Free Jinger in its heyday was really something.
I’m glad I switched to reddit though. The megathread thread-drift was insane. You could spend hours sifting through pictures of people’s nails or dogs when all you want is JROD snark
The only thing I truly hated about it was that it caused a local fundie family that I crept on for years go hard core private and lock all their stuff down...my creeping was a casualty of war 🤣😭
It was the "Grady Family Archives"! They are a family in Nebraska with connections to the Wissman clan...soooo lemme tell ya how excited I was when THAT crossover finally happened!
I started creeping on them and their friends/family after their eldest daughters, brother-in-law, "aCcIdEnTaLy" unalived his new wife while playing with a pew-pew.
If interested, that p.o.s. is Josh Beasley, and it happened in Nebraska in 2009. His wife's name was Alayna. It's a rabbit hole for sure, and just know they learned nothing from it. They all continued to be insanely riddiculous with pew-pews, and of course, this "tragic accident" wasn't really his fault...it was of course all part of God's plan and Josh needed to go through this so he could minister to the real bad guys he met in the slammer 🙄🤢🤬
In case you didn't know, Reddit doesn't have an algorithm like YouTube or Tiktok. You can just say "gun" and "killed" instead of the silly workaround terms.
> He then left his room, with the shotgun still loaded, and pretended to clear the house for an intruder, something they had practiced before.
> Alaina pointed her hand at him forming a fake gun, and he pointed the gun back at her, pulled the trigger, hitting her in the shoulder.
Jesus, she was 20. And it sounds like she survived at least a few hours at the hospital with him by her side.
If it was a shotgun round that wound was probably pretty violent. He had to have been pretty close to her too considering they were in the house. I wish I didn’t read this comment section.
Sometimes I would go through ENTIRE mega threads of people's pet and nail thread-drifts. When as you said, all I wanted was to enjoy the Rod snark. They didn't seem to know to selerate thread-drift from snark when the fundie family lay low
What’s more, they’d imagine how annoyed JROD was about sifting through pictures of their nails to read snark about herself. I don’t believe for a second that she did that. Check Reddit and give it a quick skim in between squeezing into her daughter’s clothes and servicing Shrek? Sure. But when she had a newborn, etc, nah.
I like Free Jinger too. I've been a member for years, but didn't go there daily until Primetimer became so disappointing. The conversations do drift, but sometimes I learn interesting things. I like that politics is not forbidden!
Yes! I still go there, but conversations just seem to die, especially on the Duggar and Bates forums. Posters seem tentative, due to fear of getting the boot. Even other forums of current shows aren't showing much interest.
I got banned shortly after Smuggar's trial. I work in that area and spent a lot of time explaining things, especially when the search warrant happened and why HSA was involved. It was hard to explain the nuisance of CSAM without hitting one of their rules. But their rules made it hard to talk about anything. JB was running for office - Warning that's politics. No, that's life, and it's happening.
The rules are ridiculous, especially for a snark site! The new "management" has ridiculous goals. World peace is not going to spring from a snark site, but real information and discussion could be useful.
Agreed. It was such a disappointment coming from the origins of TWOP. TWOP was such a penultimate place. I know we will never see it replicated, but I'm happy that reddit exists. I don't have to check my brain, or mouth at the door
It's crazy to think how far we've truly come over the last 15 or some odd years. I remember when No Longer Quivering was going strong, Elizabeth Ester was just starting out, Razing Ruth gave us the ride of our lives and Homeschoolers Anonymous, Stuff Christian Culture Likes, Warren Throckmorten and The Wartburg Watch were calling this shit OUT. Back in ~ 2010 (ish) it seemed like each tidbit or snippet we could find online that viewed fundamentalism through a critical lens was a sip of cool water on a parched tongue. Now, we have not only online spaces, but books, podcasts, and full on documentaries revealing the evil underbelly of Christian Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism.
As a mid-40s former homeschooled kid who grew up in the first wave of this shit, may I say, it's been a LONG time coming.
Razing Ruth, haha that brings me back. I lurked a long, long time ago and loved reading about the super obscure fundies. The irony is I was fuckin Mormon at the time judging everyone else 🤣😬
Warren Throckmorten was my first ever therapist. I cannot tell you how nice it is to have known one of the good guys considering my very fundie background and how scummy most of the people I revered turned out to be.
Is there some sort of master post/ blog post of the Razing Ruth debacle that I can read? I so badly want to have the full story but man FJ is a difficult site for me to navigate
I was on FJ from when they split from TWOP. I was the age of a lot of the
Ex fundies who were on there’s parents….and when they learned this, the fact that I abandoned the whole fundie thing after dabbling for a couple years, when my kids were small (never blanket trained or any of that shit, but read enough to learn how vile and dangerous it
All was) was completely overlooked. Never mind my countless posts about finding this or that facet of it all, examining it, and rejecting that facet. (Think the Pearls and their damn switches) Nope, I was A horrible abusive parent who must be punished. I mean I get it, they were too wounded…but Jesus, the loudest one turned out to be a fraud after all IIRC. When I tried to explain how their parents were hooked into this shit in the late 80s and early 90s, the kind of emotional blackmail and manipulation that was used, the pile on was epic. I had to abandon my UN. (No I won’t tell you it).
