Speaker 1: Also media Robert Evans here and for the holiday season
Speaker 1: the end of the year, all that good stuff we
Speaker 1: are continuing are normally scheduled behind the Bastards episodes, don't
Speaker 1: you worry, but we also are running some special episodes,
Speaker 1: compilations from new shows we launched this year and the
Speaker 1: very best episodes they did. We've dished a couple together,
Speaker 1: so you've got less ads. You can listen to something
Speaker 1: that maybe you haven't had a chance to check out yet.
Speaker 1: And today you're going to hear sixteenth Minute. As in
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute of Fame Jamie LOFTUS is excellent news podcasts
Speaker 1: about the main characters of the Internet and what happens
Speaker 1: to them after Internet start them. And here's your wonderful
Speaker 1: two parter on Mormon influencers.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we talk
Speaker 2: to the Internet's characters of the day and see how
Speaker 2: they're fifteen minutes of fame affected them and what it
Speaker 2: says about the Internet and us. But this week we're
Speaker 2: taking a bit of a side quest to answer a
Speaker 2: question I've been asked quite a bit lately, and I
Speaker 2: didn't know how to answer. Why are there so many
Speaker 2: Mormon women at the top of the social media influencing pile.
Speaker 2: After a recent episode, I saw this question in the
Speaker 2: comments everywhere. I saw it on the sixteenth minute Reddit board, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, someone made if you're interested or have
Speaker 2: thoughts after episodes, And while it did resonate with me
Speaker 2: that the subject of the episode had been raised Mormon,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to touch that within the episode for
Speaker 2: a couple reasons. First because they never talk about Mormonism
Speaker 2: in their content and have generally avoided questions about it.
Speaker 2: And second, I didn't have a fucking clue what the
Speaker 2: answer to this question was, even though I understand why
Speaker 2: it was being asked. So this week we're going to
Speaker 2: attempt to answer that question in a two part deep
Speaker 2: dive series, the second of which we'll release on Thursday.
Speaker 3: Because to understand the root.
Speaker 2: Of why Mormonism and present day Mormon mommy influencers are
Speaker 2: so successful, you've got to understand where the overlaps in
Speaker 2: their interests are and how the values of both of
Speaker 2: these communities line up. So this week we're going to
Speaker 2: get all up to speed on that, and on Thursday,
Speaker 2: Alissa Grenfell will unpack how Mormon mobs have stayed on
Speaker 2: top of Internet influencing for the last twenty years. All right,
Speaker 2: let's jump in and take a brief God, I really hope,
Speaker 2: actually brief look into the history of the Mormon Church
Speaker 2: in America, and I'll link to some additional resources in
Speaker 2: the description of the episode. Okay, let's learn about Mormons.
Speaker 2: Mormonism is a nineteenth century religion formerly founded by Joseph
Speaker 2: Smith in eighteen thirty. He was born squarely in the
Speaker 2: middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the US,
Speaker 2: a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism,
Speaker 2: and the Baptist Church and would birth a lot more
Speaker 2: and Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He
Speaker 2: grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to
Speaker 2: try things. The Mormon Faith, often called the LDS or
Speaker 2: Latter day Saints, came up shortly after the Shaker's movement.
Speaker 2: The LDS came to prominence around the same time as
Speaker 2: a number of black church movements like the African Methodist
Speaker 2: Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA
Speaker 2: with Spiritualism, and you could listen to my limited series
Speaker 2: Ghost Church for more about the history of that. The
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century was a big time of religious change
Speaker 2: and upheaval in the US, and after Mormonism took off,
Speaker 2: new religions continued to pop up.
Speaker 3: For example, Jehovah's.
