It seems Real Housewives of NYC star Susan Saunders Jill Zarin just can’t help herself. First came Amazon-gate last year in which she was caught red-handed leaving positive reviews for her book on Amazon.com while also threatening people who left her negative reviews. And then two months later, UsWeekly reported she hired 4 media consultants to help her prep for the season 3 reunion show. Well folks, the Jillousy is back at it again!
A new report by Gawker sheds some light on Jill’s new MO, which is allegedly having others – likely hired PR interns – spam numerous blogs and sites with extremely positive comments about her.
The issue first came to light on May 1st when the TvOnTheRocks blog detected some suspicious comments about Jill from stories that were over a year old. One of the comments is below –
“Why do people say I hate Jill Zarin? Just because it’s called “reality” TV doesn’t make it an accurate portrayal of who a person really is. Do your research, Jill is a good person who does more than just appear on RHONY…she also does a lot of charity work and has a great new line of Shape wear called Skweez Couture to help us all look hot! Thank you Jill!”
As you can see, the comment is not only grossly transparent but even includes a link to Jill’s official blog under the words ‘I hate Jill Zarin.’ The reason for this? There is an actual blog on the internet titled ‘I hate Jill Zarin.’ The intention of Jill and her likely PR flunkies is that by manipulating the links, people searching online for I hate Jill Zarin would be taken to Jill’s official blog rather than the original I hate Jill Zarin blog. While also promoting her Skweez Couture line of course.
Low and behold, Reality Tea also received similar spam comments days later. Below are the three comments posted on our blog under stories about Jill –
“murphygirl on 2011/05/06 at 3:44 pm She’s pretty and smart. People should stop with all the IHate Jill Zarin stuff. She looks great and she’s using what she has to be the best reality star she can be! Jill Rules!”
“bonnie on 2011/05/06 at 4:30 pm I agree with you, Im on Jill’s side for sure. She is the sweetest onr on the show, and by far my favorite of the housewives! I dont understand why anyone would say I hate Jill Zarin”
“Erica on 2011/05/13 at 2:22 pm I have to agree with Jill, people do have a short attention span and I hope so, she deserves a new spin this season. But it’s the show, the editing and they have created all this I hate Jill Zarin buzz. The real person Jill Zarin is active in the community and gives her time to charity work. But that’s reality tv for you.”
And now back to the Gawker story which also pointed out that some hired PR flunkies superfans of Jill or even Jill herself have been bombarding the NYmag.com Vulture comments section with suspiciously pro-Jill propaganda. We do have to warn you ahead of time as some of these comments might induce nausea. Examples of the comments left by the “superfans” are – “Too many people love Jill Zarin. She is the best of all housewives. We LOVE her!!… Jill has a star quality that makes the show great… Jill Zarin is the heart and soul of Real Housewives of NYC.”
Similar to Bravo Gossip, we believe Jill likely hired a PR firm or a bunch of PR interns to help repair her tainted image. Thus explaining all the extreme Team Jill comments. Why you ask? Well folks, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) manipulation attempts leads us to believe this isn’t the work of your average superfans but definitely a group of people knowledgeable in the SEO field aka a PR company! But then again it could just be Jill herself doing her own dirty work as she’s definitely not above that.
This would also explain the whole polling fiasco that took place last month on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live. Jill was on the show with Ramona Singer immediately following the season 4 premiere of the RHONY, and Andy Cohen ran a whose side are you on poll question. Jill lost in a landslide after receiving only 22% of the votes. Three days later, Andy stated on the air that the original poll was erroneous and that Jill got 41% of the votes. Many found the recant to be odd, that is until the NY Post reported Jill was the one who demanded a recount right after the show ended, and even threatened to get her lawyers involved.
However, it was Jill’s comment to the Post that raised a red flag with us. She stated, “My initial reaction was surprise… That night, we said, ‘We don’t think these numbers are right.’ ” We questioned back then how Jill, who was very disliked last season by fans, could be so certain the polling numbers were wrong if she hadn’t done something to try to manipulate it? Well, based on the above, it seems we finally have our answer! Plus a similar poll by the HollywoodLife blog only gave Jill 19% of the votes while a poll we ran only gave her 10%. Safe to say those PR flunkies can’t get to all the polls.