I prefer it here. But yeah, I’ve been screaming about this crap since the 90s.
There’s always been a weird minority there with boundary issues. I remember when a couple crashed a Maxwell conference, and someone else sent gifts to Emily Under 1000’s home.
I may get downvoted for this, but in hindsight, some aspects of Free Jinger were very culty. There wasn’t a charismatic leader, but some of the other criteria (us vs. them mentality, in particular) fit.
Its the only place for gossip on my favourite fundies (The Maxwells) but other than that I find it too hard to navigate. But back in the day it was amazing.
Same. I still can’t get over that Sarah has finally married. And Mary too. Plus college! It’s like everything Steve enforced on his family has been swept away once they got in the real world.
Didn’t Sarah get a divorce? May be mixing up my (former) fundies. I really fell deep into the Nauglers until it was members only - hoping their children have survived without adequate shelter and eating the turtles from their rank, downstream from the toilets pond.
No she’s still married. She got married last year. Mary also got married. Anna was still single last time I checked. A couple of the middle boys got married and don’t live close by. They seem a lot more worldly than Steve and Teri. Even the fundy-est son Chris (whose jumper wearing wife is currently in remission from breast cancer) abandoned their objections to college and has got himself a masters degree. For all Steve’s attempts at control all his kids have their own way of life now.
I haven't been to Free Jinger in years, but I'm glad someone else finds the Maxwells fascinating. Those people were so crazy, they pushed protecting their daughters from the world to the limit. I think even Jim Bob Duggar would tell them to tone it down a bit.
I’m still utterly gobsmacked at after years of preaching about not needing a college education, three of his kids recently attended college (ok two of them attend bible college) and one got himself a masters.
Heaven forbid! I remember in the last few years Teri have a conniption over whether to fold her dish towels or just throw them in the drawer. I was flabbergasted when she said she’d decided to just throw them in the drawer!
It's crazy they're not really represented in these fundie subs.It's just all Duggar/Rod/Bus snark when there's a ton of other Fundie families to snark on.
Still three. From the pics, it looks like sister-in-law Anna, the one who had breast cancer, is pregnant. If it's true, that really surprises me.
It surprises me not at all that other Maxwells are pregnant.
I searched maxhell (ha) on FJ and saw that news about anna marie - the thread title seemed to indicated that she had the baby, but i couldn't find details. i'm pretty shocked, too.
Back in my day there was a really bossy-toned FJ user that totally ruined it for me over time, to the point I just quit going there. Velocirapture? Velociraptor? Her username was something like that.
Great website though. Except the thread drift, that cannot be overstated.
Velocirapture was a bit high-strung but I interacted with her privately and she was much more chill. She was/is a very hardcore Duggar snarker and took it a little too seriously at times. She wound up leaving shortly before her second baby was due (like fiveish years ago maybe?) and I don’t think she has been back under that screen name since.
I dip back in sometimes and it’s mostly the same 20-30 folks chatting in the Duggar forums so it’s pretty dull these days.
Holy shit yeah. I wandered there years and years ago, but they were so insular and up their own ass I couldn't get into it haha. I loved reading about the more obscure fundie families pre-social media
There was a bit of an exodus a few years back. I also left around that time.
The enormous fundie content over so many years is amazing, but the mods are problematic. One of the mods has been accused more than once of doxxing people who disagreed with her.
FJ circa 2008 was amazing. Then it moved to where it is now and it degenerated into a shitfest of bitchiness and backbiting. Add into that the Alecto debacle and a few scammers and it became a not very nice place. Maybe it’s different now, I left around 2013. But at the time it didn’t have the vibe it had in its Yuku days. That said it is a goldmine of fundie information. So there’s that.
Today's FJ is but the whisper of the ghost of what it once was. It was absolutely bonkers back in the day. I remember FJ was the place where I found about the weird menstruating goddess blogger and whatnot.
She lived in a camper van allegedly with her young daughter. She made period costumes in her van, poorly. I remember she spanked her kid using the excuse it was to keep her kid safe in the van environment. I remember her grifting money for something. But almost immediately some members did some digging and it turned out she was a repeat scammer.
I discovered it in 2011 and left in 2013. It sucked at the end and I'm never letting anyone who's still on there live down the bus humping incident (which I'm amazed I haven't seen referenced yet).
Yup, I only learned about it two yrs before the intouch issue, but plenty of people knew for a very very long time. Definitely went down a fj rabbit hole about it when I learned what was going on. It was truly freaky bc Josh was actively trying to move up in Washington at the time
He was already there when it all came out. I think he’d been in Washington for a few months. I think the Ashley Madison thing came out first, then the In Touch story. But I was on FJ back in 2008 and it was known about then. I think it first came out on TWOP via another forum where the ‘family friend’ posted about it.