Speaker 2: Witnesses and Christian Scientists weren't far behind Mormonism, but very
Speaker 2: few specific movements from this time still have the cultural
Speaker 2: hold on America that Mormonism does. So Joseph Smith releases
Speaker 2: the Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty, but the religion's origin story connects to two
Speaker 2: incidents from the previous ten years. One was from eighteen
Speaker 2: twenty when Joseph was fourteen and asked both Jesus and
Speaker 2: God which religion to follow, and was told by them
Speaker 2: follow none of them. It is your job to prepare
Speaker 2: the world for the second coming of Jesus. The other
Speaker 2: incident was in eighteen twenty three, when a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old Smith is said to have been visited by the
Speaker 2: angel Moroni to repeat this calling, and was also told
Speaker 2: that there was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with
Speaker 2: the quote unquote American continent that he needed to translate
Speaker 2: with a series of tools. When he was a little older.
Speaker 2: After the angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he
Speaker 2: retrieved and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon,
Speaker 2: which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a
Speaker 2: bit of a wizard of Ozzi equality to the way
Speaker 2: that this translation is dictated.
Speaker 3: There's magic stones.
Speaker 2: He's going behind curtains, and sometimes he wouldn't even use
Speaker 2: the gold plates. He would instead put a special stone
Speaker 2: in a hat, then bury his face and said hat.
Speaker 2: But if you're a prophet, he explained, the stone lights
Speaker 2: up within the hat and then you just.
Speaker 3: Dictate from there.
Speaker 2: This whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern scientology,
Speaker 2: where members in Florida are engraving the words of l
Speaker 2: Ron Hubburn on to titanium plates as we speak. It
Speaker 2: also harkens back to Helena Blovotsky's notion of the Acaciic
Speaker 2: records of the late nineteenth century, which were said to
Speaker 2: be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that
Speaker 2: a lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in
Speaker 2: its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic.
Speaker 2: Great movie and if you're not familiar with the origins
Speaker 2: of the Book of Mormon. To be fair, most religious
Speaker 2: origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has
Speaker 2: a similarly mystical origin story as for its contents. The
Speaker 2: Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of
Speaker 2: Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's
Speaker 2: destroyed in six hundred BC. They built a boat, sail
Speaker 2: it to the Americas, and soon become embroiled in a
Speaker 2: conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes
Speaker 2: and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to
Speaker 2: the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites
Speaker 2: were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later
Speaker 2: be softened to say that they were among the ancestors
Speaker 2: of some indigenous people. So a group of Jewish people
Speaker 2: migrate to the Americas and become indigenous Americans.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Jesus is a huge part of Mormonism, and the Book
Speaker 2: of Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in thirty
Speaker 2: three AD, he goes to visit the Americas, where he
Speaker 2: is hailed as the pale Prophet. Because yes, Mormon, Jesus
Speaker 2: is white, some of their Other beliefs, as expressed through
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith, are that God is a flesh and blood
Speaker 2: being who has a flesh and blood wife, his wife
Speaker 2: who lives far away near a distant star. And God
Speaker 2: tells Joseph Smith that we earthlings were brought into being
Speaker 2: to create these nuclear families, to be closer to God,
Speaker 2: so that one day we can live with God out
Speaker 2: of town on the star where he lives. And to
Speaker 2: create these families. You hear a lot of the classic
Speaker 2: signifiers of fundamentalist religions. There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline,
Speaker 2: and suffering. There are rigid gender roles. There's canonical homophobia,
Speaker 2: a third racism that was later scaled back in order
Speaker 2: to accommodate growth in membership. Until a few decades ago,
Speaker 2: the Book of Mormon described members as quote a white
Speaker 2: and delightsome people unquote. To this day, there is still
Speaker 2: a tacit, don't ask, don't tell policy within the church
Speaker 2: about queerness, and that's an improvement from the mid twenty tens,
Speaker 2: when the children of queer parents were still not allowed
Speaker 2: to be baptized in the LDS. Anyways, in his time,
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith was for his account declared a prophet by
Speaker 2: Jesus and genuinely did face a great deal of persecution
Speaker 2: in the early days where he was gathering followers in
Speaker 2: New York, he was arrested and ejected from the state
Speaker 2: and took his believers to Ohio to prepare for the
Speaker 2: Second Coming of Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise
Speaker 2: where Smith envisioned communities that would be governed by celestial
Speaker 2: laws as determined by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows
Speaker 2: further away from traditional Christianity, and before you know it,
Speaker 2: the Mormons are ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered.
