Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media joining.
Speaker 2: The six.
Speaker 3: Six Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we
Speaker 3: talk to the Internet's characters of the day and see
Speaker 3: how their fifteen minutes of fame affected them and what
Speaker 3: it says about the Internet and us. But this week
Speaker 3: we're taking a bit of a side quest to answer
Speaker 3: a question I've been asked quite a bit lately, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to answer, why are there so
Speaker 3: many Mormon women at the top of the social media
Speaker 3: influencing pile After a recent episode, I saw this question
Speaker 3: in the comments everywhere. I saw it on the sixteenth
Speaker 3: minute Reddit board, which, by the way, someone made if
Speaker 3: you're interested or have thoughts after episodes, And while it
Speaker 3: did resonate with me that the subject of the episode
Speaker 3: had been raised Mormon, I didn't want to touch that
Speaker 3: within the episode for a couple reasons. First because they
Speaker 3: never talk about Mormonism in their content and have generally
Speaker 3: avoided questions about it. And second, I didn't have a
Speaker 3: fucking clue what the answer to this question was, even
Speaker 3: though I understand why it was being asked. So this
Speaker 3: week we're going to attempt to answer that question in
Speaker 3: a two part deep dive series. The second of which
Speaker 3: will release on Thursday. Because to understand the root of
Speaker 3: why Mormonism and present day Mormon mommy influencers are so successful,
Speaker 3: you've got to understand where the overlaps in their interests
Speaker 3: are and how the values of both of these communities
Speaker 3: line up. So this week we're going to get all
Speaker 3: up to speed on that, and on Thursday, Alissa Grenfell
Speaker 3: will unpack how Mormon mobs have stayed on top of
Speaker 3: internet influencing for the last twenty years. All right, let's
Speaker 3: jump in and take a brief God, I really hope,
Speaker 3: actually brief look into the history of the Mormon Church
Speaker 3: in America, and I'll link to some additional resources in
Speaker 3: the description of the episode. Okay, let's learn about Mormons.
Speaker 3: Mormonism is a nineteenth century religion, formally founded by Joseph
Speaker 3: Smith in eighteen thirty. He was born squarely in the
Speaker 3: middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the US,
Speaker 3: a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism,
Speaker 3: and the Baptist Church and would birth a lot more
Speaker 3: and Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He
Speaker 3: grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to
Speaker 3: try things. The Mormon Faith, often called the LDS or
Speaker 3: Latter day Saints, came up shortly after the Shaker's movement.
Speaker 3: The LDS came to prominence around the same time as
Speaker 3: a number of Black church movements like the African Methodist
Speaker 3: Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA
Speaker 3: with Spiritualism, and you could listen to my limited series
Speaker 3: Ghost Church for more about the history of that. The
Speaker 3: mid nineteenth century was a big time of religious change
Speaker 3: and upheaval in the US, and after Mormonism took off,
Speaker 3: new religions continued to pop up. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses
Speaker 3: and Christian Scientists weren't far behind Mormonism, but very few
Speaker 3: specific movements from this time still have the cultural hold
Speaker 3: on America that Mormonism does. So Joseph Smith releases the
Speaker 3: Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in eighteen thirty,
Speaker 3: but the religion's or story connects to two incidents from
Speaker 3: the previous ten years. One was from eighteen twenty, when
Speaker 3: Joseph was fourteen and asked both Jesus and God which
Speaker 3: religion to follow, and was told by them follow none
Speaker 3: of them. It is your job to prepare the world
Speaker 3: for the second coming of Jesus. The other incident was
Speaker 3: in eighteen twenty three, when a seventeen year old Smith
Speaker 3: is said to have been visited by the angel Morone
Speaker 3: to repeat this calling, and was also told that there
Speaker 3: was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with the quote
Speaker 3: unquote American Continent that he needed to translate with a
Speaker 3: series of tools when he was a little older. After
Speaker 3: the Angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he retrieved
Speaker 3: and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon,
Speaker 3: which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a
Speaker 3: bit of a wizard of Ozzi equality to the way
Speaker 3: that this translation is dictated. There's magic stones. He's going
Speaker 3: behind curtains, and sometimes he wouldn't even use the gold plates.
Speaker 3: He would instead put a special stone in a hat,
Speaker 3: then bury his face and said hat. But if you're
Speaker 3: a prophet that he explained, the stone lights up within
Speaker 3: the hat and then you just dictate from there. This
Speaker 3: whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern scientology,
Speaker 3: where members in Florida are engraving the words of l
Speaker 3: Ron Hubburn on to titanium plates as we speak. It
Speaker 3: also harkens back to Helena Blovotsky's notion of the Acaciic
Speaker 3: records of the late nineteenth century, which were said to
Speaker 3: be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that.
Speaker 3: A lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in
Speaker 3: its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic.
Speaker 3: Great movie. And if you're not familiar with the origins
Speaker 3: of the Book of Mormon, to be fair, most religious
Speaker 3: origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has
Speaker 3: a similarly mystical origin story as for its contents. The
Speaker 3: Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of
Speaker 3: Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's
Speaker 3: destroyed in six hundred BC. They build a boat, sail
Speaker 3: it to the America, and soon become embroiled in a
Speaker 3: conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes
Speaker 3: and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to
Speaker 3: the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites
Speaker 3: were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later
Speaker 3: be softened to say that they were among the ancestors
Speaker 3: of some indigenous people. So a group of Jewish people
Speaker 3: migrate to the Americas and become indigenous Americans. Okay. Jesus
Speaker 3: is a huge part of Mormonism, and the Book of
Speaker 3: Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in thirty three AD,
Speaker 3: he goes to visit the Americas, where he is hailed
Speaker 3: as the pale Prophet because yes, Mormon Jesus is white.
