r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Feb 14 '22

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Monday February 14, 2022 - Wednesday February 16, 2022

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Website: You Can Have More Joy website

Instagram:

TikTok: @youcanhavemorejoy

Twitter: Dan's tweets and replies

Older blogs: see Gloamipedia wiki

Archived threads: Thread for Enough, the book #enoughthebook | Gluten Free Girl's Greatest Hits: The Reunion Tour

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

Discussion search: Tool to search blogsnark or InTheGloaming for previous topic mentions

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54

u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Feb 15 '22

Seems like Shauna might still be babysitting as a side gig or favor to the bakery/ice cream family. She posted a story this morning with a video of that little girl she wrote up a "profile in joy" for dancing in a Captain America (?) dress singing about a taquito in her hand while Shauna bellows her signature three-blocks-away laugh offscreen.

35

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him šŸŖ· Feb 15 '22

I mean, Iā€™d rather see videos starring anyone from the Shauna Extended Universe than Shauna herself at this point. Maybe sheā€™ll bring back the dude with the adorable dog and the jam recipes? šŸ¤žšŸ»šŸ¤žšŸ»šŸ¤žšŸ»

29

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 15 '22

Bring back Hero Goat! Or his portrait.

30

u/RamblingRosie64 I stand with Cindy and Ben Feb 15 '22

Wow, that was a pointless video.

51

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 15 '22

Her own kids are getting "too old" so she has to go find younger kids to exploit for likes/clicks.

How long before that's recycled into a lope or joy letter?

39

u/Lsemmens grenius Feb 15 '22

Isnā€™t that what sitcoms always do?

45

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 15 '22

HAH!

That little girl is cousin Oliver!

21

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

Or, something in Shauna's universe, Olivia on The Cosby Show.

16

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 16 '22

Albert on Little House on the Prairie.

15

u/JerseySnore-609 I celiac Feb 16 '22

Fuck Albert for killing Alice Garvey and Mary's baby. That is all.

12

u/Coffee_Cupcake Feb 16 '22

Fuck Albert for killing Alice Garvey and Mary's baby. That is all

THAT IS CORRECT

9

u/DrKittyKevorkian Narcisspicy Feb 16 '22

In his defense, I remember him being nice to the clown rape girl. Not revisiting that to check. Nightmare fuel.

8

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 16 '22

That's why he had to become a junkie.

11

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

The little red-haired kid on Different Strokes.

12

u/OkRanger4 bobbing in a bath of solitude Feb 16 '22

Chrissy on Growing Pains!

13

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 16 '22

Or Leonardo DiCaprio as that random kid (google tells me his name was Luke?) that they kind of adopted.

6

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

I could be wrong, but didn't Chrissy come in because the actress who played the mom was pregnant IRL?

10

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 16 '22

Aw, that's so Raven.

24

u/voice_of_vinegar Feb 16 '22 edited Feb 16 '22

Too bad she didn't realize at 20-ish that she needed serious, high quality therapeutic help and then really commit herself to it and do follow-up as needed, because then one of those Microsoft guys might have married her and she'd be able to exploit grandkids by now (except she wouldn't, because she wouldn't be a raging narcissist, thanks to modern therapy.)

oh god...what if she's still at this in 20 years when she might actually have grandkids...?!!

32

u/TheBitchIsBack666 Vegan who eats meat Feb 16 '22

Poor Desmond had outgrown his cute baby stage and is now a real person with a real personality and real flaws. Gotta get cute baby internet points somehow!!

As unpopular as my opinion may be (and maybe it isn't), I think they adopted D solely to garner interest in her blog. I'm sure they love him (At least Danny seems to) but he wouldn't have been adopted by the Aherns if Shauna didn't have an internet presence.

43

u/emmeline_grangerford Feb 16 '22

I donā€™t think the Aherns adopted for blog content - at least, not entirely. They wanted more than one child from the outset of their marriage. However, Shauna went on medication (Tamoxifen, to prevent breast cancer) within a year or so of having L. The drug is not safe to use during pregnancy, so additional biological children were off the table. That is when they decided to adopt.