Speaker 2: Before this, the group then moves to Missouri, which is
Speaker 2: great because the Lord just so happens to have told
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith that that's actually where Zion is, but also
Speaker 2: where the Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start
Speaker 2: buying up land in Missouri. And to remind you of
Speaker 2: the era of history we're in, this happened in eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty one, just a year after the Indian Removal Act
Speaker 2: was passed and brought about twenty years of brutal genocide
Speaker 2: of the indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons
Speaker 2: are driven out again, this time with increasing violence, and
Speaker 2: over the next few years they head with Smith all
Speaker 2: over the Midwest, where they're treated with similar hostility most
Speaker 2: places they go. At one point, the governor of Missouri
Speaker 2: passed an extermination act. Eventually they moved to Illinois, where
Speaker 2: they're permitted to set up a city of their own
Speaker 2: called Novou basically Zion two point zero, and it's here
Speaker 2: where Smith lightly militarizes the group and increasingly sends out
Speaker 2: missionaries to continue to grow the faith, and at the
Speaker 2: same time, Smith is told by an angel to introduce
Speaker 2: one of the lda Yes's most controversial policies, polygamy. And
Speaker 2: polygamy wasn't something that was allowed to everyone in the
Speaker 2: faith at first, just the powerful in the church, and
Speaker 2: during Smith's lifetime the practice was kept fairly quiet. He
Speaker 2: married as many as forty women, some of whom were underage.
Speaker 2: Women were expected to remain in the home, have many children,
Speaker 2: and to this day there is an early and intense
Speaker 2: emphasis on being a wife and mother before all else.
Speaker 2: The end of the line came for Joseph Smith in
Speaker 2: Illinois in eighteen forty four, where non Mormon locals imprisoned
Speaker 2: and then killed he and his brother. He's been hailed
Speaker 2: as an eternal prophet in the Mormon Church ever since,
Speaker 2: and is still an extremely prominent figure in the culture
Speaker 2: to this day. And if you want this story told
Speaker 2: from the Mormon perspective, there's a lot of LDS produced
Speaker 2: movies about it on YouTube that are really well acted
Speaker 2: and actual.
Speaker 4: Being from the unseen world, exerting all my strength to
Speaker 4: call upon God, I saw.
Speaker 3: A pillar of life, all right, save it for the pulpit.
Speaker 2: After Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over
Speaker 2: and the Mormons leave Navoo in eighteen forty six, hiking
Speaker 2: pioneer style to what is now present day Utah, where
Speaker 2: in the next ten odd years they ignored the American
Speaker 2: government and practice polygamy openly. That is, until this was
Speaker 2: going to prevent Utah getting statehood. Polygamy would be in
Speaker 2: LDS sanctioned practice until eighteen ninety, but it was technically
Speaker 2: discontinued at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws
Speaker 2: around bigamy passed in the eighteen sixties and seventies. However,
Speaker 2: a lot of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In
Speaker 2: today's Mormon marriages, more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm,
Speaker 2: and there's a long complicated history with the Mormons, Utah
Speaker 2: and indigenous people because, unlike most accounts of a new
Speaker 2: American colony being founded, there were Native Americans in Utah
Speaker 2: when they arrived, and under Brigham Young, LDS members are
Speaker 2: encouraged to purchase Native children as slaves and raise them
Speaker 2: in their homes with the hopes of assimilating them to
Speaker 2: the Mormon faith. It's not too dissimilar from the residential
Speaker 2: schools that separated Native families and erase their culture, often
Speaker 2: killing children, all the way into the nineteen nineties. Today,
Speaker 2: there is still a very high number of Mormons in Utah,
Speaker 2: hovering somewhere around forty percent in twenty twenty three. It's
Speaker 2: where Brigham Young University is and where are some of
Speaker 2: the religion's most prominent influencers live today. Ever heard of
Speaker 2: the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Speaker 5: Salt Lake City, Utah, is known for its magnificent mountains
Speaker 5: and world class.