Speaker 3: Some of their other beliefs, as expressed through Joseph Smith,
Speaker 3: are that God is a flesh and blood being who
Speaker 3: has a flesh and blood wife, his wife who lives
Speaker 3: far away near a distant star. And God tells Joseph
Speaker 3: Smith that we earthlings were brought into being to create
Speaker 3: these nuclear families, to be closer to God, so that
Speaker 3: one day we can live with God out of town
Speaker 3: on the star where he lives. And to create these families.
Speaker 3: You hear a lot of the classic signifiers of fundamentalist religions.
Speaker 3: There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline, and suffering. There
Speaker 3: are rigid gender roles. There's canonical homophobia. There's absurd racism
Speaker 3: that was later scaled back in order to accommodate growth
Speaker 3: in membership until a few decades ago. The Book of
Speaker 3: Mormon described members as quote a white and delightsome people unquote.
Speaker 3: To this day, there is still a tacit, don't ask,
Speaker 3: don't tell policy within the church about queerness, and that's
Speaker 3: an improvement from the mid twenty tens, when the children
Speaker 3: of queer parents were still not allowed to be baptized
Speaker 3: in the LDS. Anyways, in his time, Joseph Smith was,
Speaker 3: for his account, declared a prophet by Jesus and genuinely
Speaker 3: did face a great deal of persecution in the early
Speaker 3: days where he was gathering followers in New York, he
Speaker 3: was arrested and ejected from the state and took his
Speaker 3: believers to Ohio to prepare for the Second Coming of
Speaker 3: Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise where Smith envisioned
Speaker 3: communities that would be governed by celestial laws as determined
Speaker 3: by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows further away from
Speaker 3: traditional Christianity, and before you know it, the Mormons are
Speaker 3: ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered. Before this,
Speaker 3: the group then moves to Missouri, which is great because
Speaker 3: the Lord just so happens to have told Joseph Smith
Speaker 3: that that's actually where Zion is, but also where the
Speaker 3: Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start buying up
Speaker 3: land in Missouri and to remind you of the era
Speaker 3: of history we're in. This happened in eighteen thirty one,
Speaker 3: just a year after the Indian Removal Act was passed
Speaker 3: and brought about twenty years of brutal genocide of the
Speaker 3: indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons are driven
Speaker 3: out again, this time with increasing violence, and over the
Speaker 3: next few years they head with Smith all over the Midwest,
Speaker 3: where they're treated with similar hostility most places they go.
Speaker 3: At one point, the governor of Missouri passed an extermination act.
Speaker 3: Eventually they moved to Illinois, where they're permitted to set
Speaker 3: up a city of their own called Nouvou basically Zion
Speaker 3: two point zero, and it's here where Smith lightly militarizes
Speaker 3: the group and increasingly sends out missionaries to continue to
Speaker 3: grow the faith, and at the same time, Smith is
Speaker 3: told by an angel to introduce one of the LDS's
Speaker 3: most controversial policies, polygamy. And polygamy wasn't something that was
Speaker 3: allowed to everyone in the faith at first, just the
Speaker 3: powerful in the church, and during Smith's lifetime the practice
Speaker 3: was kept fairly quiet. He married as many as forty women,
Speaker 3: some of whom were under age. Women were expected to
Speaker 3: remain in the home, have many children, and to this
Speaker 3: day there is an early and intense emphasis on being
Speaker 3: a wife and mother before all else. The end of
Speaker 3: the line came for Joseph Smith in Illinois in eighteen
Speaker 3: forty four, where non Mormon locals imprisoned and then killed
Speaker 3: he and his brother. He's been hailed as an eternal
Speaker 3: prophet in the Mormon Church ever since, and is still
Speaker 3: an extremely prominent figure in the culture to this day.
Speaker 3: And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on
Speaker 3: YouTube that are really well acted and actual.
Speaker 4: Being from the unseen world, exerting all my strength to
Speaker 4: call upon God, I saw a pillar.
Speaker 3: Of line, all right, save it for the pulpit. After
Speaker 3: Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over and
Speaker 3: the Mormons leave Navoo in eighteen forty six, hiking pioneer
Speaker 3: style to what is now present day Utah, where in
Speaker 3: the next ten odd years they ignored the American government
Speaker 3: and practice polygamy openly, that is, until this was going
Speaker 3: to prevent Utah getting statehood. Polygamy would be in LDS
Speaker 3: sanctioned practice until eighteen ninety, but it was technically discontinued
Speaker 3: at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws around bigamy.
Speaker 3: Pass in the eighteen sixties and seventies. However, a lot
Speaker 3: of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In today's Mormon marriages,
Speaker 3: more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm, and there's
Speaker 3: a long complicated history with the Mormons, Utah and indigenous people, because,
Speaker 3: unlike most accounts of a new American colony being founded,
Speaker 3: there were Native Americans in Utah when they arrived, and
Speaker 3: under Brigham Young LDS members are encouraged to purchase Native
Speaker 3: children as slaves and raise them in their homes with
Speaker 3: the hopes of assimilating them to the Mormon faith. It's
Speaker 3: not too dissimilar from the residential schools that separated Native
Speaker 3: families and erase their culture, often killing children all the
Speaker 3: way into the nineteen nineties. Today, there is still a
Speaker 3: very high number of Mormons in Utah, hovering somewhere around
Speaker 3: forty percent In twenty twenty three. It's where Brigham Young
Speaker 3: University is and where are some of the religion's most
Speaker 3: prominent influencers live today. Ever heard of the Real Housewives
Speaker 3: of Salt Lake City?
Speaker 5: Salt Lake City, Utah, is known for its magnificent mountains
Speaker 5: and world.
Speaker 6: Class casetos, but what Salt Lake City is most known
Speaker 6: for is the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3: A quick lesson on how to be a good Mormon.
Speaker 3: Don't drink, don't swear, treat your body like a temple.
