The Duggar family is used to controversy, and they’ve certainly generated a whole lot of it since they first appeared on their TLC reality show. Over the past few years, it’s intensified — for good reason. Between their oldest child being convicted and sentenced and in prison for 20 years, two other adult kids releasing autobiographies about their life growing up, and a scathing documentary, a lot of their dirty laundry has been spilled.
And now, critics think Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are in rebranding mode.
On November 25, Joy-Anna Duggar shared a YouTube video to her family channel, Follow the Forsyths, something she does weekly for the most part.
This video featured footage from a family campout Joy-Anna had with her kids, husband, and many of her Duggar siblings.
There was one line in the 25-minute-long video that piqued the interest of Duggar critics.
About halfway through the video, James Duggar, 22, the 13th kid of Jim and Michelle, was behind the camera taking viewers on a little tour of their campgrounds.
While looking at all the campers that were parked, he walked past one and said: “We've got Jim and Shell's bus right here.”
On Reddit, critics picked that line out and had a few questions.
In the popular Reddit community, DuggarSnark, someone posted about Joy-Anna’s video and the line about “Jim and Shell.”
“I can't believe that I just heard James refer to his parents as ‘Jim and Shelly’ in Joy’s new vlog,” the Redditor wrote. “He's giving us a campsite tour and refers to 'Jim and Shelly's bus. Just struck me as super odd.”
The comment section opened up, and there were many people who had some interesting thoughts.
The overall theme for why James appeared to call his parents Jim and Shell could have something to do with trying to rebrand, many thought.
“Jim and Shelly sound like real people where Jim Bob and Michelle are monsters,” one Redditor explained.
“Maybe Jim bob and Michelle realized the negative press they’ve been getting so they are slightly changing up how they refer to themselves and have other refer to them?” another commenter proposed. “Jim bob and Michelle, lots of people associate that with the negative Duggar press. Jim and Shelly? Never heard of them.”
'They’re rebranding,' someone else speculated.
Someone else thought perhaps they just didn’t want people to know the parents were there.
“Probably saying it that way to throw people off not to think that their parents were there with them,” explained another Redditor.
If it is a rebranding, which sounds a little far-fetched really, changing their names is probably not enough. But honestly, with the stories about Jim Bob floating around out there, maybe we shouldn’t count anything out.