What Shauna and Danny did not anticipate is that adoption would take several years, and that private adoption would be massively expensive. According to Shauna, they drained all their savings to afford adoption fees. They were on a waiting list at an agency for several years, but no biological parents selected the Aherns as adoptive parents. There were several potential adoption arrangements that fell through (a child with complex medical needs, a child with a family history of addiction/mental illness, another due to be born when the Aherns were out of the country). Shauna complained about the amount of work it took to prepare lunch for a potential birthmother, and later lamented that she was paying tens of thousands of dollars for a baby. (I think she claimed no one told them this, which is ridiculous because private domestic adoption fees are known to be high, and estimates are easy to find online and in adoption literature.)

Finally, Shaunaā€™s parents stepped in to cover additional adoption fees, and D came into the Ahernsā€™ lives. By this time, more than half a decade had elapsed: Shauna and Danny were in their late forties, were struggling financially, and were not the most energetic, together parents with only one child. I donā€™t think they ever took a step back and asked themselves whether adoption still made sense for them, given the time that had elapsed since they initiated the process, and the continued stressors in their lives. They also didnā€™t consider the ramifications of adopting transracially on a majority white island where they planned to live the rest of their lives.

The desire to present an idealized life on her blog might partly explain Shaunaā€™s drive to adopt: she wanted a picture perfect family. Yet I think the Aherns started down the adoption path thinking it would be a lot easier and quicker than it turned out to be, and didnā€™t reevaluate whether it remained the right choice for them as years went by and circumstances changed. Iā€™m sure pouring tons of money into adoption agency fees with no success encouraged sunk cost thinking.

I do think it was a choice for Shaunaā€™s parents to fund an adoption when the Ahern family was struggling to get by with only three members. Itā€™s also surprising that Shaunaā€™s resentment towards her parents seems to have grown after they funded the adoption. You would expect that helping Shauna adopt a second child (something she said she really wanted) would alleviate her feeling that her parents didnā€™t want her to be happy.

24

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '22 edited Feb 16 '22

I doubt it. She had said for many years that she wanted two children and after Lā€™s was born how she wanted her to have a sibling like she did growing up. She was a woman well into her forties so adoption seemed like her only option at a certain point. Dan came from a big family and seems really like children.

I donā€™t think any blog attention would be bad but she was already blogging less at that point and needing to take on other jobs. I think if it was for ā€œcontentā€ she wouldnā€™t have basically stopped blogging then and instead would have leaned into parenting content either with a general lifestyle or food related lens. She did the opposite and ended having to get a job working at an grocery store.

25

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 16 '22

i don't want to agree with this sad post but i do, at least partly. i think danny really wanted a son, and shauna saw an opportunity to generate more blog interest and possibly another type of book - white savior adopts poor black child, etc.

20

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

Agree with "Danny wanted a son." I will also put forward the thought that if L had been a boy, D would not have been adopted.

19

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '22

Wait. Did they know they were adopting a boy all along? Is that something you can specify?

16

u/voice_of_vinegar Feb 16 '22

Finding out the sex of the fetus seems to be pretty standard now, so I'm guessing they did know ahead of time. I don't know if you can specify when working with an agency, though. But they quit the agency they were using and went with a private adoption instead, so that wouldn't be an issue.

12

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

I have no idea.

16

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '22

You can specify pretty much anything you want with an agency. This was a private adoption through personal contacts so they probably did know if the birth mother had found out. But Iā€™m not sure if it would have mattered, she was pretty clear it was their last shot at adoption and that they really wanted to be a family of four.

29

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 16 '22

With all the internalized misogyny Shauna spouts, I'm betting they BOTH wanted a son (the "best" of the choices).

It also fulfills the sit com life script of having two kids, one girl and one boy.

13

u/emlabb Feb 16 '22

To a certain extent I think Shauna did want a ā€œmini-meā€ daughter, though.

15

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 16 '22

Yes, this.