Speaker 3: To be Mormon, we are taught honesty and integrity, and
Speaker 3: most importantly, to watch for sue you're gonna go with
Speaker 3: Mary your grandfather, Well, there you go. On the other
Speaker 3: end of that, about a third of people raised in
Speaker 3: the LDS today end up leaving the religion, as opposed
Speaker 3: to the ninety five percent retention rate of the late
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. So it's important to note the Internet age
Speaker 3: has made a difference in how Mormonism is perceived by
Speaker 3: its own members. And if you're Mormon or ex Mormon,
Speaker 3: you know that I am barely scratching the surface here.
Speaker 3: It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around for nearly
Speaker 3: two hundred years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances,
Speaker 3: restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout missions, which
Speaker 3: are eighteen to twenty four month assignments where LDS officials
Speaker 3: determine a location for a young person to go and
Speaker 3: their job is to recruit people into the church. As
Speaker 3: it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that
Speaker 3: Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion that has been historically hostile
Speaker 3: to women, to queer people, and to anyone who isn't white.
Speaker 3: What is also important is that the Mormon Church has
Speaker 3: a shitload of money, A shitload I had no idea.
Speaker 3: At present, the Mormon churches net worth is estimated to
Speaker 3: be two hundred and sixty five billion dollars. For context,
Speaker 3: Disney is valued at one hundred and sixty one billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where
Speaker 3: church members are required to give ten percent of their
Speaker 3: income back to the LDS. As for pop culture, Mormonism
Speaker 3: has been portrayed negatively a lot. Think HBO show Bis
Speaker 3: Love and still running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon,
Speaker 3: which of course the LDS condemned.
Speaker 5: Hello, my Name is Elder Price, and I would like
Speaker 5: to share with you the most amazing book.
Speaker 3: Hello, my name is Elder Grant.
Speaker 5: It's a book about America a long, long time ago.
Speaker 3: It has well, I wonder why they didn't like that.
Speaker 3: But the LDS has also produced its fair share of
Speaker 3: successful entertainment acts. There no scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archiletta,
Speaker 3: Donnie and Marie Osmond and Gladys Knight is still a
Speaker 3: pretty impressive roster. The aquabats are Mormon? Really think about that?
Speaker 3: And of course a ton of currently successful influencers more
Speaker 3: when we come back. The prevalence of Mormon influencers has
Speaker 3: been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months,
Speaker 3: mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through
Speaker 3: to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this,
Speaker 3: a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut
Speaker 3: about Mormon wife influencers.
Speaker 1: I love the Mormon Church, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of rules that we have to follow. We were raised
Speaker 1: to be these housewives for the men, serving their every desires.
Speaker 1: Have kids by the time you're twenty one or in
Speaker 1: my case at sixteen, Well, I'm like this.
Speaker 2: We are trying to change the stigma of gender roles
Speaker 2: in the Mormon culture.
Speaker 3: The central characters of this show are existing successful Mormon
Speaker 3: mommy TikTokers, and if the comments on virtually every video
Speaker 3: of these women is to be believed, they are very
Speaker 3: controversial within the Latter day Saint community, and most would
Speaker 3: say they do not represent Mormonism in spite of the
Speaker 3: fact that they live in Salt Lake City, where the
Speaker 3: LDS is headquartered. Most of them grew up Mormon, and
Speaker 3: part of why they became so popular on TikTok was
Speaker 3: because they were referencing the tenants and values of the church.
Speaker 7: Have you talked to your bishop or the church about anything? No?
Speaker 1: No, how come I don't know? Because like what if
Speaker 1: they're going to like excommunicate me.
Speaker 3: This content got really popular under the hashtag mom talk
Speaker 3: on TikTok in the early twenty twenties, and while this
Speaker 3: content promotes fundamentalist values around gender rules, due to their popularity,
Speaker 3: the mom talkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family.
Speaker 3: The women of mom Talk look very modern. They're usually
Speaker 3: wearing Kardashian adjacent athleteture, but the reason they have a
Speaker 3: TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew
Speaker 3: up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's
Speaker 3: because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon.
Speaker 3: In two to mom Talk influencer Taylor, Frankie Paul announced
Speaker 3: that she and her husband would be getting a divorce
Speaker 3: because of her violation of the terms of their soft
Speaker 3: swinging within their Mormon friend group. And soft swinging is
Speaker 3: not sanctioned by the LDS in no small part because
Speaker 3: that might actually be fun for women.
Speaker 1: Soft swinging, again, is when you like, just hug up,
Speaker 1: but you don't go.
Speaker 5: All the way.
Speaker 3: It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons,
Speaker 3: if the comment section is to be believed, and it's
Speaker 3: not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact
Speaker 3: that mom talkers were regularly breaking core tenants of the faith.
Speaker 3: They did things like drink caffeine, they didn't wear their
Speaker 3: religious garments beneath their clothes all the time. This soft
Speaker 3: swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community,
Speaker 3: but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved
Speaker 3: caused to stir within the community. So presented with this
Speaker 3: public scandal and subsequent high profile influencer's decision to remain
Speaker 3: within the church. Is this bad for the Mormon pr
Speaker 3: team or is all press good press? They haven't been
Speaker 3: excommunicated or anything like that. But the Mormon Church has
Speaker 3: issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And
Speaker 3: this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how
Speaker 3: Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But
Speaker 3: when the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives trailer dropped, the
Speaker 3: LDS released the following statement.
Speaker 5: The portrayal is a gross misrepresentation that could have real
Speaker 5: life consequences for people of faith. A statement by the
Speaker 5: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints reads it
Speaker 5: depicts lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of
Speaker 5: the Church and irresponsibly mischaracterizes the safety and conduct of
Speaker 5: our volunteer missionaries. We understand the fascinations some in the
Speaker 5: media have with the church, but regret that portrayals often
Speaker 5: rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and
Speaker 5: fully reflect the lives of our church members or these
Speaker 5: sacred beliefs that they hold.
