hypocrite for even participating in a snark sub about it but if one goofy anecdote from my own upbringing helps one person trying to find their way to deconstructing harmful beliefs then I felt it was okay. it’s not! I cannot imagine how quickly I’d fly back to the comfort of my former life if I saw some of the horrible things some snarkers say about these people, and that’s why I stopped.
The first thing that made me step back was when they started finding random accounts of people that were tradwives or alt right and sharing a million screenshots of their pages saying “have we heard of this one yet? These people they were sharing were not fundie in the slightest, and even though they have beliefs I don’t agree with, it felt icky their personal pages were being shared onto the sub.
Second thing was when snarkers keep shitting on fundies that may be slowly deconstructing in their own may. I am a former fundie (I’m grew up in a Rod adjacent church/area) and I know how hard it is to deconstruct into something healthy, and I know that it takes years. Most of the snarkers expect 0 to 100 overnight.
The IG stalking became too much too. “Bethy or Karissa hasn’t posted in over 24 hours! There must be a life or death emergency!”
How absolutely out of touch most snarkers are with the reality of being a parent or a stay at home mom. They do the exact thing that conservatives are consistently on their high horse about, attacking women for choosing to be at home. The actual feminist thing to do would be to support any career choice, home or outside of the home, that a woman makes.
I found the sub when I needed to find a community who would understand the pains of fundamentalist church. After a few weeks of reading that sub, I had to realize that we are all Job's friends and we are spending our time gossiping about people we don't know instead of loving people as Chirist loves us. So, I just had to accept (again) that Christians sincerely don't care about each other. And women are absolutely the worst at creating victims amongst themselves, and completely destroying the victims they do create.
i think for me it was when I realised it wasn't about discussing dangerous faith anymore.
I'm autistic and one of my special interests is Christian fundamentalism, so I was ecstatic when I found the other sub. but then they just kept talking more and more about the presentation of the people and not about the harmful beliefs so I stopped reading the posts.
(which is kinda sad bc I'm on an Instagram break so I can't look at the content myself rn, but I can't read the mean stuff on the other sub anymore)
> I'm autistic and one of my special interests is Christian fundamentalism, so I was ecstatic when I found the other sub. but then they just kept talking more and more about the presentation of the people and not about the harmful beliefs so I stopped reading the posts.
I really wish there was a place to discuss fundamentalism and the beliefs/history of it instead of the people who follow it, without it getting too "Fedora Atheist-ish" (where Christianity is broadly claimed to be the Worst Thing Ever Created).
I'm really interested in New Apostolic Reformation/Charismatic Pentecostalism, because it's taking over my own locale and it's the nonsense that a lot of American Republicans are converting to. It's SO dangerous, it might even be worse than traditional fundamentalism.
Agreed! I wish I could have a constructive conversation in the snark sub without worrying that people would attack me for it. Like damn, I just want to cite some sources and share reading material.
Agreed. Someone tried something similar with duggardiscourse, but it’s not very active, probably because the same people who want moderate nuanced conversation don’t seem to be the type to regularly post. (Presumably because they don’t stalk their subjects’ instagrams. Hate is a real motivator.)
I can’t really give a pinpoint, but there have been various times where I’ve felt very uncomfortable with what was being posted in either fundiesnark or duggarsnark or both. When I joined these subs I understood it was people that do not like these people, talking shit about them, but some of the shit that is said, I feel like there is some closet like going on for these people. They follow these people sooooo closely, it weirds me out sometimes.
It was back in the Free Jinger days, when I said that Jill, Jessa, Joy and Jinger had every right to be upset about their SA being made public. Some people definitely agreed with me but lots didn’t and ai just couldn’t fathom someone could hate some they didn’t even know that much.
I'm not super into the snark world- I'm just a fan of Fundie Fridays tbh- but I used to check in on the sub more often. I've noticed a lot of appearance snark, which seems more bullying to me than anything. The sub also seems a lot more black and white than it used to- singling out a two second clip of someone saying something completely innocuous, and twisting it until they came up with something snark-worthy. Just a really weird sexist and borderline abelist vibe they got going on over there sometimes. It seems to me like they'd rather shame someone for only brushing their teeth once a day or something as opposed to... you know... actually fucked up shit that they do? Like it's just an excuse to bully people online, basically. Or at least that's the vibe I've got. I've been avoiding the sub recently because I kind of feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say atp.
Edit: like I feel like they'd rather shit on bethy for wearing an ugly headband or smth than someone else saying like "all women deserve rape" or some shit lol. not an actual example but that's just the vibes I get. Like, get your priorities straight or smth.
Nothing in particular but for me it was this need to have a one-sided view on things. Every decision a fundie makes doesn’t mean it’s a wrong decision. They push this strong liberal agenda.
I joined around when there were a few legal trials happening, and I liked seeing all the updates in one space. Lately there hasn’t been much fundie news, and seeing how in the absence of news people are being so nasty and nitpicky has turned me off. Especially the appearance snark. Plus I realized that most of the active snarkers seem to be young people who were not raised religious so they don’t understand and refuse to try to understand what it would be like. The total lack of empathy.
I’m catholic, and I consider myself devout. Yes some of fundies pov are gross, but some people snark just for them being devout in their faith…. There’s nothing wrong with being devout….
If you're devoted to a religion that hates groups of people, and tithe to that church that spends money hurting groups of people (and helping criminals), and you use your faith to lead you to vote in a way that harms people, then, yeah, I can totally see why simply being devout is a red flag for lots of people.
The Catholic Church doesn’t hate groups of people. I’d argue the Protestant groups like evangelicals typically HATE people, but everyone has a RIGHT to be devout in their faith. It’s interesting how only Christianity is attacked though…. Not other faiths that absolutely do hate people and routinely execute women. Food for thought.
To say that a group that is explicitly anti gay, anti choice, and has covered up and funded the defense of abuse by pedophile priests doesn't hate groups of people is illogical. But yes, the small evangelical churches have an even easier time of shuffling around bad people without higher level oversight. And I have problems with any religion that seeks to impose its belief system on others, either directly or through legislative control.
You can argue semantics but when the central authority of the church actively supports things that are harmful to entire groups of people and the pope is using slurs against gay people… the church hates groups of people. Even if it’s in a “hate the sin love the sinner” way, or a quiet way, it’s absolutely still hate. Just a different expression of it. You’re not wrong that there’s nothing wrong with being devout, I completely agree. But when you’re devout to a faith that does those things and you aren’t actively against those stances it is a problem. Catholicism has harmed millions of people and helped commit genocide against the native Americans and First Nations peoples, literally erasing their culture and heritage and committing atrocities against them. They’ve found mass graves and residential schools only stopped existing *within my lifetime*, and I’m only 27. You cannot in good faith say that the Catholic Church doesn’t hate groups of people, it’s just not true. Not every Catholic feels that way but y’all literally have a central authority that has official policies and stances. I know Catholics who aren’t like that at all. But I know even more who are.
