Excited fans of TLC’s Counting On thought they caught Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo jumping the gun and declaring their marriage on social media before it could be revealed in a dramatic surprise through their reality show. Viewers following social media accounts for the couple say they caught Jeremy changing his marital status to “married,” and Jinger changing her last name to Vuolo.
The first problem with this? Jinger doesn’t have an official (known to the public) social media account yet.
Citing information seen on Jinger’s Instagram account, fans commented on the Counting On page to declare their inside information: the Duggar daughter whose courtship has dominated this season of the family’s reality show was already married, and they had proof.
Since Jinger doesn’t have a (public and official) social media account, though, it seems fans were probably looking at this account , or a similar one.
Since her name is already spelled in an unusual way, perhaps excited fans didn’t even notice that, in fact, the name on the account is “JinJer” — a portmanteau of “Jinger” and “Jeremy.” They may have also missed that the page is clearly labeled as a “fan page.”
This is fairly common with the Duggar fandom. First, there are loads of fake pages made by fans, many labeled as “fan page” or “role play,” though some are not so clearly identified. Further, most of these pages have numerous comments from fans either trying to determine whether the account is genuine or assuming it is.
These accounts typically repost photos from official Duggar accounts or pages associated with the show and thus may look real at a glance. Several gained a great deal of attention after Josh Duggar’s police report was released last year, revealing he had been accused of molesting several underage girls. Twitter accounts purporting to be the younger Duggar siblings begged fans to reassure that they, and Josh, were still loved.
However, at this point, the DuggarFam official account had already answered the question months before, in February.
In the Instagram post above, the official, verified account of the family declares the following:
Because some ppl were wondering… ONLY TRUE DUGGAR ACCOUNTS: @duggarfam @joshduggar @annaduggar @jillmdillard @derickdillard @jessaseewald @ben_seewald @amyduggar ALL OTHERS ARE FAKES. None of us have secondary accounts. This is it.
Of course, in the nearly two years since that post, there have been a few changes. Josh’s account has been deleted or disabled , Amy Duggar has gotten married, which adds another Duggar spouse, an account was added for Josiah , and Jeremey Vuolo joined the family in the spotlight. However, the family gave a little hint that would serve going forward: if the @DuggarFam account doesn’t follow it, assume it isn’t real.
That also rules out this account bearing Jeremy Vuolo’s name, again, even supposing the words “role play” in the description are overlooked.
None of this definitively proves that Jinger and Jeremy haven’t secretly wed, as many viewers have speculated , or that Jinger really doesn’t have any social media accounts. After all, we have seen Jana using Pinterest , so it’s entirely possible the unmarried Duggar women do have accounts that are kept private.
However, any social media accounts Jinger might have are not publicly shared and are certainly not likely to be labeled “role play” and only repost photos that have already been seen elsewhere. It’s also not likely that either half of the young couple would slip and forget that they’re very much in the public eye, and accidentally announce their marriage before they intend to.
Is it possible that the couple has, or will, wed in secret, whether to avoid uncomfortable encounters with avid fans or to boost ratings? Yes. Is there any evidence that they have done so? No.
In particular, have Jeremy Vuolo and Jinger Duggar accidentally leaked to their adoring public the secret of their marriage? That one is a definite no.
[Featured Image by TLC/YouTube ]