Speaker 3: Dear, there are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't
Speaker 3: often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed
Speaker 3: a lot in ex Mormon content. There is rituals like
Speaker 3: the washing and anointing. There's endowment ceremonies and esthetics that
Speaker 3: are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with
Speaker 3: the American Freemasons. But whether the LDS likes it or not,
Speaker 3: this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have
Speaker 3: made into mainstream culture. Again, I haven't seen an episode
Speaker 3: of this show yet, but it looks like the wives
Speaker 3: are going to be centered in the story here, which
Speaker 3: would have been unheard of in Mormonism at one time.
Speaker 3: But what I've learned is that part of why Mormon
Speaker 3: influencers are more successful than other trad wife Okay, let's
Speaker 3: define tradwife.
Speaker 5: A trad wife is a woman who believes in and
Speaker 5: pctices traditional gender roles and marriages. Some may choose to
Speaker 5: take a homemaking role within their marriage, and others leave
Speaker 5: their careers to focus on meeting their families' needs in
Speaker 5: the home.
Speaker 3: Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other
Speaker 3: tradwife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon Church
Speaker 3: has been unusually good at adapting to the Internet and
Speaker 3: always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll
Speaker 3: get there. If you've managed to make it to Fall
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four without having the word tradwife shoved in
Speaker 3: your face, congratulations and sorry, because I am going to
Speaker 3: tell you what it is. Tradwife content is a social
Speaker 3: media trend from about the last half decade where women
Speaker 3: create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes, the more closely
Speaker 3: aligned with traditional gender roles, with an emphasis on the
Speaker 3: beauty of a return to old time values. So TikTok's
Speaker 3: about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself
Speaker 3: primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning
Speaker 3: a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to
Speaker 3: the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest.
Speaker 3: Not all tradwives are Mormons hashtag not all tradwives, not
Speaker 3: even close. And I'm not going to tackle the topic
Speaker 3: of tradwive content wholesale in this episode. What you need
Speaker 3: to know is the term tradwife shouldn't be conflated with
Speaker 3: staying at home moms because while tradwife creators are moms
Speaker 3: and at home with the children. Making tradwife content is,
Speaker 3: for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting,
Speaker 3: because being a stay at home parent is a job,
Speaker 3: although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor
Speaker 3: as valid. Tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and
Speaker 3: low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of
Speaker 3: the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess.
Speaker 3: There's a sense of self surveillance to this content, an
Speaker 3: appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected
Speaker 3: to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back
Speaker 3: to mid twentieth century America. So, if this makes sense,
Speaker 3: tradwives don't look like stay at home moms. They look
Speaker 3: like the advertisements of stay at home moms. And so
Speaker 3: much of what makes their content appealing is that an
Speaker 3: incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive,
Speaker 3: and morally correct. Because if you're making lifestyle content of
Speaker 3: any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle,
Speaker 3: you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you,
Speaker 3: how many hot dogs have I sold by accident incalculable,
Speaker 3: just not. The trad live space is predominantly white, but
Speaker 3: possibly more diverse than you might expect. There is an
Speaker 3: active Black trat life community who, according to a Refinery
Speaker 3: twenty nine piece by Nyla Burton in late twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: believe that quote traditional marriage is the key to Black
Speaker 3: women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress
Speaker 3: of trying to survive in a world hostile to our
Speaker 3: survival and existence. Cradwife content is popular across a lot
Speaker 3: of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a
Speaker 3: feeling of performance, and this aesthetic of either mid century
Speaker 3: housewives or cottage core. In my opinion, there's very little
Speaker 3: intimacy to these posts, in spite of the fact that
Speaker 3: we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing
Speaker 3: their children, who are, make no mistake, a part of
Speaker 3: the business model. While I totally get why the content
Speaker 3: is so appealing, it does feel like a performance, and
Speaker 3: a very effective one. I mean, I'm like a militant feminist,
Speaker 3: and I would be lying if I said I hadn't
Speaker 3: seen a few trildwife posts that made me feel like
Speaker 3: I was living my life the wrong way, but neutral statement.
Speaker 3: These posts are a performance.
Speaker 4: Think of it like this.
Speaker 3: The Donna Reed Show very effectively sold the idea of
Speaker 3: Donna Red as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived
Speaker 3: in this effortless way, and in reality was a television
Speaker 3: show that was produced by its star, and that the
Speaker 3: real Donna Reed was a multi hyphenic creative and a
Speaker 3: TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife
Speaker 3: rather than actually living that life herself. Well, would you say,
Speaker 3: missus Johnson, that Donna worked hard in college?
Speaker 7: She worked hard up at seven in the morning, all
Speaker 7: day in school and jobs between classes to earn a
Speaker 7: little extra money, and then home to earn a roman
Speaker 7: board to help me cooking dishes and a little ironing,
Speaker 7: and men stud until midnight. I don't think she ever
Speaker 7: had more than six hours.
Speaker 3: To me from a social media perspective, the trad life
Speaker 3: phenomenon has a lot in common with a pattern that
Speaker 3: we talk about on this show all the time. A
Speaker 3: lot of the reason we're still talking about this content
Speaker 3: is because there's been so much backlash and outrage toward
Speaker 3: it since it became popular in the early twenty twenties.