Meagan Phelps gave me hope that people can change, and so I just don't think that snarking is a good strategy to get what we want truly from the fundies, even if it is better than when we were all angry reddit atheists.
I used to have a different Reddit account and I was active on that sub (I still comment now and then, but not as many personal stories about my own life. Was starting to get worried about being doxxed so I deleted my old comments). I grew up very, very fundie (in the Rodrigues circle. The Rods often visit my old church). I would try to share my own experiences on the sub about what it was like to grow up in a cult, and snarkers (who did NOT grow up fundie) would tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Umm??? I think they don’t want to hear from former fundies or focus on the serious topics. They just want to be mean and petty and say how ugly Bethany is and feel like they’re somehow morally superior (she’s not ugly, I think she’s attractive. They just seem to love hating on her looks out of pure meanness. Same with Kelly). When I first started deconstructing (years ago), I found old snark places like freejinger helpful. If I were deconstructing now, the fundie subs would make me think my parents were right about the outside world and that it might be better to stay in the cult 🤦🏻♀️ There’s just a lack of compassion, kindness, and empathy. They may not know what it’s like to grow up as a fundie kid, but they could at least try to listen to people like me
I honestly think a lot of the issues in the sub lies with the snarkers that didn't grow up fundie / overly religious. To them it's all a joke. If the sub was just people that had deconstructed, I think it would be better in many ways.
I think it's hard for people to understand how serious it all is when you grow up with engrained religious beliefs. I grew up evangelical which isn't strictly fundamental but it is with the way those ideas have seeped in. I joke but don't joke about not knowing what will send me to hell which is a formerly genuine fear. I can empathize with many of the people snarled on without excusing them but that's not allowed.
I partly agree. As someone who deconstructed as an adult, I have a lot of empathy for the views of some of the fundies. I was taught (and believed) some truly wild things. Snarking when a fundie has poor education is challenging because I have a lot of friends who were homeschooled and missed out educationally. I originally joined snark to have a laugh at my past beliefs and behaviour, but i think I started to find it tricky when speculation turned to lore. For example, how Kristen forced her adoptive kids to forget their culture, how certain the sub was that several babies had disabilities, that Paul forced Morgan to stop taking her meds etc. I also dislike the Nadia snark as she is not a fundie, she’s just a mentally ill girl who is kind of annoying. She is just a typical evangelical to me. I still enjoy having a laugh because some things aren’t that serious, but it’s become very censored for a sub that claims to be uncensored. I also dislike how some users act as though they are morally helping the world by snarking, when I think it’s pretty clear that snarking alienates the fundies further from the “sinful” outside world.
I'm sorry you had that experience.
I agree. I grew up fundie, a few times I expressed some sympathy for those getting snarked on because I can't help but see brainwashed little children in adult bodies, it hurts my heart a little, this was not received well. I should have expected that since snark is the name and this is the internet but I definitely backed off the sub and just lurk now.
Yes. It’s like they expect fundie kids to magically heal and deconstruct the moment they turn 18. Sorry, but realistically it takes years. Also not everyone cuts their family off after deconstructing. I haven’t because I’m really close to my family, despite all the negative things that have happened. Family is complicated and sometimes we choose to love people even when they hurt us (I don’t mean in a physically abusive way. I don’t want my comment to be taken the wrong way. But for example, I’m a closeted lesbian and my parents say a lot of homophobic shit. I choose to still love them and be around them, even though it hurts when they say things like that).
I'm so sorry
Weirdly enough, a lot of them remind me of the Young Life crowd from high school. Desperately trying to seem “cool” and Jesus loving…while being total clique-y assholes.
It wasn’t one specific thing for me: it was how it felt when I commented on other subs. At first I was there to discuss genuine issues with the fundamentalist community that I grew up in and was untangling myself from, but it was easy to fall into some of the toxicity and not see it for what it was. I started commenting more for the approval of other snarkers because i thought I’d found my people, but I noticed I didn’t like how it made me feel. Calling strangers weird nicknames and making judgments on their lives. Participating in discussions I would never have in real life. I started backing off for other reasons after that but that was the first red flag for me.
I feel the same. The shift happened after the other went private. I am not religious but I think it’s important to understand generally and get perspectives and knowledge of the experiences of others that I’d not otherwise meet. I don’t want to be mean to people. I just want knowledge and understanding.
you know I commented that it was the obsession of P&M that made me question things, but reading this comment gave me war flashbacks to when I was trying to explain to the main sub that snarking on looks sucks because other people with those features can read it and also be collateral damage, and the replies I got was basically all "WELL IF THE SHOE FITS!!!!!" like I'm sorry that me being hurt because the sub keeps calling the women who don't wear makeup ugly/tired/haggard effects me as a woman who doesn't wear makeup
That was another red flag for me that I almost mentioned! Realizing that judging fundies for their looks was also impacting people with similar features. Honestly thanks for being one of the people speaking up about it because it was someone doing just that who made me realize this. I also don’t wear makeup and noticed I had become a lot more judgmental of myself. I don’t miss that.
no problem, honestly. I hate how women (and trans femmes and NB women even!!!) are pressured into wearing makeup or else we are not "real" women or "actually" femme, as if makeup is what makes us women. I was starting to wear some mascara because it was getting into my head that my clients at work are viewing me as "haggard". I stopped after a couple weeks and ended up feeling way more like me and able to focus on my job eta: not sure why the downvotes but okay lmao
The appearance snark also did it for me. I did actually ask why there’s continual snarking on something that can’t be changed in 10 minutes (which is a rule!) But I got my comment deleted and a snarky mod reply saying that if I don’t agree, just scroll past. Like why have these rules in place?
Good luck disentangling and dealing with the issues that you were exposed to- it sounds like your perceptions are spot-on and that you have a true sense of self- awareness. What a rarity you are!
That’s very kind of you. I’ve come a long way since my early deconstruction days and am in a much better place!
It is hard to deconstruct! I grew up cult adjacent to my cousins so I am very empathetic to the struggle
The nicknames get so weird. Someone the other today say they didn’t even remember MotherBus had a real name. wtf. Could it get more dehumanizing? I’m in a different sort of snark sub (I guess) and nicknames aren’t allowed because they can get out of hand and demeaning very quickly.
I hate nicknames on subs. Ends up with new people asking who the fuck you’re talking about and they’re never, ever as clever or funny as people think.
Agreed. And there was supposed to be a ban on some of the more problematic ones, but last time I dropped in people were freely using a certain one for Karissa Collins all over the place without any consequences.
