Stop me if you've heard this one before...the Duggars are in the news after a controversial Facebook post got their fans upset.
The Duggars are consistently in the news because of their controversial antics, their child-abusing son, and their dedication to marrying their kids off while extremely young. Okay, so there are probably a few more reasons that the Duggars are consistently making headlines, but more often than not it's because they aren't really in touch with the modern world.
Just the other day, Derick Dillard, husband of Jill Duggar, got the rumor mill turning once again when he claimed that no one in his family got paid for their appearances on Counting On and claimed the network exploited his family and his kids. He claimed that TLC didn't help pay for his son Samuel's stay in the NICU.
Dillard said the extended stay was after Samuel's birth, but didn't elaborate on the reasons. When one user said "your job is to protect your kids, not use them as meal tickets," Dillard replied in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, saying "does that means I shouldn't have gotten the hospital lunch while my son was in the NICU for two weeks?"
Dillard went into further explanation, saying:
"We even requested that they help with some of the medical expenses from the birth that they made a pretty penny on, but they refused to help cover any of those costs. It was close to a year before we made the last medical payment."
That blew over, but Jill's most recent Instagram post has people thinking that maybe this family really does need the money.
A book series called The Tuttle Twins, which is about Libertarian politics and economics, is running a contest which encourages parents to submit pictures of their kids reading the book series. Each post can be voted on and then the post with the most votes wins a $350 prize.
Jill posted a picture of her and her son, Israel, on Instagram, asking people to go and vote for their picture on the Facebook page.
"Help Israel win! Go to link in bio and share â¤ï¸" she wrote.
Immediately, she found herself in hot water after people began pointing out how unfair it is that she, as a public figure, gets to enter the contest.
"Completely unfair that this picture was allowed," one user wrote. "Until recently Jill Duggar Dillard has appeared on TLC for many years. Shame on her for using her celebrity to win a contest with money as a prize."
""Celebrities" should not be eligible for this contest," Cheryl chimed in. "It's not fair to regular people. Jill has a social media reach that not one other entrant has. No one stands a chance against her and that really not ok."
"I just think it's sad that someone who probably think $350 is pocket change is taking away a chance from someone else who could really use it," Cassi said. "It's tacky. But what can we do? Off to look through the other photos and vote for someone who deserves it. That's all you can do people."
The Duggars haven't responded to the intense criticism, but The Tuttle Twins have.
On almost every comment about the unfairness of Jill's entry, the book company comes to the defense of Jill.
"You are welcome to create a rally to support another child if you feel it's not right. Nothing is preventing anyone from doing so 🙂 But as far as our part in this goes.. we opened the contest to anyone and it is not right for us to disqualify her based on the number of followers she has."
Another user claimed it was unfair to allow Jill to enter in the first place. But the company didn't see it that way.
"Fair = allowing anybody to participate," they said. "This is what we did. It would be unfair to establish arbitrary limits on those with various sizes of social networks."
Jill's post is currently sitting at 780 likes and 160 shares, which puts her at over 1000 points. Many of the other posts do not even crack 100 likes, which is why people are finding Jill's post a little unfair, considering she has almost two million followers on Instagram.
Do you think that Jill should be disqualified from the contest because of her large social media following?