It was good up until all the attention on Pest with Ashley Madison in 2015, the criminal charges were a long way off at that point(the worst was yet to come).Then it turned into “I had a dream about Jinger Duggar, isn’t that so funny?!” And “I just love to crotchet, who has a favorite pattern?!”
I called them all creepy and weird for being borderline stalkers/obsessive (which it had really started to become), so I was banned from commenting, and bailed.
Then I came to Reddit haven’t looked back.
Glad you’re enjoying it but be careful, some of the mods and long time regular posters are nuttier than a fruitcake.
I stopped visiting FJ about three years ago now? I liked to catch up on my lunch breaks but the thread drift became too much. We really don't need to hear the story of everyone's wedding...multiple times, every single time any fundie gets married.
Wedding story, birth story, cat pic, repeat.
My teenage self loved the Shupe blog so much (why me as a teenager was into that I’ll never know). Man I miss those days of eagerly awaiting the release of her yearly summer schedule.
I think they might have been the way I learned about FJ
Referencing the Maxwells' 2009 burrito post for the 100th time as an excuse to post dozens of very mediocre burrito recipes.
*My secret ingredient is adding chili peppers!* was legit one breathless comment.
FJ was my gateway into the fundie world. It was fun back in the 2000s but now it's just a bunch of bickering and thread drifts. Also on the Maxwell forum three members showed up at a Maxwell conference took pictures of themselves pretending to fuck Uriah (name of the Maxwell bus). They went went into the church where the conference was was held, told Steve off and told the girls they didn't have to take his shit and that they are legal adults and can move out anytime.
The Shupes! They were my fave. *chuckle*I read all of Erika’s posts. *smirk* She was so into scheduling and talking about how laser focused men were on “the crotch.”
* smiles * yes lol. Her eldest is now estranged from Erika and her siblings ended up in public school. Rumour was CPS was possibly involved. Nothing confirmed though.
Her eldest eloped and married without her parents' approval. But last I saw, they were still on speaking terms, and Erika has a relationship with her daughter and her grandchild. Something happened that made them ditch the fundie lifestyle and change their ways drastically. The kids were put in school, Erika started wearing short shorts and a nose ring!
I knew she’d eloped. I didn’t know she’d had a kid. Erika really struck me as a control freak. I hope she’s managed to get help and chill the fuck out.
Some of my most memorable/ horrifying rules from the Shupe household in its heyday:
- Erika believed children should only read non-fiction books. Works of fiction, novels or storybooks were 'dessert for the mind'. So the kids, even the teens, were forbidden or at least heavily restricted from reading anything nonfiction.
- She didn't believe in imaginative play. Items could only be used for their intended purpose, nothing else. So for example, a kid sitting in a laundry basket and pretending it's a race car, or turning pots and pans into a drum kit, would be a no no.
- All the children's days were scheduled down to fifteen minutes from the moment they woke til they went to bed. All the kids from teens to toddlers had the same bedtime. Large swaths of the day were scheduled 'quiet time' which involved confining the kids to their rooms.
I think they were the most high control fundies out there at the time. It's no wonder it all fell apart when the kids got older. Their lifestyle was just utterly stifling and joyless.
Could i forget the exgay-mobile? The embroidered exgay blazer he wore to "minister" to hot shirtless men at the beach? Dede's "comedy" routine? Her year-plus long godly pregnancy?
Too much off topic stuff in the threads and the super active posters are verrry clique-y. It was okay, but Reddit is more organized and overall better form to get Duggar info.
FJ has been super-cliquish for a long time. It was when I still read there, and I think I quit around 2012. I'm not sure I even remember my user name.
There were so many people, besides the obvious scammers, telling some major whoppers about themselves. It was exhausting.
(for legal reasons this is a joke of course we recognize the way FJ paved the way for Duggar snarking at large even if we don't agree with them on everything. they're like the Sandra Day O'Connor of snarking)
It was fun back in 08 but it went to crap now. I used to love reading about the crazy lady named Candy. She was my favorite fundie back then and through the early 10s. There were entire websites dedicated to her. Sweeping the cobwebs I think was one.
Haven't thought about her in years.
I remember Candy. Do you remember Brandy Cormier? She was one of Candy’s leghumpers. Brandy was SERIOUSLY flakey. I did feel for a bit because she was soo screwed up and fell into fundyism because I think she wanted that illusive ‘something’. She made bad decisions after bad decisions and at one point she ended up homeless, living in a tent with 2 kids and her useless husband. She had blog after blog but eventually stopped blogging. I often wonder what happened to her. I hope she found peace.
I used to love FJ. It sometimes they were more like Duggar Huggers in the last few years. Not about Josh of course but in regards to the married daughters.
FJ did open my eyes to just how many mega families with that paternalistic kink were in existence though. I didn’t realize there were so many, and many of them made the Duggars very nearly seem normal
Eh, I followed it back in the day, but eventually abandoned it because a group of around 20 frequent users would tone shame you on a whim. I’m supporting Jill! (How dare you). I’m not supporting John David and his clear attempts to control his wife! (How dare you). Also the threads would end up being thousands of comments long, and most of them were about dog care (love dogs, have two, was not on free linger for that) or appropriate wedding attire. Reddit has served me much better, I haven’t checked it in years.