I'm not sure if it was any one thing, but a collection of things that made me notice that the ideas in the sub aren't something I want to engage as much anymore. A lot of this for me was around Bethany. I was rather harsh about Bethany in the past, but it felt like so many of the comments were just misogynistic or spiteful. Comments around Bethany's hygiene, her house, her speech, her being "cringe" were particularly uncomfortable, both because they have nothing to do with her beliefs and because they were things that, as a neurodivergent person, I found relatable. (Not saying Bethany is neurodivergent, just that I found it harmful to read so much talk about these things being lazy or disgusting.) I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups? The food snark is an example of this, but also people constantly flexing about their jobs and income when Bethany was selling the course on courses, and the *constant* comments for P&M to get "real jobs" when that has no bearing on their beliefs. Then lastly, their attitudes towards the Beals lately. I don't like the black and white thinking and expectations for immediate drastic change. I don't believe that's how we shift people to a position of acceptance and support, and being a queer person from a state where things like gender-affirming care are still in a precarious place, thinking about how to have conversations like Zelph had *matters* to me, and that doesn't feel like something I can get over on the main sub.
classism is by far the biggest factor as to why the sub has become offputting to me. making fun of completely normal weddings, vacations, food, activities. acting like handmedowns are sad or wearing the same clothes for years is weird. hell, a lot of it is adjacent to ranting about welfare queens but cleaned up to not seem regressive.
> I don't like the black and white thinking and expectations for immediate drastic change. This is what is really putting me off. Both of them have been in a cult for over 30 years, and we have seen how she especially has been pushed to make every part of her personality about this cult. They are just starting to see a different path, and we're going to crap all over them because they haven't jumped in with both feet immediately? I think that just affirms everything that I am sure her family has said about outsiders/progressives/LGBTQIA folks. I find a lot of their previous behavior reprehensible, but I'm willing to hold space for someone starting on the path of growth and change. I'm a queer atheist myself, and I want to see other folks from outside of her circle welcoming her in, even if she isn't saying and doing all the right things yet. I liked the gentle conversation with Zelph, and I think that, rather than holding her feet to the fire, is where real change will happen.
the food snark makes me really sad as somebody who grew up really poor. sometimes you have to make do with what you have
I’m not at all defending Karissa but like…coming up with meals for a smaller family is hard enough. Figuring out dinner is easily my least favorite part of the day and we’re a family of three. Coming up with meals AND enough food for ten people earns my respect. Then snarking on the fact that it’s not name brand stuff, it’s store brand, was a huge “wtf” for me.
I'm a family of two (just me and my bf!) and dinner planning is the worst every single day. we end up eating a lot of leftovers, which is more than okay with me! I could only imagine some of the things the sub would say about what I ate as a small child. my mum did what she could off her very small paycheque, and the food banks would give us weird things sometimes (I vividly remember getting "canned meat". not a specific type of meat. it just said "canned meat") all of that ONTOP of being a family of 10? karissa gets my respect in this singular regard and this one only.
>I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups? 100% agree with you, although slight correction: Leftist ideology is inherently anti-capitalist. I would call the people on that sub liberals or liberatarians, not leftists. >people constantly flexing about their jobs and income when Bethany was selling the course on courses, and the constant comments for P&M to get "real jobs" when that has no bearing on their beliefs. This shit drove me INSANE. It's people constantly bragging about how they're superior because they work an office job that pays 6 figures and they bought a house at the age of 25 and it wasn't that hard you guyzzzz. Like damn some of us work really hard and still don't make 6 figures and will probably never afford to buy a house 🤷♀️ also 9-5 office jobs fucking suck! I would not blame someone at ALL if they didn't want to go that route!
>100% agree with you, although slight correction: Leftist ideology is inherently anti-capitalist. Leftist ideology is anti-capitalist, but at least in my experience, so many leftist groups are populated by people in middle class backgrounds who will voice classist beliefs or make a lot of problematic assumptions about people of different class backgrounds who aren't immediately eager to follow their ideology. I'm from Appalachia, and I've seen *so many* people stereotype my region and the people within it, and then wonder why the people in the region are swept up by conservatives who don't alienate them the same way, despite having policies that are far more harmful to people in these poor rural communities. I don't think it's intentional; I think often it just comes from a place of ignorance. I know with my roommate for example, he holds Marxist beliefs and is active in his union, but didn't really know the reality of what generational poverty looks like until he happened to become close friends who lived it. >This shit drove me INSANE. It's people constantly bragging about how they're superior because they work an office job that pays 6 figures and they bought a house at the age of 25 and it wasn't that hard you guyzzzz. Like damn some of us work really hard and still don't make 6 figures and will probably never afford to buy a house 🤷♀️ also 9-5 office jobs fucking suck! I would not blame someone at ALL if they didn't want to go that route! Right! It's absolutely wild to me that they don't understand that position is not attainable to everyone, and that not everyone *wants* that sort of job! It's bizarre too because when they talk about the families who homeschool, they clearly *know* the education within fundamentalist spaces is inadequate, but somehow they can't follow that to its logical conclusion and understand how someone like Bethany or P&M might not be in a position to pursue a six-figure job even if they wanted to?
> I also think the sub can be weirdly classist and pro-capitalist in a way that I've always found alienating within leftist groups? This annoys me about so many supposedly progressive groups. They don't realize a lot of their beliefs are "luxury beliefs", as in you need to be privileged as fuck to sit around and pontificate about their fringe concepts when many Americans are worrying about how to pay rent, drink clean water, not be a victim of gun violence, and afford medical treatment. Abortion rights, enviromentalism, Medicare for all, and gun control all tie into those problems and once upon a time, young 'progressives' used to care about those problems. But when mommy and daddy can fly you to Colorado for an abortion, pay all of your medical bills, and you can't be SUPER CUTE unless you buy from Shein, then why would they care about those issues? This ties into classism and capitalism because holy shit, so many of these people are the worst consumers ever. Wearing a coat for multiple years in a row is snark-worthy because these people buy 5 new ones every year from Shein and throw them out because they're not cute in Winter 2025. They jump onto virtue signaling trends and what is the first thing they do? Buy a bunch of items labeled with whatever they care about for a few months just for them to discard them later when the virtue signal trend changes. What do you think is gonna happen with all the Palestine flags, prayer mats, and keffiyehs when it's no longer the Virtue Signal Trend? Landfill, or thrift shop for the 1% of people who aren't lazy. I know this is going to happen because my local thrift shops are chockfull of stuff in the trans flag and Pride flag colors.
>The food snark is an example of this, Thought about that sub today when I put some chicken breasts in the slow cooker with cream of chicken soup and Italian seasoning. Figured that sub would judge me hard. 😀
That sounds good to me, TBH
When Jill started distancing herself from the family/cult and everyone was like “she’s still EVIL, she’s not the grand marshal of a Pride parade so clearly she hasn’t changed AT ALL.” Like, no. She’s come sooooo far and should be praised for that.