Speaker 6: Case STOs, But what Salt Lake City is most known
Speaker 6: for is the Mormon Church.
Speaker 7: A quick lesson on how to be a good Mormon.
Speaker 8: Don't drink don't swear to treat your body like a
Speaker 8: Temples Mormon.
Speaker 9: We are taught honesty and integrity, and most importantly, to
Speaker 9: watch for sue. You're gonna go with Mary your grandfather.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go.
Speaker 2: On the other end of that, about a third of
Speaker 2: people raised in the LDS today end up leaving the religion,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the ninety five percent retention rate of
Speaker 2: the late nineteen eighties. So it's important to note the
Speaker 2: Internet age has made a difference in how Mormonism is
Speaker 2: perceived by its own members. And if you're Mormon or
Speaker 2: ex Mormon, you know that I am barely scratching the
Speaker 2: surface here. It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around
Speaker 2: for nearly two hundred years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances,
Speaker 2: restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout missions, which
Speaker 2: are eighteen to twenty four month assignments where LDS officials
Speaker 2: determine a location for a young person to go and
Speaker 2: their job is to recruit people into the church. As
Speaker 2: it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that
Speaker 2: Mormonism is a fundamental religion that has been historically hostile
Speaker 2: to women to queer people into anyone who isn't white.
Speaker 3: What is also.
Speaker 2: Important is that the Mormon Church has a shitload of money,
Speaker 2: A shitload I had no idea. At present, the Mormon
Speaker 2: churches net worth is estimated to be two hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty five billion dollars. For context, Disney is valued at
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3: One billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where
Speaker 2: church members are required to give ten percent of their income.
Speaker 3: Back to the LDS.
Speaker 2: As for pop culture, Mormonism has been portrayed negatively a lot.
Speaker 2: Think HBO show Big Love and still running Broadway musical
Speaker 2: The Book of Mormon, 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.
Speaker 2: It's a book cub out America a long long time ago.
Speaker 9: It has well.
Speaker 3: I wonder why they didn't like that.
Speaker 2: But the LDS has also produced its fair share of
Speaker 2: successful entertainment acts. There no Scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archiletta,
Speaker 2: Donnie and Marie Osmond and Gladys Knight is still a
Speaker 2: pretty impressive roster. The aquabats are Mormon? Really think about that?
Speaker 2: And of course a ton of currently successful influencers more
Speaker 2: when we come back. The prevalence of Mormon influencers has
Speaker 2: been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months,
Speaker 2: mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through
Speaker 2: to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this,
Speaker 2: a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut
Speaker 2: about Mormon wife influenzas.
Speaker 9: I love the Mormon Church, but there are a lot
Speaker 9: of rules that we have to follow.
Speaker 10: We were raised to be these housewives for the men,
Speaker 10: serving their every desires.
Speaker 9: Have kids by the time you're twenty one or in
Speaker 9: my case, at sixteen, Well, I'm like this.
Speaker 2: We are trying to change the stigma of gender roles
Speaker 2: on the Mormon culture. The central characters of this show
Speaker 2: are existing successful Mormon mommy TikTokers, and if the comments
Speaker 2: on virtually every video of these women is to be believed,
Speaker 2: they are very controversial within the Latter Day Saint community,
Speaker 2: and most would say they do not represent Mormonism in
Speaker 2: spite of the fact that they live in Salt Lake City,
Speaker 2: where the LDS is headquartered. Most of them grew up
Speaker 2: Mormon and part of why they became so popular on
Speaker 2: TikTok was because they were referencing the tenets and values
Speaker 2: of the church.
Speaker 11: Have you talked to your bishop or the church about anything?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 11: No, how come I don't know, because like what if
Speaker 11: they're going to like excommunicate me.