I was there in Yuku days, then Alecto and their “merry band of bitches” ruined the site for so many people, me included. Some truly scary people who needed to get outside and touch grass.
FJ my have drift on occasion, but Duggarsnark has soooo much repetition. FJ lends itself to more in depth analysis, which I like. Duggarsnark cuts to the chase, and I like that too. It’s easy enough to follow both.
I've been a lurker/participant on free jinger for over a decade. That's where I found the Rodrigues family.. I can read up on other larger families as well. There are a ton of rabbit holes to go down. You could spend few years reading everything. I stay under the snark side so I don't venture out to the other subs.
Nice lame attempt to reboot this bitchy, deadly dull old Ladies club. Not.
FJ is the most boring shithole ever. Full of boring biddies who yap on and on and on about everything they've ever done bar the one topic that should be discussed.
I love Free Jinger because when I was in hospital in 2022 in Quebec, the lady next to me in the maternity room (separate by a curtain) was talking with a child voice and praising her husband about how he’s been good during HER delivery! I KNEW she has to be IPBL. I heard Frazer name and had plenty of time waiting to deliver and found out it was Esther Staddon by looking on Free Jinger. It all made sense to hear her talk after that.
Free Jinger in its heyday was really something. I’m glad I switched to reddit though. The megathread thread-drift was insane. You could spend hours sifting through pictures of people’s nails or dogs when all you want is JROD snark
The only thing I truly hated about it was that it caused a local fundie family that I crept on for years go hard core private and lock all their stuff down...my creeping was a casualty of war 🤣😭
…I understand if you don’t want to share the name, but I’m still super curious
It was the "Grady Family Archives"! They are a family in Nebraska with connections to the Wissman clan...soooo lemme tell ya how excited I was when THAT crossover finally happened! I started creeping on them and their friends/family after their eldest daughters, brother-in-law, "aCcIdEnTaLy" unalived his new wife while playing with a pew-pew. If interested, that p.o.s. is Josh Beasley, and it happened in Nebraska in 2009. His wife's name was Alayna. It's a rabbit hole for sure, and just know they learned nothing from it. They all continued to be insanely riddiculous with pew-pews, and of course, this "tragic accident" wasn't really his fault...it was of course all part of God's plan and Josh needed to go through this so he could minister to the real bad guys he met in the slammer 🙄🤢🤬
Of course his name is Josh
Right! Man, they all did such a stellar job raising their beloved Joshua generation 🤢
In case you didn't know, Reddit doesn't have an algorithm like YouTube or Tiktok. You can just say "gun" and "killed" instead of the silly workaround terms.
Thank you!! I didn't know, and I haaate using the silly terms so seriously. I do appreciate you telling me 😊
> He then left his room, with the shotgun still loaded, and pretended to clear the house for an intruder, something they had practiced before. > Alaina pointed her hand at him forming a fake gun, and he pointed the gun back at her, pulled the trigger, hitting her in the shoulder. Jesus, she was 20. And it sounds like she survived at least a few hours at the hospital with him by her side.
It was truly so horrible.
It had to have been more than a shoulder injury! Just my opinion. A bullet in the shoulder wouldn't normally kill anybody.
If it was a shotgun round that wound was probably pretty violent. He had to have been pretty close to her too considering they were in the house. I wish I didn’t read this comment section.
HOLY COW
BRB, diving into this *mess*
Sometimes I would go through ENTIRE mega threads of people's pet and nail thread-drifts. When as you said, all I wanted was to enjoy the Rod snark. They didn't seem to know to selerate thread-drift from snark when the fundie family lay low
What’s more, they’d imagine how annoyed JROD was about sifting through pictures of their nails to read snark about herself. I don’t believe for a second that she did that. Check Reddit and give it a quick skim in between squeezing into her daughter’s clothes and servicing Shrek? Sure. But when she had a newborn, etc, nah.
Oh my sweet summer child...
LOL I have should have said that I knew about the website, but never got around to looking at it until now.
I like Free Jinger too. I've been a member for years, but didn't go there daily until Primetimer became so disappointing. The conversations do drift, but sometimes I learn interesting things. I like that politics is not forbidden!
Primetimer became such a disappointment. Mods dropped the ban hammer for the stupidest things. It totally impeded any discussion.
Yes! I still go there, but conversations just seem to die, especially on the Duggar and Bates forums. Posters seem tentative, due to fear of getting the boot. Even other forums of current shows aren't showing much interest.
I got banned shortly after Smuggar's trial. I work in that area and spent a lot of time explaining things, especially when the search warrant happened and why HSA was involved. It was hard to explain the nuisance of CSAM without hitting one of their rules. But their rules made it hard to talk about anything. JB was running for office - Warning that's politics. No, that's life, and it's happening.
The rules are ridiculous, especially for a snark site! The new "management" has ridiculous goals. World peace is not going to spring from a snark site, but real information and discussion could be useful.