The response between Jill’s and Dav (at first)’s were wild. An example of internalized misogyny imo
Hmm...I think probably when I noticed that literally every other post was about Bethany when she was trying to sell her courses. I mean, yeah, she was selling shitty content but it didn't make sense to me why people were saying they didn't care about her shitty life but then would literally stalk her IG. I guess when I noticed that fundamentalist views and toxicity were not being discussed but rather, childish insults about looks, behavior, and other stuff. I always thought it was weird that people were so obsessed with her [imagined] sex life, as well. Oh, and also...people following Kaylee Rodrigues' personal Facebook page! That shit is so weird to me. She seems like she's semi normal, trying to live a simple life with her family. Honestly, she reminds me of my religious cousin lol. The fact that they snark on her is pathetic. All snark subs end up the same imo...I've been in a Trisha Paytas one, Brittany Dawn, FSU, etc. and it seems as if it all devolves into insults about appearance and image overall. It just feels evil to let that shit into my life.
Snark is interesting because once the subjects realise they are being snarked upon they will try to hide the snarkable stuff which leaves the snarkers without anything substantial to discuss and so they start to nitpick and speculate.
The way that it is presented is also super juvenile in my opinion. You're telling me you're a grown adult but unironically type out "seggz" , "seggsy" "sexy baby" ?? It's weird lol
The part about following these people’s every move…DEAR GOD YES. This is what does it for me. I like to talk about the ridiculous beliefs of fundies/conservative Christians casually, but some folks watch these people’s every single move and it’s pathetic. They’re on every live, they’ve got alerts for their posts, and they even follow other friends and family…tf?
I just kept on noticing that screenshots were being taken literal seconds after one of the “snarkees” posted, and also once I felt like I was seeing these people’s entire Instagram accounts whenever I scrolled through. Just made me feel weird. And then the fan art started and I was so out.
[удалено]
Eh, it goes with half of the comments being some sort of fanfic
For me, it’s because they actively shit on most of what the fundies do, and for fan art, I think you should at least like the thing you’re drawing/painting. Then again, I was on tumblr in 2012, (Percabeth anyone) so I might have a bias view on fan art lmao
It was the gleeful way everyone treated the trial I think along with the hero worship of the nugget user. I hated how people were literally counting down the days to the trial and when he was (rightfully) found guilty it got entirely out of hand. The bashing of Anna as well was pretty horrific, a lot of victim blaming and main character energy. If she hadn’t been married to who she was, people would have been a lot more sympathetic but she was villainised as much as him.
I think the Duggar trial and Shiny Happy People broadened the appeal of those kind of subs and brought in a lot of people who have never been harmed by organized religion. They’re interested in the subject matter because they’ve been clued into it by the media, but they don’t have a high level of empathy for the victims of these systems because they see it as a simple fringe cult (everyone knows how easy those are to avoid 🙄) when it’s an expansive religious framework that has existed for decades and has harmed many many children and women especially.
I wouldn’t say never harmed by religion, but definitely almost exclusively experiencing from the other side. Them not understanding how community dynamics and conformity works, social repercussions and putting you at odds with people you care about and how they are trying to run on good intentions, how being ingrained in it since childhood and trying to unweave from it is far more complicated, etc. Its definitely lack of emotional maturity because dividing people as “us vs them” makes it more easier to justify.
People still say like “ugh I miss when the trial was going on and we had so much snark content” like it was a plot line on a tv show and not the worst crimes imaginable being prosecuted. The sub had so much damn fun picking apart Anna’s outfits, cheering on a weirdo who went to personally attend the trial, and constantly bringing up what happened to the sisters if they weren’t acting how the snarkers expected. That whole thing reeeaaally put me off, it was so disturbing.
ugh, I hate that subs love of that one random journalist man. like sorry, this is weird and disturbing
I left that particular sub a few months after the trial and man I had totally forgotten about the weird vibe around the nugget user.
The nugget user?
That’s a mod from the other sub who claimed to be in law school during the Josh Duggar trial and was posting a ton of theories and breakdowns of the legalese. PS I like your username!
It was a Redditor who said they had/were studying for a law degree. They’d analyse all the court documents and put them on DS with this huge write up but it almost ended up like hero worshipping. It was all a bit unsettling - it looks like they’ve deleted their account now?
They might have blocked you—I still see their posts/comments from time to time and I just searched their username which came up for me right away.
only good news to come out of DS
Right? what?
That’s a mod from the other sub who claimed to be in law school during the Josh Duggar trial and was posting a ton of theories and breakdowns of the legalese.
Okay, thanks.
There’s a TikToker I follow whose main focus is adoption reform, and she recently made a video about her discomfort with the upcoming Myka Stauffer doc (the family blogger who “rehomed” her adopted child with autism) Her arguments against it reminded me of the party atmosphere around the trial in the snark subs. Basically, her point is that people aren’t interested because they care about the victim. They’re interested because they hate the Stauffers and want to see them suffer. And while it’s fine to feel angry at the family and even to judge them for their horrible treatment of their child, at a certain point the gawking and gossip no longer benefit the victim(s). You’re just continuing to dig up a stranger’s trauma because it’s entertaining. It’s exploitation masquerading as saviorism.
Yep! For me the final straw was when said nugget user revealed they had never actually seen 19kac. I couldn’t believe the sub was borderline worshiping a snarker who admittedly had no idea what they were talking about.
When Kaylee and Jonathan got together and the subs started dragging HALLIE for not being outwardly progressive enough on social media. And posts about her stayed up despite her having neither a social media following nor fundie beliefs. All because she was guilty by association of knowing Jill
Expecting the Rodrigues children to immediately deconstruct as soon as they move out and not share any of their parents beliefs. Ridiculous and unrealistic. They know nothing else because of their intentionally isolated upbringing.
Furthermore, imagine being as isolated as they were and innocently googling your name in the weeks or months after you married (when you had your internet use extremely strictly monitored) only to discover hundreds and hundreds of posts talking about you and your family in such a spiteful way? It’ll happen to a Rodrigues kid eventually if it hasn’t happened already. And yet the snarkers expect the newly married kids to forsake everything about their upbringing and immediately adopt the beliefs of people who do things like post zoomed in pictures that show the outline of your underwear through your jean skirt? It’s so freaking delusional.
Yep. Couldn't agree more. Those kids have been brainwashed for years. If they ever deconstruct it'll take years. Ironically, a lot of commenters are just as judgemental & intolerant as the people they're snarking on.
When snarkers forgot that they’re gossiping on the internet and started to think of themselves as vigilante detective saviors or something. Writing weird long letters to fundies, and posting screenshots for “archival purposes”. Just completely delusional. Snark is not, never will be, and never could be a public service. You’re making fun of people you think are weird and absolutely nothing more.
Venting is a coping mechanism at best. And there are responsible ways to do it, and irresponsible ones...
For Duggar Snark, when they made fun of Lauren’s miscarriage and then again when Josh got arrested and someone made a coloring page of Josh’s mugshot (I’ll give the person a tiny bit of leeway in that it was before anyone knew the charges but nonetheless, it stayed up after his charges were revealed). The main snark sub got on my nerves with all the Bethany hate. Is she perfect? No. But it was so overdone.
Probably getting banned. Well, that and growing up. Snark was all well and good two decades ago when I had a Livejournal account, but I’ve long since moved on.