Speaker 2: This content got really popular under the hashtag mom talk
Speaker 2: on TikTok in the early twenty twenties. And while this
Speaker 2: content promotes fundamentalist values around gender rules, due to their popularity,
Speaker 2: the mom talkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family.
Speaker 2: The women of mom talk look very modern. They're usually
Speaker 2: wearing Kardashian adjacent athleeture. But the reason they have a
Speaker 2: TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew
Speaker 2: up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's
Speaker 2: because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, mom talk influencer Taylor Frankie Paul
Speaker 2: announced that she and her husband would be getting a
Speaker 2: divorce because of her violation of the terms of their
Speaker 2: soft swinging within their Mormon friend group. And soft swinging
Speaker 2: is not sanctioned by the LDS in no small part
Speaker 2: because that might actually be fun for women.
Speaker 9: Soft swinging, again, is when you like just hug up,
Speaker 9: but you don't go all the way.
Speaker 2: It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons,
Speaker 2: if the comment section is to be believed, and it's
Speaker 2: not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact
Speaker 2: that mom Talkers were regularly breaking core tenants of the faith.
Speaker 2: They did things like drink caffeine, They didn't wear their
Speaker 2: religious garments beneath their clothes all the time. This soft
Speaker 2: swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community,
Speaker 2: but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved
Speaker 2: caused a stir within the community. So, presented with this
Speaker 2: public scandal and subsequent high profile influencer's decision to remain
Speaker 2: within the church, is this bad for the Mormon pr
Speaker 2: team or is all press good press? They haven't been
Speaker 2: excommunicated or anything like that, But the Mormon Church has
Speaker 2: issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And
Speaker 2: this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how
Speaker 2: Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But
Speaker 2: when the secret lives of Mormon wives trailer dropped, the
Speaker 2: 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 2: Dear, there are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't
Speaker 2: often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed
Speaker 2: a lot in ex Mormon content. There is rituals like
Speaker 2: the washing and anointing. There's endowment, ceremonies and aesthetics that
Speaker 2: are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with
Speaker 2: the American Freemasons. But whether the LDS likes it or not,
Speaker 2: this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have
Speaker 2: made into mainstream culture.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen an episode of this show yet, but
Speaker 2: it looks like the wives are going to be centered
Speaker 2: in the story here, which would have been unheard of
Speaker 2: in Mormonism at one time. But what I've learned is
Speaker 2: that part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than
Speaker 2: other trad wife Okay, let's define tradwife.
Speaker 5: A trad wife is a woman who believes in and
Speaker 5: practices 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 famili's needs in
Speaker 5: the home.
Speaker 2: Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other
Speaker 2: tradwife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon Church
Speaker 2: has been unusually good at adapting to the Internet and
Speaker 2: always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll
Speaker 2: get there. If you've managed to make it to Fall
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four without having the word tradwife shoved in
Speaker 2: your face, congratulations and sorry, because I am going to
Speaker 2: tell you what it is. Tradwife content is a social
Speaker 2: media trend from about the last half decade where women
Speaker 2: create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes to more closely
Speaker 2: aligned with traditional gender roles, with an emphasis on the
Speaker 2: beauty of a return to old time values. So TikTok's
Speaker 2: about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself
Speaker 2: primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning
Speaker 2: a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to
Speaker 2: the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest.
Speaker 2: Not all tradwives are Mormons hashtag. Not all tradwives, not
Speaker 2: even close, And I'm not going to tackle the topic
Speaker 2: of tradwive content wholesale in this episode. What you need
Speaker 2: to know is the term tradwife shouldn't be conflated with
Speaker 2: staying at home moms, because while tradwife creators are moms
Speaker 2: and at home with the children, making tradwife content is,
Speaker 2: for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting,
Speaker 2: because being a stay at home parent is a job,
Speaker 2: although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor
Speaker 2: as valid. Tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and
Speaker 2: low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of
Speaker 2: the nuclear family, and rarely any of the struggle or mess.