Speaker 3: Left leaning feminists who believe that the tradwife trend hearkens
Speaker 3: a dangerous period of regression as the American people's right
Speaker 3: to bodily autonomy slowly and surely slips into the very
Speaker 3: mid century timeframe that tradwives so often portray. And this
Speaker 3: outrage does help to fuel the success of the influencers,
Speaker 3: because yes, they have millions of followers, but the snart
Speaker 3: reddit boards and hate comments saying that tradwives are self
Speaker 3: hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in the hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands as well. And as far as the algorithm is concerned,
Speaker 3: engagement is engagement, whether it's positive or negative. You're remind
Speaker 3: finds me a lot of friend of the pod Max
Speaker 3: Fisher's book A Chaos Machine, in which he fully illustrates
Speaker 3: the ways in which modern algorithms are designed to enrage.
Speaker 3: That's why we have so many social media stories that
Speaker 3: are rooted in backlash and then backlash to the backlash.
Speaker 3: Prod wife narratives fall neatly into this pattern because for
Speaker 3: every bit of praise, there's an essay that's written in
Speaker 3: stark disagreement. So why is this content so popular in
Speaker 3: the last few years friend of the pod Brigid Todd
Speaker 3: of there are no girls on the internet sets.
Speaker 8: During uncertain times, people sell easy solutions because our brains
Speaker 8: in times of precarity crave simple solutions. But often those comforting,
Speaker 8: simple solutions are just placeholders for the reality, which is
Speaker 8: that the problem is actually systemic and institutional. You're not
Speaker 8: going to dismantle it in your specific nuclear household and family.
Speaker 8: If you're only looking within your own family, you're not
Speaker 8: looking hard enough at the larger issues at play.
Speaker 3: While these as have millions upon millions of followers who
Speaker 3: view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty
Speaker 3: of modern moms who were completely fucking baffled by it.
Speaker 3: Because I've engaged with so much of this content that
Speaker 3: my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying
Speaker 3: that tradwife content is often a lot about subtext, right
Speaker 3: projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the fifties
Speaker 3: were a great time for women, Maybe we need to
Speaker 3: bring it back, but there's a sense of encouraging to
Speaker 3: submit to the status quo, a status quo that existed
Speaker 3: before a lot of necessary civil rights were fought for,
Speaker 3: But online now tradwives man. But let's bring it back
Speaker 3: to the Mormon's side of this content specifically, because as
Speaker 3: we're trying to get to the bottom of Mormons have
Speaker 3: found a lot of success in this space. Mom Talkers
Speaker 3: are far from the only prominent Mormon content creators dominating
Speaker 3: social media today. The most popular, and so by extension,
Speaker 3: the most embroiled in controversy is the second major Mormon
Speaker 3: influencer story of the summer, Ballerina Farm. More when we
Speaker 3: come back, welcome back to sixteenth minute. The more I
Speaker 3: learned about tradwives, the more it became obvious that they
Speaker 3: developed in response to the capitalism is for girls to
Speaker 3: actually slay rhetoric of the mid twenty tens. But like,
Speaker 3: is it that different when you're a tradwife entrepreneur? It
Speaker 3: kind of seems like you're doing the same thing, but
Speaker 3: the thing that you're selling is that you're not actually
Speaker 3: doing the thing that I'm watching you doing. And when
Speaker 3: we left off, we were talking about the most famous
Speaker 3: Mormon influencer on the scene today, Ballerina Farm. Where do
Speaker 3: we again? All my male listeners are getting like a
Speaker 3: noseblade Mallerina Farm is the user name for a Mormon
Speaker 3: woman named Hannah Neielman, whose follower count on Instagram currently
Speaker 3: sits at ten million. She was raised in the LDS
Speaker 3: and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into and
Speaker 3: graduated from Juilliard. And she cited over and over that
Speaker 3: she was the first undergrad in modern history to be
Speaker 3: pregnant while still at Juilliard because while there she got
Speaker 3: married to fellow Mormon Daniel Nielman in twenty eleven, the
Speaker 3: year before she graduated.
Speaker 9: So both the.
Speaker 3: Neielmans grew up in big, devout Utah Mormon families. Hannah
Speaker 3: was one of nine, Daniel was one of ten. They
Speaker 3: got engaged after only three weeks, and while Hannah was
Speaker 3: still in college, she also started competing in beauty pageants.
Speaker 3: She started with Miss New York and then re entered
Speaker 3: the space after getting married and having kids, because Hannah
Speaker 3: does not stay a ballerina. After graduation, Hannah and Daniel
Speaker 3: moved to England for a semester at Cambridge, then Utah
Speaker 3: so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham Young University,
Speaker 3: and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as the director
Speaker 3: of his father's security company for a few years, because
Speaker 3: it must be said financially, these are incredibly privileged people.
Speaker 3: Daniel's father founded Jet Blue. Dude, They've got money, and
Speaker 3: he's so Mormon that he worked on Mitt Romney's failed
Speaker 3: presidential campaign in twenty twelve. But Daniel's dream is to
Speaker 3: move back to Utah and live on a farm, and
Speaker 3: they finally do so in twenty seventeen, buying the eponymous
Speaker 3: Ballerina Farm in twenty eighteen. By the time they moved
Speaker 3: on to the three hundred and twenty eight acre farm,
Speaker 3: they had four kids, and when they moved onto the farm,
Speaker 3: Hannah Nielman's online brand as a Mormon wife was well established,
Speaker 3: but significantly less successful. Hannah started her social media journey
Speaker 3: as a mom influencer on a blog called We Took
Speaker 3: the Train in early twenty thirteen, shortly after the birth
Speaker 3: of her first child, Henry, and her college graduation. And
Speaker 3: it's interesting that she in with a completely different era
Speaker 3: of successful Mormon online influencers because in the two thousands
Speaker 3: into the early twenty tens, Mormon mommy blogs were a thing.
Speaker 3: The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline was popular for as long
Speaker 3: as blogs were popular and mommy bloggers in general have
Speaker 3: always enjoyed massive success and usually adapt to new social
Speaker 3: media platforms pretty easily. I'd recommend Sarah Peterson's book mom
Speaker 3: Fluenced for more on this topic because mommy blogging was
Speaker 3: popular from the very dawn of social media, but it
Speaker 3: was very different than the tradwive content that we see today.