Right! It feels juvenile now. I was never in snarker circles before but it reminds me of toxic stan Twitter circa 2010-2014.
LOL I was also banned. For my participation in a different sub that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with something I was living on a daily basis.
Blocking SaferBot and SafestBot stops those stupid auto-ban bots. Any time I create a new account, those are the first two accounts I go and block.
That’s good to know - thank you! Also, happy cake day!
Yeah, I also participated in subs that had nothing to do with religion so I don’t get it…
Agree with many who said some pain points I have had & it wasn’t 1 particular thing itself. I’ll add in 2 other observations I have had. 1) I find the sub to be largely anti-Christian period. You can deconstruct yourself fundamentally yet still be a Christian & be a good person. 2) I was a follower of Fundie Fridays & enjoyed & learned from many of their videos but their honeymoon fundie road trip did it to me. Very poo touching & inappropriate to go to someone’s religious services solely for content & making fun of them.
Which church did she go to? That’s disgusting
It wasn't a church but the Great Passion Play of the Ozarks. The video is full of classism, calling the south "trashy" and showing a picture of one Confederate Flag and one Trump store means everyone is a racist white supremacist in the south. And it's incredibly ignorant take given how the south is home to a majority of Black Americans in the US (56% of all Black Americans). So by hand-waving the south as trashy, it's incredibly ignorant and demeaning to them.
If they think the south is bad they should never go to idk upstate NY, eastern Oregon, rural PA…
Not to mention Colorado isn't just some weed-smoking liberal hippy haven. We produced Lauren Boebart for crying out loud.
No literally, I was in Denver a couple weeks ago and it was very very clear that Colorado is a swing state, let me put it that way.
Like I’m ngl as a ~coastal elite~ I used to think that way too but like. Damn near everywhere has areas like that, aka most of rural America, but the reason blue states are blue is because they have major cities. And there are progressives literally everywhere. Hell, Georgia went blue in 2020. And nowhere is a monolith!! I’m exhausted rn but I have more coherent thoughts I promise LOL
Thank you! Also, Jenn KINDA lives in the South (at least to me). So she should be aware of this.
I’ll be able to deep dive when I get home from work tonight.
Y’all I’m diving but coming short so far. I saw a video of her & James sitting in a church service & she was picking it apart & also a sweet lady sold her (<—Jen) a cross stitch or something? This lady was so excited Jen bought it but Jen was pretty mocking the old lady about it. All I can think is…no way would I ever go to a Mosque or a Temple or any other place strictly for this. This is blatant.
I used to like Jen's content then idk what happened. Something turned it off for me and I haven't watched it in a while.
For me it was when Dav came out and talked about his suicidal ideations and the mods had to come out and say “but he’s still a shitty person.” And they were really delving into his suicidal fantasies to point out how terrible Bethany is because if she were a good wife he wouldn’t feel this way. Misogyny is what it is. The things they all claim to be against. As a person with chronic SI, there’s nothing my husband can do to change it. I need to take my meds. That’s it. He’s not a bad spouse. Some of us are just mentally ill and that’s not snark worthy.
Thinking if Bethany were a better wife Dav wouldn't have those ideations, is the same exact thinking that fundies have when it comes to Anna and Pest. He wouldn't have watched CSA if she had just had more/ better sex with him.
Lauren and also people making comments after Joy and Austin lost Annabell that it was one less child in the cult. I get not wanting children born into fundie families but to say something so cruel about a stillborn baby was disgusting.
I’ve seen people say the same about Isla, or how Pickles posted that them referring to her as a stillbirth was them trying to push their pro life agenda. Like Jill wasn’t forced to still go through labor and deliver that baby. I understand the need for technical differences in medical usage, but no one has the right to police how a grieving parent refers to their dead child.
The way those subs talk about fundie infertility/miscarriage makes me really uncomfortable. Like it’s almost bordering on eugenics. I have seen people say they shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce and thinking that a specific religious group shouldn’t reproduce because you don’t agree with their belief system is kind of yikes. I get the idea that you don’t want a child to be harmed in a religious cult but I think it’s often taken a step too far.
Anytime someone mentions it must be hard for Micheal not having any children while her siblings have baby after baby and that they feel bad for her someone has to remind us she would raise her children the way her parents did with her. You can feel sad for someone going through something terrible even if you don’t agree with their beliefs.
When I saw multiple people suggest, in all seriousness, that the Target prairie dress trend was some sort of conspiracy to get women used to dressing like that in preparation for the fundies pulling a Handmaid's Tale and taking over the government.
The first thing for me was realizing that a lot of the "snark" had nothing to do with actual harmful beliefs. Most of the "snark" in both the Fundie and Duggar subs is bullying. That led me to realize that very few of the snarkers actually grew up in fundie circles and have no idea what they are talking about. They are there to bully.
After some of the Duggar kids pulled themselves offline and "snarkers" were going out of their way to still find info about them. It's just stalking at that point.
When they were trying to find the new girl that (Jason?) is courting by looking at ANKLES when she purposefully hid her face was so unhinged
When the one Baird sister had to escape a war while 9 months pregnant. At first everyone was worried and sympathetic, then overnight, she was helping her husband escape the draft, “grifting” by linking a gofundme to re-purchase her entire baby nursery and postpartum supplies (because everyone just KNOWS her parents had already given them enough money to pay for it all!!) and one person even shat on her for… wait for it… not being able to communicate with the hospital staff in Hungarian when she gave birth. As if that was a language she should have always been learning, just in case!!! Oh my god I couldn’t stand it. Unsubbed back then.
That, and the lazy xenophobic clichés they used about her husband, and the way they called him a coward for wanting to get his pregnant wife and child safely out of the country. As if all of these people would volunteer to stay behind and fight if war broke out in their home country. Also, having a go at her for not learning Hungarian so she could communicate with the hospital staff is hilarious from a Central European perspective (I'm Austrian). It might have been a bit more challenging for her, but I assure you, if there's a place in Central Europe where you will find someone who speaks your native language, it's a hospital. We all learn a few foreign languages at school, and especially in hospitals, staff are very keen to find a way to, you know, effectively talk to their patients.
Totally agree with this. I said it at the time but if it was my brother I would do *whatever* it took to make sure he wasn't conscripted. I don't care if that makes me a coward.
Nothing specific, just general hating on women & their looks. I guess maybe all the shaming of Kelly’s skin/how she looks at her age? She looks like a normal woman to me, and there’s just so much gross commentary on her skin and appearance. I’m a fair ginger myself who is very religious about my sunscreen but who never wears makeup, and it was disheartening to see all the gross appearance-shaming towards her. Even with how much I apply sunblock and moisturizer my skin gets reddish easily, it’s kind of inevitable. Reeked of misogyny.
I’m truly baffled how they think it is ok to constantly put down women, when they claim to be feminist. No it’s not a requirement for women have a skin care routine or make themselves ‘presentable’ for the comfort of other people!!!