Speaker 2: There's a sense of self surveillance to this content, an
Speaker 2: appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected
Speaker 2: to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back
Speaker 2: to mid twentieth century America. So, if this makes sense,
Speaker 2: tradwives don't look like stay at home moms. They look
Speaker 2: like the advertisements of stay at home moms, and so
Speaker 2: much of what makes their content appealing is that an
Speaker 2: incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is.
Speaker 3: Made to seem easy.
Speaker 2: Attractive, and morally correct. Because if you're making lifestyle content
Speaker 2: of any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle,
Speaker 2: you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you,
Speaker 2: how many hot dogs have I sold by accident? Incalculable?
Speaker 12: Just not.
Speaker 3: The trad life space.
Speaker 2: Is predominantly white, but possibly more diverse than you might expect.
Speaker 2: There is an active black track life community who, according
Speaker 2: to a Refinery twenty nine piece by Nyla Burton in
Speaker 2: late twenty twenty two, believe that quote traditional marriage is
Speaker 2: the key to black women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity,
Speaker 2: and the stress of trying to survive in a world
Speaker 2: hostile to our survival and existence. Tradwife content is popular
Speaker 2: across a lot of religions, but what's consistent across these
Speaker 2: communities is a feeling of performance and this aesthetic of
Speaker 2: either mid century housewives or cottage core. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: there's very little intimacy to these posts, in spite of
Speaker 2: the fact that we're seeing inside of a family's home
Speaker 2: and usually seeing their children, who are, make no mistake,
Speaker 2: a part of the business model. While I totally get
Speaker 2: why the content is so appealing, it does feel like
Speaker 2: a performance, and a very effective one. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: like a militant feminist and I would be lying if
Speaker 2: I said I hadn't seen a few tild wife posts
Speaker 2: that made me feel like I was living my life
Speaker 2: the wrong way. But neutral statement, these posts are a performance.
Speaker 2: Think of it like this. The Donna Reed show very
Speaker 2: effectively sold the idea of Donna Red as a nuclear
Speaker 2: housewife and mother that lived in this effortless way, and
Speaker 2: in reality, he was a television show that was produced
Speaker 2: by its star, and that the real Donna Read was
Speaker 2: a multi hyphenic creative and a TV pioneer who was
Speaker 2: selling the idea of this housewife rather than actually living
Speaker 2: that life herself.
Speaker 6: Well, would you say, missus Johnson, that Donna worked hard
Speaker 6: in college?
Speaker 12: She worked hard up at seven in the morning, all
Speaker 12: day in school and jobs between classes to earn a
Speaker 12: little extra money, and then home to earn a roman
Speaker 12: board to help me move, cooking and dishes and a
Speaker 12: little ironing and men study until midnight. I don't think
Speaker 12: she ever had more in six hours sleep.
Speaker 2: From a social media perspective, the track life phenomenon has
Speaker 2: a lot in common with a pattern that we talk
Speaker 2: about on this show all the time. A lot of
Speaker 2: the reason we're still talking about this content is because
Speaker 2: there's been so much backlash and outrage toward it since
Speaker 2: it became popular in the early twenty twenties left leaning
Speaker 2: feminists who believe that the tradwife trend hearkens a dangerous
Speaker 2: period of regression as the American people's right to bodily autonomy.
Speaker 3: Slowly and surely slips.
Speaker 2: Into the very mid century timeframe that tradwives so often
Speaker 2: portray in. This outrage does help to fuel the success
Speaker 2: of the influencers, because yes, they have millions of followers,
Speaker 2: but the snark reddit boards and hate comments saying that
Speaker 2: tradwives are self hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in
Speaker 2: the hundreds of thousands as well, and as far as
Speaker 2: the algorithm is concerned, engagement is engagement, whether it's positive
Speaker 2: or negative. It reminds me a lot of Friend of
Speaker 2: the Pod Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine, in which
Speaker 2: he fully illustrates the ways in which modern algorithms are
Speaker 2: designed to enrage. That's why we have so many social
Speaker 2: media stories that are rooted in backlash and then backlash
Speaker 2: to the backlash. Tradwife narratives fall neatly into this pattern
Speaker 2: because for every every bit of phrase, there's an essay
Speaker 2: that's written in stark disagreement. So why is this content
Speaker 2: so popular in the last few years. Friend of the
Speaker 2: Pod Brigid Todd of there are no girls on the
Speaker 2: internet sets.