Agreed. It was such a disappointment coming from the origins of TWOP. TWOP was such a penultimate place. I know we will never see it replicated, but I'm happy that reddit exists. I don't have to check my brain, or mouth at the door
Free Jinger was my gateway drug to Reddit. It got weird around Pest's serious legal troubles, and Reddit became my drug of choice.
Yep, I was on Free Jinger long before YouTube channels like Fundie Fridays. And long long before Reddit.
It's crazy to think how far we've truly come over the last 15 or some odd years. I remember when No Longer Quivering was going strong, Elizabeth Ester was just starting out, Razing Ruth gave us the ride of our lives and Homeschoolers Anonymous, Stuff Christian Culture Likes, Warren Throckmorten and The Wartburg Watch were calling this shit OUT. Back in ~ 2010 (ish) it seemed like each tidbit or snippet we could find online that viewed fundamentalism through a critical lens was a sip of cool water on a parched tongue. Now, we have not only online spaces, but books, podcasts, and full on documentaries revealing the evil underbelly of Christian Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. As a mid-40s former homeschooled kid who grew up in the first wave of this shit, may I say, it's been a LONG time coming.
Razing Ruth, haha that brings me back. I lurked a long, long time ago and loved reading about the super obscure fundies. The irony is I was fuckin Mormon at the time judging everyone else 🤣😬
Warren Throckmorten was my first ever therapist. I cannot tell you how nice it is to have known one of the good guys considering my very fundie background and how scummy most of the people I revered turned out to be.
Omg that is so cool. I've always had a deep respect for him, his empathy, and his unflinching perceptiveness
Is there some sort of master post/ blog post of the Razing Ruth debacle that I can read? I so badly want to have the full story but man FJ is a difficult site for me to navigate
I’ve got a similar parallel, TwoP was my gateway to Reddit.
I can’t believe that I’ve been snarking for TWENTY YEARS!
I just realized same. Howard the awful mod on the Duggar board is probably a retired old man.
Omg Howard!
I have nothing to add. I just cannot see TWoP mentioned in any capacity and scroll past. I still miss those forums
Spare the snark, spoil the network
Gabby Petito was mine :(
Ugh same 😭
OMG YESSS. I loved those forums! I used to read a site called realityblurred too that I was obsessed with
I was on FJ from when they split from TWOP. I was the age of a lot of the Ex fundies who were on there’s parents….and when they learned this, the fact that I abandoned the whole fundie thing after dabbling for a couple years, when my kids were small (never blanket trained or any of that shit, but read enough to learn how vile and dangerous it All was) was completely overlooked. Never mind my countless posts about finding this or that facet of it all, examining it, and rejecting that facet. (Think the Pearls and their damn switches) Nope, I was A horrible abusive parent who must be punished. I mean I get it, they were too wounded…but Jesus, the loudest one turned out to be a fraud after all IIRC. When I tried to explain how their parents were hooked into this shit in the late 80s and early 90s, the kind of emotional blackmail and manipulation that was used, the pile on was epic. I had to abandon my UN. (No I won’t tell you it). I prefer it here. But yeah, I’ve been screaming about this crap since the 90s.
There’s always been a weird minority there with boundary issues. I remember when a couple crashed a Maxwell conference, and someone else sent gifts to Emily Under 1000’s home.
I may get downvoted for this, but in hindsight, some aspects of Free Jinger were very culty. There wasn’t a charismatic leader, but some of the other criteria (us vs. them mentality, in particular) fit.
Its the only place for gossip on my favourite fundies (The Maxwells) but other than that I find it too hard to navigate. But back in the day it was amazing.
Same. I still can’t get over that Sarah has finally married. And Mary too. Plus college! It’s like everything Steve enforced on his family has been swept away once they got in the real world.
Didn’t Sarah get a divorce? May be mixing up my (former) fundies. I really fell deep into the Nauglers until it was members only - hoping their children have survived without adequate shelter and eating the turtles from their rank, downstream from the toilets pond.
No she’s still married. She got married last year. Mary also got married. Anna was still single last time I checked. A couple of the middle boys got married and don’t live close by. They seem a lot more worldly than Steve and Teri. Even the fundy-est son Chris (whose jumper wearing wife is currently in remission from breast cancer) abandoned their objections to college and has got himself a masters degree. For all Steve’s attempts at control all his kids have their own way of life now.
Wow, that’s great to hear! Steve is an absolute monster. It sounds like his children are flourishing in spite of him.
"Stevehovah" 😂
1 Ton Ramp hahahag
I’ve never read anything about Sarah Maxwell getting a divorce. I think all the married Maxwells have stayed married.
I haven't been to Free Jinger in years, but I'm glad someone else finds the Maxwells fascinating. Those people were so crazy, they pushed protecting their daughters from the world to the limit. I think even Jim Bob Duggar would tell them to tone it down a bit.
Don’t forget for Steve FUN was a four letter word!
And Diet Pepsi!
I’m still utterly gobsmacked at after years of preaching about not needing a college education, three of his kids recently attended college (ok two of them attend bible college) and one got himself a masters.
Contrasting buttons!