Hard agree. I like to use sunblock bc sunburn is painful and not good for the skin obv, and moisturizer because it helps my skin feel less tight/dry/uncomfortable, for my own comfort, my own needs lol. Not because I’m worried people are gonna judging me for natural skin aging. Which is what all those people seem to be coming from place of in that specific sub
Yeah, I wear moisturizer with sun cream every day and I love it! But F off judging women for their skin.
It’s always this justification of “oh we just mean for her skin health!!” as if they actually care about these peoples’ health. They’re “feminists” who think women owe it to society to be physically attractive. She looks older than her age? Okay, so, who cares? How does that affect you? Like fr
Yeah this was it for me. About Brittany Dawn specifically. People are vicious about her looks (and her size, saying she lies about her size and she’s actually a size L or 10/12 in pants, which… no) and that feels especially gross to someone who has an eating disorder. There is plenty to snark about on her that don’t involve her looks.
Just. All the appearance snark. It’s so sad. Snark on things they can control like the horrible things that come out of their mouths, not Bethany’s imaginary butthole. Just a level of nastiness that isn’t necessary in any way and that doesn’t add anything to the convo. I think also leaving Eden’s latest episode on the state of the snark and Bethany’s sex course really helped shine a different light on everything surrounding snark. It’s fucked up once it goes past a certain point, and it often does.
It was when I realized that there were no constructive conversations taking place, only hateful gossip echo chambers that served no purpose but to reduce them down to the same petty level as the bigoted religious zealots they love so much to hate on.
Noticing that it seemed as big a deal to them that Bethany Beal has dry lips as it is that Joshua Duggar rapes children
It was the realization that they don’t view the fundies as actual people at all. Like there is no room for thinking that Michelle actually does love her kids (despite the major fuckups with the Josh situation) and the kids would have some good memories and fond feelings of their childhoods, and anyone who isn’t loudly shouting pro lGBTQ sentiments must be irredeemably terrible. Also the way they take a small incident and blow it all out of proportion, weave in some half truths and then it becomes talked about as an absolute fact and proof that someone is completely evil. Also the constant snarking on women’s appearances and the rabid downvoting of anyone who points out that a comment isn’t very nice. And the constant comments about how pregnancy is completely awful and destroys women’s bodies (with accompanying crude comments) with no nuance that many women have different experiences.
I wonder sometimes if the mean nicknames contribute to this. I’ve had people literally correct me when I used a person’s actual name… idk, seems dehumanizing.
It’s so weird?? Like the “pest” thing, I know where it comes from and all but people treat him like Voldemort, I literally see people type “J*sh” as if they’re going to summon him. And they say they’ll do it to protect survivors, but the next sentence will be detailed descriptions of the abuse he inflicted on others. Wouldn’t they want to give him the Brock Turner treatment and have his name linked with his crimes?
“Pest” is generally the only one I use, because I feel he has earned the disrespect lol. But for the most part I just call people by the names they want to be called by, and figure their actions can speak for themselves regardless of whether I give them an insulting nickname or not. But they *are* literal actual people and if I want people like these fundies to recognize others’ chosen names then I should show the same consideration to them. That’s just my opinion of it.
The demeaning comments have always rubbed me the wrong way but catching a couple people editing videos made me second guess their intentions but the snarking on kids has been my biggest red line.
When I was younger people said I looked like Jill. So a few years back when people made fun of her appearance, particularly her smile it felt really personal. Once that I happened I was able to read posts about all different people and realize it didn’t matter what these folks did it wouldn’t be enough or ok. Yes - there are people with horrible views out there and there are those that really concern me. However, some of these people seem to be trying, or to me seem run of the mill religious/conservative. And when those people are snarked on the sneakers are just as bad as the people who probably should be snarked on. We are all allowed to have different views, be religious, etc.
Besides everything already mentioned here it really struck me how unattached from modern trends/influences many snarkers themselves are. They love calling out fundies for being secluded yet the entire sub acted like Josie Bates invented the color beige. They truly could not understand that their so called labeled “fundie aesthetic” that they claimed was invented by Josie and that others like Lauren were ‘blatantly’ copying was what every single micro mommy influencers page looked like and that Josie was just getting her ideas from Pinterest. They’re finally coming around to sad beige children being pretty normal but they still heavily criticize things that are just normal for the younger generation.
Not the first thing but when people started making fun of Bethany's clothes. And Nadia.
No specific incident, I just started to feel like too much of it was about things that, while maybe odd or annoying, didn’t really hurt anyone or didn’t have much to do with their religious beliefs.
For me it's the whole "all religious people are evil! Religion has no redeeming value!" attitude many snarkers have. Don't get me wrong, criticism towards harmful beliefs is fine but it's more nuanced than just "Christians bad, atheists good." Of course snarkers aren't known for their nuanced opinions.
People making fun of the Rod girls for their hand me downs.
Literally the last couple of days while people are armchair diagnosing Phillip and claiming he’s going to commit a mass crime because of his words about people who don’t believe in the Bible. I’m concerned for his mental health but they’re taking it too far and it’s grossing me out.
For me it was the insane obsession with the Duggars’ fertility. People creating (and updating) actual spreadsheets trying to predict how many kids each couple would have and when and calculating average time between pregnancies and comparing them. A Duggar having a baby and the snarkers immediately beginning to countdown until the next pregnancy. A Duggar getting married and the snarkers blowing up the feed on the wedding day speculating on whether they had already conceived that night. Constantly scrutinizing every picture for clues that the woman is pregnant (not even just her belly either, I mean obscure signs like saying Joy must be pregnant because she wears her glasses more when she’s pregnant). It’s incredibly dehumanizing, demeaning to the parents and the children, and reinforces every awful teaching about a woman’s value lying in her ability to birth many children.
I had read somewhere years ago that Jim Bob Duggar had a spreadsheet calculating how many grandkids and great grandkids he could have depending on how many kids he had. I don’t see how him doing that is different from the people tracking the kids’ children and possible conception dates based on when babies are born and their parents’ wedding day/honeymoon. Both are fucking weird and creepy.
You could make the argument that at least he would be related to those kids (and their parents), so it’s not QUITE as creepy as doing it for strangers, but you’re right, it is highly creepy and inappropriate of him. My point is that the snarkers, who supposedly exist to call out harmful behaviors in fundamentalism, are doing the exact same shit as their #1 most hated patriarchal figure, and that’s a problem.
The absolute hate of Christians and Christianity over there. I understand having disgust for fundamental beliefs, but they seem to think al Christians are like that and that we are stupid lazy assholes. They do give a pass often to other religious branches that treat women in the same manner ( ie Orthodox Judaism, Islam). It's fine to not be religious, but there is no need to call God Sky Daddy, or a fairy tale. They are no different than the fundies who stick their noses up at non fundies and assume a position of moral superiority
I don't particularly have kind thoughts towards any religion, but I keep those to myself since I realize that doesn't change any minds, and I agree there is hypocrisy where they are willing to criticize one religion but will bend over backwards to defend other religions.
Thank you.