Speaker 7: During uncertain times, people sell easy solutions because our brains
Speaker 7: in times of precarity crave simple solutions. But often those comforting,
Speaker 7: simple solutions are just placeholders for the reality, which is
Speaker 7: that the problem is actually systemic and institutional. You're not
Speaker 7: going to dismantle it in your specific nuclear household and family.
Speaker 7: If you're only looking within your own family you're not
Speaker 7: looking hard enough at the larger issues at play.
Speaker 2: While these accounts have millions upon millions of followers who
Speaker 2: view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty
Speaker 2: of modern moms who were completely fucking baffled by it.
Speaker 2: Because I've engaged with so much of this content that
Speaker 2: my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying
Speaker 2: that tradwife content is often a lot about subtext, right
Speaker 2: projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the fifties
Speaker 2: were a great time for women, Maybe we need to
Speaker 2: bring it back, but there's a sense of encouraging to
Speaker 2: submit to the status quo, a status quo that existed.
Speaker 3: Before a lot of necessary civil rights.
Speaker 2: Were fought for, but online now tradwives man. But let's
Speaker 2: bring it back to the Mormon's side of this content,
Speaker 2: specifically because as we're trying to get to the bottom
Speaker 2: of Mormons have found a lot of success in this space.
Speaker 2: Mom sockers are far from the only prominent Mormon content
Speaker 2: creators dominating social media today. The most popular, and so
Speaker 2: by extension, the most embroiled in controversy, is the second
Speaker 2: major Mormon influencer story of the summer Ballerina Farm more
Speaker 2: when we come back, maybe welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 2: The more I learned about tradwives, the more it became
Speaker 2: obvious that they developed in response to the capitalism is
Speaker 2: for girls to actually slay rhetoric of the mid twenty tens.
Speaker 2: But like, is it that different when you're a tradwife entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: It kind of seems like you're doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: but the thing that you're selling is that you're not
Speaker 2: actually doing the thing that I'm watching you doing. And
Speaker 2: when we left off, we were talking about the most
Speaker 2: famous Mormon influencer on the scene today, Ballerina Farm. Where
Speaker 2: do we begin? All my male listeners are getting like
Speaker 2: a nosebleed. Ballerina Farm is the user name for a
Speaker 2: Mormon woman named Hannah Nielman, whose follower count on Instagram
Speaker 2: currently sits at ten million. She was raised in the
Speaker 2: LDS and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into
Speaker 2: and graduated from Juilliard. She cited over and over that
Speaker 2: she was the first undergrad in modern history to be
Speaker 2: pregnant while still at Julliard because while there she got
Speaker 2: married to fellow Mormon Daniel Nielman in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: The year before she graduated.
Speaker 2: So both the Neielmans grew up in big, devout Utah
Speaker 2: Mormon families. Hannah was one of nine, Daniel was one
Speaker 2: of ten. They got engaged after only three weeks, and
Speaker 2: while Hannah was still in college, she also started competing
Speaker 2: in beauty pageants. She started with Miss New York and
Speaker 2: then re entered the space after getting married and having kids,
Speaker 2: because Hannah does not stay a ballerina. After graduation, Hannah
Speaker 2: and Daniel moved to England for a semester at Cambridge,
Speaker 2: then Utah so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham
Speaker 2: Young University, and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as
Speaker 2: the director of his father's security company for a few years.
Speaker 3: Because it must be said.