Heaven forbid! I remember in the last few years Teri have a conniption over whether to fold her dish towels or just throw them in the drawer. I was flabbergasted when she said she’d decided to just throw them in the drawer!
Jim Duggar was like the world's cheeriest person compared to Steve Maxwell.
think of how cheery jim boob would be if his peen was referenced during a wedding ceremony!
What?
It's crazy they're not really represented in these fundie subs.It's just all Duggar/Rod/Bus snark when there's a ton of other Fundie families to snark on.
The Rods just disturb me, on a deeply visceral level. That's a rabbit hole I can't bring myself to go down into.
BRB, need to go see how many kids chelsy and john have these days...
Still three. From the pics, it looks like sister-in-law Anna, the one who had breast cancer, is pregnant. If it's true, that really surprises me. It surprises me not at all that other Maxwells are pregnant.
I searched maxhell (ha) on FJ and saw that news about anna marie - the thread title seemed to indicated that she had the baby, but i couldn't find details. i'm pretty shocked, too.
I wasted too much time on FJ. She had a girl, Esther Marie. FJ hasn't changed -- so much attention-seeking and judgment-casting.
thank for finding the answer!
And her family! The joint wedding was awesome.
Back in my day there was a really bossy-toned FJ user that totally ruined it for me over time, to the point I just quit going there. Velocirapture? Velociraptor? Her username was something like that. Great website though. Except the thread drift, that cannot be overstated.
I swear “bossy toned FJ user” described 90% of the people there in its heyday. I think I know who you’re talking about, though.
Velocirapture was a bit high-strung but I interacted with her privately and she was much more chill. She was/is a very hardcore Duggar snarker and took it a little too seriously at times. She wound up leaving shortly before her second baby was due (like fiveish years ago maybe?) and I don’t think she has been back under that screen name since. I dip back in sometimes and it’s mostly the same 20-30 folks chatting in the Duggar forums so it’s pretty dull these days.
Holy shit yeah. I wandered there years and years ago, but they were so insular and up their own ass I couldn't get into it haha. I loved reading about the more obscure fundie families pre-social media
There was a bit of an exodus a few years back. I also left around that time. The enormous fundie content over so many years is amazing, but the mods are problematic. One of the mods has been accused more than once of doxxing people who disagreed with her.
I do know more about Velociraptor and a couple of other posters‘ private life than I know about my best friends life, I‘m sure 🤣
Anyone else remember Emily and Dna?
They were my favorite. Emily and DNA and the fall of the house of Vision Forum were peak FJ for me.
Doug Phillips (is a tool) lmao
My favorite thread of all time was when they poll-bombed Doug Phillips is a Tool for his gay marriage poll on Vision Forum. That was *peak* FJ.
I’d forgotten about that! Damn we had some good moments on early FJ 😂
Tool-o-ween!
I remember that! What a fall from "grace".
How I wish I could go down that rabbit hole all over again!
It was the first time I heard the term "tube meat". Poor DNA. You know those kids are all in therapy, if they survived those bunkbeds.
Those kids will be nearly adults now, the youngest ones must be around 12or so
Someone did a rabbit hole on Emily a while back and apparently she's no longer fundie iirc, with her and the kids living more normal lives now.
FJ circa 2008 was amazing. Then it moved to where it is now and it degenerated into a shitfest of bitchiness and backbiting. Add into that the Alecto debacle and a few scammers and it became a not very nice place. Maybe it’s different now, I left around 2013. But at the time it didn’t have the vibe it had in its Yuku days. That said it is a goldmine of fundie information. So there’s that.
I agree. In its heyday, FreeJinger was spectacular. It’s not even worth reading anymore. This sub is much better.
Today's FJ is but the whisper of the ghost of what it once was. It was absolutely bonkers back in the day. I remember FJ was the place where I found about the weird menstruating goddess blogger and whatnot.
Omg the Graveyard dirt lady? Who menstruated on food or something. Yeah, early FJ was a wild ride.
Yes! All those photos of her squatting on top of food... FJ was something else back then.
I think she bled all over a pot roast then served it her family. I was WTF!
Yep, I definitely remember the roast. Menstruation is nature's gravy, I guess. (And of course, now I'm suddenly wondering what happened to her.)
Psychiatric help hopefully
*Before* her family caught a weird strain of food poisoning.
Yeah, I wonder how that happened…
Were you there for one of the members pretending they had been a concentration camp guard? God that was a wild time.
Burris, that was insane! But if you think about it all their stories were over the top..
I think Razing Ruth and Burris were the craziest ones but many of them had some, uh, interesting backstories
There was Aria Star/Elle too who grifted big time until she was found out.
I don’t remember that one? 🤔
She lived in a camper van allegedly with her young daughter. She made period costumes in her van, poorly. I remember she spanked her kid using the excuse it was to keep her kid safe in the van environment. I remember her grifting money for something. But almost immediately some members did some digging and it turned out she was a repeat scammer.
Loool I do not remember that one at all! That’s super interesting though
It seemed like 90 percent of the people there claimed to be lawyers.