Speaker 3: There was a lot more emphasis on writing over visuals,
Speaker 3: and the writing tended to be more confessional. Writer Catherine
Speaker 3: Jeezer Morton has been covering this space for a long time.
Speaker 3: I'm quoting here from a New York Times column called
Speaker 3: Did Moms Exist Before Social Media? From twenty twenty, where
Speaker 3: she mentions how Mormon women entering the mommy blog space
Speaker 3: changed it.
Speaker 8: To overlook the influence of Mormon and other Christian mommy
Speaker 8: bloggers on this ship would be a huge oversight. Mormon
Speaker 8: mommy bloggers in particular, were enormously influential in establishing the
Speaker 8: esthetic and tone that came to characterize influencer era online motherhood.
Speaker 8: Mormonism encourages the careful documentation of family life, and Mormon
Speaker 8: mothers were among blogging's earliest and most enthusiastic adopters. Unlike
Speaker 8: the confessional. Early mommy blogs, Mormon mother's blogs broadcast a
Speaker 8: clean and chipper vision of motherhood, replete with DIY crafting
Speaker 8: projects and coordinated family photoshoots. Many of the most successful
Speaker 8: Mormon bloggers from the mid auts, like Amber Phillerup Clark,
Speaker 8: and Naomi Davis, went on to become mainstream lifestyle bloggers,
Speaker 8: and although their Mormon faith is no secret, its prominence
Speaker 8: were seated as the years passed.
Speaker 3: Early successful Mormon or ex Mormon mommy bloggers included how
Speaker 3: the Armstrong of Deucey, Amber Phillarup Davis, and love Taza
Speaker 3: aka Naomi Davis. Around this same time, successful family bloggers
Speaker 3: like Dade Carl and his family only become really popular
Speaker 3: on YouTube and the late oughts into the early twenty tens.
Speaker 3: In fact, Carl's child, Brock, was considered to be the
Speaker 3: first Truman baby, as in The Truman Show, as in
Speaker 3: a child whose life was documented from moment one to
Speaker 3: a massive social media audience. Scary, This hyper vulnerable mommy
Speaker 3: blog stuff is considered pretty old school now. At the time,
Speaker 3: Mormon mommy bloggers were a part of the coined blogger
Speaker 3: nackle community, with personalities like Stephanie Nielsen of the Nine
Speaker 3: Dialogues and see Jane Kendrick of c Jane Enjoyett serving
Speaker 3: as early examples for their crossover appeal outside of the religion.
Speaker 3: There was even an award system developed for successful blogger
Speaker 3: Nacle publications called the Niblets. This went from twenty five
Speaker 3: to twenty seventeen, and bloggers who were particularly good at
Speaker 3: spreading Mormon values online got a trophy. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if you feel the same way, but I was
Speaker 3: really surprised because because I thought of Mormon culture as
Speaker 3: so conservative in its gender roles that actively encouraging women
Speaker 3: to speak at all would be a non starter. But
Speaker 3: that's not true at all, if talks given by Mormon
Speaker 3: leaders during the early blogging era are to be believed.
Speaker 3: These blogs, blogs, et cetera were viewed to be an
Speaker 3: extension of the Mormon mission and a way to get
Speaker 3: the word out. I'm pulling this from an LDS news
Speaker 3: post from two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5: Apostle urges students to use new media. Two hundred graduating
Speaker 5: students at Brigham Young University, Hawaii were urged today to
Speaker 5: use the Internet, including blogs and other forms of new
Speaker 5: media to contribute to a national conversation about the Church
Speaker 5: of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Elder M Russell Ballard,
Speaker 5: an apostle in the church, told the mostly Mormon student
Speaker 5: body that conversations about the church would take place whether
Speaker 5: or not church members decided to participate in them. We
Speaker 5: cannot stand on in the sidelines while others, including our critics,
Speaker 5: attempt to define what the church teaches.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 5: While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions,
Speaker 5: most are much much smaller, but all conversations have an
Speaker 5: impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the
Speaker 5: Church are established one conversation at a time. Church leaders
Speaker 5: have publicly expressed concern that while much of the recent
Speaker 5: extensive news reporting on the church has been balanced and accurate,
Speaker 5: some has been trivial, distorted, or without context. Elder Ballard
Speaker 5: said there were too many conversations going on about the
Speaker 5: church for church representatives to respond to each individually, and
Speaker 5: that church leaders can't answer every question, satisfy every inquiry,
Speaker 5: and respond to every inaccuracy that exists. He said students
Speaker 5: should consider sharing their views on blogs, responding to anna
Speaker 5: line news reports, and using the new media in other ways,
Speaker 5: but he cautioned against arguing with others about their beliefs.
Speaker 5: There is no need to become defensive or belligerent, he said.
Speaker 3: This feels like a skeleton key to a lot of
Speaker 3: Mormon content to why Mormons are so online, whether they
Speaker 3: are overtly discussing their religion or not. Modern Mormon missionaries
Speaker 3: will very often vlog their experiences. This is from a
Speaker 3: missionary named Grayson Hardman from last year.
Speaker 5: All right, we're all proselyting through it in the heat.
Speaker 5: We just had our very first contact really of the
Speaker 5: day in person. What happens not interesting.
Speaker 3: Posting is all but baked into the religion in the
Speaker 3: modern day, probably in a sour dough that took five
Speaker 3: hours to make. By the time Mormon tradwives and mommy
Speaker 3: bloggers become mainstream famous, they're not wearing their religion on
Speaker 3: their sleeve as much. It's more of a soft pitch.