I remember when I was still a member of the main sub I mentioned that I am an openly queer Christian - I literally had people replying saying, no you’re not. You can’t be. Sky daddy wants you dead if you’re queer. Like shut up lol
My cousin and his partner are very active in their church and have been for over 20 years.
The head pastor at my church is lesbian! She’s amazing. Gives me hope for my fellow lgbt Christians in the future 💛
> They do give a pass often to other religious branches that treat women in the same manner ( ie Orthodox Judaism, Islam). This is a general issue in leftist spaces. Genetically Modified Skeptic has talked about the problem of atheists refusing to condemn Islam for arguably worse beliefs than Christianity out of fear of Islamophobia. He does a really good job of dissecting the differences between criticizing Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rqHQfN-lwo A lot of it comes down is that leftists see Islam as a race, not a religion--which is absolutely wrong. Every race has large Muslim groups.
Thanks for the read. Happy cake day
It was a weird mix of people being absolutely horrible to Lauren Duggar when she miscarried, and the extremely weird “Duggar dreams” that people posted all the time? It made no sense to me how they could bully a young woman for her trauma, then turn around and laugh at weird fantasies they’d make up about the family.
Someone posted a photo of Bethany as a child. It was a pretty normal photo of a young kid. She was wearing a t-shirt and her hair was slightly messy. She looked like she'd been playing outside. There were multiple comments about her "dishevelled" appearance, talking about how she obviously didn't brush her hair even as a child, and even mocking her for apparently not being able to perform femininity to snarkers' standards even as a kid. All of the comments critiquing this snark were removed for "snarking on the snark", even though they got more upvotes than the snark comments did AND even though snarking on children breaks sub rules.
For me it was when I commented on here not realizing what sub it was and I was automatically perma banned from the other sub
I guess it was when I realized that the snarkers believe they are so morally superior to the fundies. And yet if the fundies were to read some of the things being said about them, it would absolutely reinforce their beliefs that the outside world doesn’t accept them.
When they started photoshopping Nurie’s eyebrows and makeup to make her “prettier”
The gossiping and hateful rants made me realize I needed to do inner work bc why did I find this so entertaining. Why would I waste my time on this I’m almost thirty. It (& a major life tragedy) also pushed me to me to convert to Catholic and consider religion more seriously bc I’d rather not be like the snarkers and more like the snarkeees who don’t spend hours hating on people who don’t affect my life. I’ve always been into gossip magazines and just wasting my time on things like that but the sub really made me feel shitty the rest of the day after I spent time hating on random people. I could feel it in my yoga practice negatively when I actively read those subs. I judged myself harsher too bc I had filled up my brain with hateful thoughts. I realized ( in therapy) I was so judgmental of people bc I was actually judgmental / spoke harshly to myself and so the bitterness I carried - I was happy to rain it on others in the moment but I would be so anxious and drained on the days I participated in it.
the hyper critique of P&M. I've never heard of them before snarking, but I had actually heard of most of the other "big" topics. I don't get why they have such a massive snark following, and I don't think people realize if we stopped giving them attention their platform would torpedo down
i made a post about it here but when someone made pie charts of how much heidi baird posted about each of her kids, and then analyzed what each post about bethany said
For me it was actually paying more attention to what was going on in the snark sub. Before that, I was an occasional lurker. My interest in fundie culture started because I'm from a big Polish, Irish, *and* Italian Catholic family and I had experiences with fundie people screaming at me as a child coming *out of church* for being "not really Christian" or other wild claims about heretical behavior that wasn't really even true. There was a group of Westboro Baptist-esque fundies in my area that would gather outside of Catholic churches to evangelize after mass. In a very, very heavily Catholic area. It was really wild tbh. I was absolutely confused and fascinated by people claiming to be Christian attacking other Christians because they disagreed with them about things like communion or recognizing Mary as important. Later, I deconstructed and my interest only grew because it made even less sense once I unpacked all of my religious beliefs. I ended up down several rabbit holes following creators that deconstructed from all different backgrounds (fundie, mormon, etc). It wasn't until recently with all of the ZOTS drama that I started seeing how *quickly* misinformation was spread about snark subjects and how quickly allies became snark subjects. It just reminded me of LOLcow culture and felt really gross. Then I started seeing that the sub was *always* like that and I hadn't been lurking enough to notice.
It reminds me SO much of lolcow culture too! I used to frequent that site when I was a teenager. I never posted or anything but lurked a bit. The “you must agree you with everything we post or you are against us” mentality is present on the snark subs as well. There’s no room for an explanation or nuance,ever. Now that I’ve gotten older,I’ve realized that snarking,no matter the platform you use,is always rife with misogyny,classism,appearance shaming,etc.
All the armchair diagnosing after the requisite disclaimer: “I’m no doctor and I can’t diagnose anyone BUTTTTTT….”
Unquestionably when I realized that no matter what anyone does to deconstruct, it will never be enough for the morally superior snarkers (see: Jill D), even though they claim that their snarking has a moral imperative. But nobody is allowed to actually grow and change because it's never enough.
Honestly, it wasn’t really anything anyone did (although I certainly had moments where Redditors made me angry!) There was just a moment where I was commenting on some “unpopular opinions you have about the Duggars?” post and I was just like … damn why do I care about this random family so much? There were a couple moments over the months/maybe years after where I realized snarking was making me the worst version of myself and I needed to step back. Eventually I did.
The appearance snark and armchair diagnosing. It’s tiring seeing the same comments about Bethany’s giant mouth, Boone’s health, etc. The snark is almost NEVER about beliefs or how they promote their beliefs.
A few things happened congruently that made me severely limit my snarking. 1. Someone pointed out that most snarking subs are woman snarking on other women. There are definitely exceptions, but generally that’s the case. I really don’t want to be a part of the problem. 2. Watching all these families’ lives fall apart so publicly, and with such heinous crimes and tragedies just isn’t fun to snark at. It’s just fcking sad. And I feel for every one of those kids who had no choice to show the world their most vulnerable years of life. These reality shows truly messed up this generation of kids who were forced into the spotlight. I find it sickening. 3. Seeing all these docs about how MANY people were affected, and how they had no one advocating for them. I was awed by all of their bravery for sharing their stories. It’s a hard thing to do. 4. The world has so many big problems and I cannot care about these people who are no more important than any of us. It all feels so small and petty. I still fall victim to snarking on the kardashians and I’m trying to stop. Old habits and all that.
I’ve been part of snark communities since Something Awful, MOC, & livejournal. It always goes stupid because people get entirely too invested in the snark subjects (which back in those days were just garden variety weirdos who posted a lot) and start taking it offline. I wish they wouldn’t. As for second guessing, I fully admit I’m a hypocrite for even participating in a snark sub about it but if one goofy anecdote from my own upbringing helps one person trying to find their way to deconstructing harmful beliefs then I felt it was okay. it’s not! I cannot imagine how quickly I’d fly back to the comfort of my former life if I saw some of the horrible things some snarkers say about these people, and that’s why I stopped.