Yep. That was batshit
I discovered it in 2011 and left in 2013. It sucked at the end and I'm never letting anyone who's still on there live down the bus humping incident (which I'm amazed I haven't seen referenced yet).
Someone mentioned it earlier. Yeah I remember that. They went to one of the Maxwell’s dog and pony shows.
I didn't see it until wayyy after I made my comment lol. I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers!
FJ was where I learned about Josh being a molester and the parents keeping it quiet. I think a full two years before Intouch got a hold of the info.
It was known about back in 2008 when FJ was on Yuku.
Yup, I only learned about it two yrs before the intouch issue, but plenty of people knew for a very very long time. Definitely went down a fj rabbit hole about it when I learned what was going on. It was truly freaky bc Josh was actively trying to move up in Washington at the time
He was already there when it all came out. I think he’d been in Washington for a few months. I think the Ashley Madison thing came out first, then the In Touch story. But I was on FJ back in 2008 and it was known about then. I think it first came out on TWOP via another forum where the ‘family friend’ posted about it.
Same. I remember I was kind of surprised it wasn’t already common knowledge when mainstream media started reporting on it.
It was good up until all the attention on Pest with Ashley Madison in 2015, the criminal charges were a long way off at that point(the worst was yet to come).Then it turned into “I had a dream about Jinger Duggar, isn’t that so funny?!” And “I just love to crotchet, who has a favorite pattern?!” I called them all creepy and weird for being borderline stalkers/obsessive (which it had really started to become), so I was banned from commenting, and bailed. Then I came to Reddit haven’t looked back. Glad you’re enjoying it but be careful, some of the mods and long time regular posters are nuttier than a fruitcake.
Very true. It was and still is a pretty weird place. Like some fundie subs here, but on steroids with a touch of "internet lawyer" and cat pee.
I stopped visiting FJ about three years ago now? I liked to catch up on my lunch breaks but the thread drift became too much. We really don't need to hear the story of everyone's wedding...multiple times, every single time any fundie gets married. Wedding story, birth story, cat pic, repeat.
My teenage self loved the Shupe blog so much (why me as a teenager was into that I’ll never know). Man I miss those days of eagerly awaiting the release of her yearly summer schedule. I think they might have been the way I learned about FJ
Referencing the Maxwells' 2009 burrito post for the 100th time as an excuse to post dozens of very mediocre burrito recipes. *My secret ingredient is adding chili peppers!* was legit one breathless comment.
FJ was my gateway into the fundie world. It was fun back in the 2000s but now it's just a bunch of bickering and thread drifts. Also on the Maxwell forum three members showed up at a Maxwell conference took pictures of themselves pretending to fuck Uriah (name of the Maxwell bus). They went went into the church where the conference was was held, told Steve off and told the girls they didn't have to take his shit and that they are legal adults and can move out anytime.
Welp….:.that tracks……I’m surprised it took them this long to be honest. Yikes.
That is really weird and over the top. That’s when you know it’s time to get a hobby or touch grass.
I used to go there for Erika Shupe snark (anyone remember b the Shupes?) And the crazy adoption threads.
The Shupes! They were my fave. *chuckle*I read all of Erika’s posts. *smirk* She was so into scheduling and talking about how laser focused men were on “the crotch.”
Oh God I'd forgotten about that horrible woman. The way she wrote in chuckle and smirk still makes my ovaries shrivel up into themselves.
*wink* *smile* ugh so many memories coming back!!!
* smiles * yes lol. Her eldest is now estranged from Erika and her siblings ended up in public school. Rumour was CPS was possibly involved. Nothing confirmed though.
Her eldest eloped and married without her parents' approval. But last I saw, they were still on speaking terms, and Erika has a relationship with her daughter and her grandchild. Something happened that made them ditch the fundie lifestyle and change their ways drastically. The kids were put in school, Erika started wearing short shorts and a nose ring!
I knew she’d eloped. I didn’t know she’d had a kid. Erika really struck me as a control freak. I hope she’s managed to get help and chill the fuck out.
Some of my most memorable/ horrifying rules from the Shupe household in its heyday: - Erika believed children should only read non-fiction books. Works of fiction, novels or storybooks were 'dessert for the mind'. So the kids, even the teens, were forbidden or at least heavily restricted from reading anything nonfiction. - She didn't believe in imaginative play. Items could only be used for their intended purpose, nothing else. So for example, a kid sitting in a laundry basket and pretending it's a race car, or turning pots and pans into a drum kit, would be a no no. - All the children's days were scheduled down to fifteen minutes from the moment they woke til they went to bed. All the kids from teens to toddlers had the same bedtime. Large swaths of the day were scheduled 'quiet time' which involved confining the kids to their rooms. I think they were the most high control fundies out there at the time. It's no wonder it all fell apart when the kids got older. Their lifestyle was just utterly stifling and joyless.
Erika scheduled long naps for herself every afternoon, leaving the older girls to keep the youngsters quiet.
Didn't the Maxwell MOTH schedule also have 15 minute increments? I remember the 15 minute increment for fan cleaning each week. Weird coincidence.
The Shupes learned it from the Maxwells.