Speaker 3: You usually find out their Mormon whereas if you scroll
Speaker 3: all the way down to the beginning of their profile,
Speaker 3: they often used to be more overt about the values
Speaker 3: they held. But again, to connect it back to that piece,
Speaker 3: this heating to a spouse a vision of an ideal
Speaker 3: Mormon family without defensiveness or belligerence. It kind of makes sense. Okay,
Speaker 3: back to Ballerina Farm. Because Hannah Nielman starts in the
Speaker 3: waning days of mommy blogging, she kind of straddles different
Speaker 3: eras of social media and Mormons online. She starts mommy
Speaker 3: blogging on we took the Train in the twenty tens,
Speaker 3: at the end of the mommy blogging trend, and then
Speaker 3: is at the forefront of the Instagram and TikTok Mormon
Speaker 3: mommy blogs, which are wildly different in tone. They're not
Speaker 3: at all confessional and are far more defined by their
Speaker 3: esthetic and this sense of ferial certainty. So to give
Speaker 3: you an idea of how her narrative voice shifts, here's
Speaker 3: an example of how Hannah would speak in her early
Speaker 3: blogging days in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 8: I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and
Speaker 8: just how grateful I really am that I am right
Speaker 8: here right now. Two people. One was a past pageant coach,
Speaker 8: the other a fellow dancer I want to dance with.
Speaker 8: Ask me if I was really happy to have given
Speaker 8: up those dreams for where I am today.
Speaker 3: Ha, I am so happy.
Speaker 8: I am so at peace. I have a husband who
Speaker 8: is mine forever.
Speaker 3: Together.
Speaker 8: We have a beautiful baby boy who is full of
Speaker 8: purity and joy. I get to dance and teach as
Speaker 8: much as possible, and I love that, of course, but
Speaker 8: there is nothing more rewarding than seeing my family here
Speaker 8: right now. I really feel like the luckiest girl in
Speaker 8: the world. So yep, I am happy. Goal for the
Speaker 8: week only eat out once.
Speaker 3: It's still praising the lifestyle, but even acknowledging her own
Speaker 3: insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had
Speaker 3: about her religion, is not something you would see today.
Speaker 3: In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling
Speaker 3: with I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood.
Speaker 3: Am I doing the right thing? She also talks about
Speaker 3: going to McDonald's and loving it, something that wildly differs
Speaker 3: from her current dance as a tradwive slash farmed table influencer.
Speaker 3: In these early days, she's working part time teaching dance
Speaker 3: while raising her eldest son, trying to sort of find
Speaker 3: a balance between traditional values and what her passions are.
Speaker 3: This is not at all what Ballerina Farm content sounds like.
Speaker 3: Here's a post from this year.
Speaker 9: Today, we're making some Turkish eggs. So I started off
Speaker 9: by straining some of Daniel's homemade yogurt in a cheesecloth
Speaker 9: and hung that so it could get a bit thicker.
Speaker 9: Can I wash my butter? I also like to run
Speaker 9: under some cold water to get it really nice and washed.
Speaker 3: So Hannah starts as a completely different kind of Mormon influencer.
Speaker 3: When I started looking looking for an answer to this
Speaker 3: question why there are so many Mormon women that are
Speaker 3: successful online, I was seeing the same answer over and over. Well,
Speaker 3: it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot.
Speaker 3: The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful,
Speaker 3: and Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that
Speaker 3: now consists of eight children, and they quickly expand this
Speaker 3: success to start a series of businesses. They start a
Speaker 3: beef farm, they start a lifestyle brand, and Hannah goes
Speaker 3: from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok and Instagram creator,
Speaker 3: racking up millions of views on her videos of making
Speaker 3: meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm
Speaker 3: to table and family first lifestyle, and doing it all
Speaker 3: in full makeup. And these cottage core flowy dresses. There's
Speaker 3: also quiet advertisements in Ballerina Farm content for most of
Speaker 3: her videos. You can find affiliate codes on her website
Speaker 3: for basically anything you saw her use in the course
Speaker 3: of the video. In twenty two every One, Hannah had
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand Instagram followers. Now she has ten million.
Speaker 3: So the days where Hannah was teaching Dan's part time
Speaker 3: are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just
Speaker 3: running a business and making meals. And as these responsibilities
Speaker 3: pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing
Speaker 3: all of this, like, surely someone is helping with the
Speaker 3: kids and the business, right because the kids are homeschooled
Speaker 3: and the meals took hours, and Hannah appeared to be
Speaker 3: making content and co running multiple businesses while also upholding
Speaker 3: conservative values. That's a lot of jobs, but we're not
Speaker 3: really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the content's appeal
Speaker 3: is that Hannah made this all look so easy, and
Speaker 3: as she was doing all of this, she continued to
Speaker 3: compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of missus
Speaker 3: America in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three.
Speaker 10: What You're all Flipping out about is her looking smoke
Speaker 10: and hot and participating in miss world right after she
Speaker 10: gave birth. I mean, like, I think the placenta probably
Speaker 10: hadn't even come out when she was putting on her
Speaker 10: ball gown.
Speaker 3: I mean she is. That was quick.
Speaker 10: That was a quick turnaround. So she's in your head
Speaker 10: about that. But why was she not in your head before?
Speaker 10: I think you guys just haven't been following her closely enough.
Speaker 3: She's projecting the super mom image right. It's unclear to
Speaker 3: viewers how it's attained, and you get the feeling that
Speaker 3: it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot
Speaker 3: of other people working just outside the frame, or both,
Speaker 3: because the alternative is, well, what the fuck is wrong
Speaker 3: with me? But this virtuousness, this emphasis on disciplining the body,
Speaker 3: the emphasis that ball gowns aside my marriage and family
Speaker 3: are the most important thing. That's a solid ad for Mormonism.