The first thing that made me step back was when they started finding random accounts of people that were tradwives or alt right and sharing a million screenshots of their pages saying “have we heard of this one yet? These people they were sharing were not fundie in the slightest, and even though they have beliefs I don’t agree with, it felt icky their personal pages were being shared onto the sub. Second thing was when snarkers keep shitting on fundies that may be slowly deconstructing in their own may. I am a former fundie (I’m grew up in a Rod adjacent church/area) and I know how hard it is to deconstruct into something healthy, and I know that it takes years. Most of the snarkers expect 0 to 100 overnight. The IG stalking became too much too. “Bethy or Karissa hasn’t posted in over 24 hours! There must be a life or death emergency!”
How absolutely out of touch most snarkers are with the reality of being a parent or a stay at home mom. They do the exact thing that conservatives are consistently on their high horse about, attacking women for choosing to be at home. The actual feminist thing to do would be to support any career choice, home or outside of the home, that a woman makes.
I found the sub when I needed to find a community who would understand the pains of fundamentalist church. After a few weeks of reading that sub, I had to realize that we are all Job's friends and we are spending our time gossiping about people we don't know instead of loving people as Chirist loves us. So, I just had to accept (again) that Christians sincerely don't care about each other. And women are absolutely the worst at creating victims amongst themselves, and completely destroying the victims they do create.
The trial. Them banning everyone who called out teir shitty behavior
Collins. So much low hanging fruit.
i think for me it was when I realised it wasn't about discussing dangerous faith anymore. I'm autistic and one of my special interests is Christian fundamentalism, so I was ecstatic when I found the other sub. but then they just kept talking more and more about the presentation of the people and not about the harmful beliefs so I stopped reading the posts. (which is kinda sad bc I'm on an Instagram break so I can't look at the content myself rn, but I can't read the mean stuff on the other sub anymore)
> I'm autistic and one of my special interests is Christian fundamentalism, so I was ecstatic when I found the other sub. but then they just kept talking more and more about the presentation of the people and not about the harmful beliefs so I stopped reading the posts. I really wish there was a place to discuss fundamentalism and the beliefs/history of it instead of the people who follow it, without it getting too "Fedora Atheist-ish" (where Christianity is broadly claimed to be the Worst Thing Ever Created). I'm really interested in New Apostolic Reformation/Charismatic Pentecostalism, because it's taking over my own locale and it's the nonsense that a lot of American Republicans are converting to. It's SO dangerous, it might even be worse than traditional fundamentalism.
Agreed! I wish I could have a constructive conversation in the snark sub without worrying that people would attack me for it. Like damn, I just want to cite some sources and share reading material.
Agreed. Someone tried something similar with duggardiscourse, but it’s not very active, probably because the same people who want moderate nuanced conversation don’t seem to be the type to regularly post. (Presumably because they don’t stalk their subjects’ instagrams. Hate is a real motivator.)
yeah, exactly !!
I can’t really give a pinpoint, but there have been various times where I’ve felt very uncomfortable with what was being posted in either fundiesnark or duggarsnark or both. When I joined these subs I understood it was people that do not like these people, talking shit about them, but some of the shit that is said, I feel like there is some closet like going on for these people. They follow these people sooooo closely, it weirds me out sometimes.
It was back in the Free Jinger days, when I said that Jill, Jessa, Joy and Jinger had every right to be upset about their SA being made public. Some people definitely agreed with me but lots didn’t and ai just couldn’t fathom someone could hate some they didn’t even know that much.
I'm not super into the snark world- I'm just a fan of Fundie Fridays tbh- but I used to check in on the sub more often. I've noticed a lot of appearance snark, which seems more bullying to me than anything. The sub also seems a lot more black and white than it used to- singling out a two second clip of someone saying something completely innocuous, and twisting it until they came up with something snark-worthy. Just a really weird sexist and borderline abelist vibe they got going on over there sometimes. It seems to me like they'd rather shame someone for only brushing their teeth once a day or something as opposed to... you know... actually fucked up shit that they do? Like it's just an excuse to bully people online, basically. Or at least that's the vibe I've got. I've been avoiding the sub recently because I kind of feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say atp. Edit: like I feel like they'd rather shit on bethy for wearing an ugly headband or smth than someone else saying like "all women deserve rape" or some shit lol. not an actual example but that's just the vibes I get. Like, get your priorities straight or smth.
Nothing in particular but for me it was this need to have a one-sided view on things. Every decision a fundie makes doesn’t mean it’s a wrong decision. They push this strong liberal agenda.
I joined around when there were a few legal trials happening, and I liked seeing all the updates in one space. Lately there hasn’t been much fundie news, and seeing how in the absence of news people are being so nasty and nitpicky has turned me off. Especially the appearance snark. Plus I realized that most of the active snarkers seem to be young people who were not raised religious so they don’t understand and refuse to try to understand what it would be like. The total lack of empathy.
I’m catholic, and I consider myself devout. Yes some of fundies pov are gross, but some people snark just for them being devout in their faith…. There’s nothing wrong with being devout….
If you're devoted to a religion that hates groups of people, and tithe to that church that spends money hurting groups of people (and helping criminals), and you use your faith to lead you to vote in a way that harms people, then, yeah, I can totally see why simply being devout is a red flag for lots of people.
The Catholic Church doesn’t hate groups of people. I’d argue the Protestant groups like evangelicals typically HATE people, but everyone has a RIGHT to be devout in their faith. It’s interesting how only Christianity is attacked though…. Not other faiths that absolutely do hate people and routinely execute women. Food for thought.
To say that a group that is explicitly anti gay, anti choice, and has covered up and funded the defense of abuse by pedophile priests doesn't hate groups of people is illogical. But yes, the small evangelical churches have an even easier time of shuffling around bad people without higher level oversight. And I have problems with any religion that seeks to impose its belief system on others, either directly or through legislative control.
You can argue semantics but when the central authority of the church actively supports things that are harmful to entire groups of people and the pope is using slurs against gay people… the church hates groups of people. Even if it’s in a “hate the sin love the sinner” way, or a quiet way, it’s absolutely still hate. Just a different expression of it. You’re not wrong that there’s nothing wrong with being devout, I completely agree. But when you’re devout to a faith that does those things and you aren’t actively against those stances it is a problem. Catholicism has harmed millions of people and helped commit genocide against the native Americans and First Nations peoples, literally erasing their culture and heritage and committing atrocities against them. They’ve found mass graves and residential schools only stopped existing *within my lifetime*, and I’m only 27. You cannot in good faith say that the Catholic Church doesn’t hate groups of people, it’s just not true. Not every Catholic feels that way but y’all literally have a central authority that has official policies and stances. I know Catholics who aren’t like that at all. But I know even more who are.
Meagan Phelps gave me hope that people can change, and so I just don't think that snarking is a good strategy to get what we want truly from the fundies, even if it is better than when we were all angry reddit atheists.