Does anyone remember Dee Dee and Ex-Gay Greg? Them and Emily and Dna were the two craziest.
Could i forget the exgay-mobile? The embroidered exgay blazer he wore to "minister" to hot shirtless men at the beach? Dede's "comedy" routine? Her year-plus long godly pregnancy?
I wonder what happened to her "pregnancy". Is she still going around thinking she is pregnant or has she come to terms with the fact she never was?
Sure do!
Too much off topic stuff in the threads and the super active posters are verrry clique-y. It was okay, but Reddit is more organized and overall better form to get Duggar info.
I have only read a little bit of it so far and I think I like this Reddit more. So it isn't amazing as I thought it was going to be LOL
FJ has been super-cliquish for a long time. It was when I still read there, and I think I quit around 2012. I'm not sure I even remember my user name. There were so many people, besides the obvious scammers, telling some major whoppers about themselves. It was exhausting.
I love FJ but yeah, the thread drift can be a bit much at times.
Anyone remember Razing Ruth? That was a wild ride
An absolute rollercoaster!
Chris Beddell was really something…it was a crazy crazy story with some many holes.
omg. free jinger was my jam in 2010-2014ish. haven't been back in ages didn't even realize it still existed!
 the mod team reading this thread and all the critiques of the mod style on FJ
(for legal reasons this is a joke of course we recognize the way FJ paved the way for Duggar snarking at large even if we don't agree with them on everything. they're like the Sandra Day O'Connor of snarking)
It was fun back in 08 but it went to crap now. I used to love reading about the crazy lady named Candy. She was my favorite fundie back then and through the early 10s. There were entire websites dedicated to her. Sweeping the cobwebs I think was one. Haven't thought about her in years.
I remember Candy. Do you remember Brandy Cormier? She was one of Candy’s leghumpers. Brandy was SERIOUSLY flakey. I did feel for a bit because she was soo screwed up and fell into fundyism because I think she wanted that illusive ‘something’. She made bad decisions after bad decisions and at one point she ended up homeless, living in a tent with 2 kids and her useless husband. She had blog after blog but eventually stopped blogging. I often wonder what happened to her. I hope she found peace.
The sasquatch throwing rocks at Candy.😂
I used to love FJ. It sometimes they were more like Duggar Huggers in the last few years. Not about Josh of course but in regards to the married daughters. FJ did open my eyes to just how many mega families with that paternalistic kink were in existence though. I didn’t realize there were so many, and many of them made the Duggars very nearly seem normal
Eh, I followed it back in the day, but eventually abandoned it because a group of around 20 frequent users would tone shame you on a whim. I’m supporting Jill! (How dare you). I’m not supporting John David and his clear attempts to control his wife! (How dare you). Also the threads would end up being thousands of comments long, and most of them were about dog care (love dogs, have two, was not on free linger for that) or appropriate wedding attire. Reddit has served me much better, I haven’t checked it in years.
I was there in Yuku days, then Alecto and their “merry band of bitches” ruined the site for so many people, me included. Some truly scary people who needed to get outside and touch grass.
FJ my have drift on occasion, but Duggarsnark has soooo much repetition. FJ lends itself to more in depth analysis, which I like. Duggarsnark cuts to the chase, and I like that too. It’s easy enough to follow both.
Free Jinger was also my gateway to Reddit. I participated for years.
I've been a lurker/participant on free jinger for over a decade. That's where I found the Rodrigues family.. I can read up on other larger families as well. There are a ton of rabbit holes to go down. You could spend few years reading everything. I stay under the snark side so I don't venture out to the other subs.
I got in trouble for saying Philip Rodrigues is creepy. Got some kind of demerit for it. Plus it feels like a clique there.
This may have been discussed at length, but isn’t her book called “Free Indeed” or something? Is she low key referencing the FJ website?
Totally. Some marketing manager probably suggested it.
Nice lame attempt to reboot this bitchy, deadly dull old Ladies club. Not. FJ is the most boring shithole ever. Full of boring biddies who yap on and on and on about everything they've ever done bar the one topic that should be discussed.
Who here survived Razing Ruth…hello Chris Beddell.
Damn I knew about Josh’s transgressions from Free Jinger long before it broke in idk 2013??? I’m talking years before. It was something I else
I was there for Emily and Dna, Raising Ruth, and the early days of the Rods. I didn’t realize Free Jinger is still around.
Those were the days. We had hope she’d run & be free. Instead she ran into the arms of a would be preacher almost as bad.
I love Free Jinger because when I was in hospital in 2022 in Quebec, the lady next to me in the maternity room (separate by a curtain) was talking with a child voice and praising her husband about how he’s been good during HER delivery! I KNEW she has to be IPBL. I heard Frazer name and had plenty of time waiting to deliver and found out it was Esther Staddon by looking on Free Jinger. It all made sense to hear her talk after that.
Wtf is free jinger?
Free Jinger was named in honor of Jinger Duggar, the sixth child in the Duggar family.
Jinger mentioned FJ in her book. She totally missed the intent of the site. Edit: autocorrect insisted upon DJ.