Speaker 3: And even so the Ballerina farm family doesn't often reference
Speaker 3: the Mormon Church online, it's implied they get ready for
Speaker 3: church on camera. There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender
Speaker 3: roles in nuclear families. But for someone who comes across
Speaker 3: their content by chance, there's nothing that screams, these are
Speaker 3: Mormons unless you know what to look for in terms
Speaker 3: of home decor, and this feels by design. You don't
Speaker 3: build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in
Speaker 3: the US according to Pew research, behind dominant Protestant and
Speaker 3: Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist,
Speaker 3: agnostic end quote nothing in particular, unquote. If you're six
Speaker 3: places behind Nothing in Particular and want to keep growing
Speaker 3: your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their
Speaker 3: often controversial religion. So in most places, I've seen Ballerina
Speaker 3: Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church and
Speaker 3: for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like
Speaker 3: queer and trans rites and open abortion access. I understand
Speaker 3: why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering, and for people who
Speaker 3: work on farms that are not banngrolled by JetBlue, the
Speaker 3: account scans as even more of a performance. And then
Speaker 3: this past summer, Vallerina Farm has been a popular point
Speaker 3: of discussion for years with evangelizing followers and snark blogs
Speaker 3: with readership in the six figures, but she comes to
Speaker 3: widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile
Speaker 3: written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was
Speaker 3: a very disturbing dynamic. Main takeaways from the article include
Speaker 3: Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane. It
Speaker 3: turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned,
Speaker 3: and he specifically requested to be set on seid plane
Speaker 3: beside Hannah, making it the most expensive predatory meet cute
Speaker 3: I've ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a
Speaker 3: year in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but
Speaker 3: was overruled by Daniel. She was engaged a month later
Speaker 3: and was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation.
Speaker 3: There are, of course people working on Vallerina farm and
Speaker 3: for their company, they were just never acknowledged as existing
Speaker 3: in the content. However, Hannah is not allowed to have
Speaker 3: nanny's to help her at home, and the article implies
Speaker 3: that this is Daniel's choice, and he describes Hannah as
Speaker 3: becoming so exhausted by caring for the eight children that
Speaker 3: she will sometimes collapse for a week at a time,
Speaker 3: which plays into the Mormon and just generally fundamentalist belief
Speaker 3: that women's suffering is virtuous, but to a modern audience
Speaker 3: hearing this dynamic within such a wealthy family felt fucked up.
Speaker 3: Hannah and Daniel did not believe involuntary abortion, something their
Speaker 3: content suggested but never stated, and that Hannah's identity prior
Speaker 3: to their marriage and especially her relationship with Dance, had
Speaker 3: been slowly choked out by Ballerina Farm and the Mormon lifestyle.
Speaker 3: And this story had reach not only because it was upsetting,
Speaker 3: but because it seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot
Speaker 3: of the people who had been asking how Ballerina Farm
Speaker 3: quote unquote did it all. The article suggests that the
Speaker 3: answer is by sacrificing parts of herself and being exhausted
Speaker 3: to the point of not being able to function. Something
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting while examining the reaction to this
Speaker 3: story was that non Mormons tended to find Daniel Nielman
Speaker 3: as the villain of this story because it's him who
Speaker 3: is constantly correcting, negging, and suppressing Hannah throughout the profile
Speaker 3: as written. But X Mormon influencers are careful to add
Speaker 3: a little bit of nuance to this. Their suggestion is more,
Speaker 3: does Daniel come off as an entitled asshole? Yes, but
Speaker 3: both Daniel and Hannah are playing their role here. It
Speaker 3: doesn't excuse the behavior, but x Mormon YouTubers like Jordan
Speaker 3: and Mackay note that Daniel was playing the part of
Speaker 3: the devout Mormon husband to the hilt here. And what
Speaker 3: I'll say in Ballerina Farm's defense, While I find the
Speaker 3: details of this story really dark, I do believe Hannah
Speaker 3: Nielman when she says that she believes this is the
Speaker 3: correct way to live, and the rest of us can
Speaker 3: make of it what we will. Hannah has of course
Speaker 3: condemned this piece in a recent post.
Speaker 6: A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come
Speaker 6: into our home to learn more about our family and business.
Speaker 6: We thought the interview went really well, very similar to
Speaker 6: the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory.
Speaker 6: We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article,
Speaker 6: which shocked us and shocked the world by being an
Speaker 6: attack on our family and my marriage.
Speaker 3: And her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I
Speaker 3: think this article might have helped her in the long run.
Speaker 3: But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question,
Speaker 3: why is this a ten million follower account? Hannah Nielman
Speaker 3: has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset,
Speaker 3: and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did,
Speaker 3: So is she an asset to the Mormon Church? The
Speaker 3: answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without
Speaker 3: talking to people who have been Mormons themselves who intimately
Speaker 3: understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the
Speaker 3: Internet that is built around x Mormon content, primarily on
Speaker 3: YouTube and TikTok. As I'm writing this, there are plenty
Speaker 3: of creators who have left the church explaining their personal
Speaker 3: experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas, and oppression experience
Speaker 3: within the LDS. Often accounts of their childhood and their
Speaker 3: mission and why they ultimately left. Like pro Mormon content,
Speaker 3: ex Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've
Speaker 3: watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode.
Speaker 3: Some resources I've used are the long running Mormon Stories podcast,
Speaker 3: which has been going since two thousand and five, and
Speaker 3: a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be
Speaker 3: talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's
Speaker 3: what I'll leave you with. If Mormonism is nowhere near
Speaker 3: the country's most popular religion but is disproportionately represented on
Speaker 3: our social media, then what is there left to look to?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 3: Money? Any algorithm, Alyssa Grenfell explains in Part two via Then.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Itias written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are so Ghy Lickerman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shoutouts
Speaker 3: to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper
Speaker 3: and my pet Rockbord, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 7: Bye.