Speaker 2: Financially, these are incredibly privileged people. Daniel's father founded Jet Blue. Dude,
Speaker 2: they've got money, and he's so Mormon that he worked
Speaker 2: on Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign in twenty twelve. But
Speaker 2: Daniel's dream is to move back to Utah and live
Speaker 2: on a farm, and they finally do so in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: buying the eponymous Ballerina farm. In twenty eighteen. By the
Speaker 2: time they moved on to the three hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: eight acre farm, they had four kids, and when they
Speaker 2: moved onto the farm, Hannah Nielman's online brand as a
Speaker 2: Mormon wife was well established, but significantly less successful. Hannah
Speaker 2: started her social media journey as a mom influencer on
Speaker 2: a blog called We Took the Train in early twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: shortly after the birth of her first child, Henry, and
Speaker 2: her college graduation. And it's interesting that she intersects with
Speaker 2: a completely different era of successful Mormon online influencers because
Speaker 2: in the two thousands into the early twenty tens, Mormon
Speaker 2: mommy blogs were a thing. The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline
Speaker 2: was popular for as long as blogs were popular, and
Speaker 2: mommy bloggers in general have always enjoyed massive success and
Speaker 2: usually adapt to new social media platforms pretty easily. I'd
Speaker 2: recommend Sarah Peterson's book mom Fluenced for more on this topic,
Speaker 2: because mommy blogging was popular from the very dawn of
Speaker 2: social media, but it was very different than the tradwife
Speaker 2: content that we see today. There was a lot more
Speaker 2: emphasis on writing over visuals, and the writing tended to
Speaker 2: be more confessional writer Catherine Jeezer Morton has been covering
Speaker 2: this space for a long time. I'm quoting here from
Speaker 2: a New York Times column called Did Moms Exist Before
Speaker 2: Social Media? From twenty twenty, where she mentions how Mormon
Speaker 2: women entering the mommy blog space changed it.
Speaker 7: To overlook the influence of Mormon and other Christian mommy
Speaker 7: bloggers on this ship would be a huge oversight. Mormon
Speaker 7: mommy bloggers, in particular, were enormously influential in establishing the
Speaker 7: esthetic and tone that came to characterize influencer era online motherhood.
Speaker 7: Mormonism encourages the careful documentation of family life, and Mormon
Speaker 7: mothers were among blogging's earliest and most enthusiastic adopt Unlike
Speaker 7: the confessional early mommy blogs, Mormon mother's blogs broadcast a
Speaker 7: clean and chipper vision of motherhood, replete with diy crafting
Speaker 7: projects and coordinated family photoshoots. Many of the most successful
Speaker 7: Mormon bloggers from the mid aughts, like Amber phillerup Clark,
Speaker 7: and Naomi Davis, went on to become mainstream lifestyle bloggers,
Speaker 7: and although their Mormon faith is no secret, its prominence
Speaker 7: were seated as the years passed.
Speaker 2: Early successful Mormon or ex Mormon mommy bloggers included how
Speaker 2: Their Armstrong of Deocey, Amber, Phillerup Davis, and Love Taza
Speaker 2: aka Naomi Davis. Around this same time, successful family bloggers
Speaker 2: like Day Carl and his Family become really popular on
Speaker 2: YouTube and the late aughts into the early twenty tens.
Speaker 2: In fact, Carl's child, Brock, was considered to be the
Speaker 2: first Truman baby, as in The Truman Show, as in
Speaker 2: a child whose life was documented from moment one to
Speaker 2: a massive social media audience.
Speaker 3: Scary.
Speaker 2: This hyper vulnerable mommy blog stuff is considered pretty old
Speaker 2: school now. At the time, Mormon mommy bloggers were a
Speaker 2: part of the coined blogger nacle community, with personalities like
Speaker 2: Stephanie Nielsen of The Nine Dialogues and C. Jane Kendrick
Speaker 2: of C Jane enjoy It serving as early examples for
Speaker 2: their crossover appeal outside of the religion. There was even
Speaker 2: an award system developed for successful blogger nacle publications called
Speaker 2: the Nibblets. This went from twenty five to twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: and bloggers who were particularly good at spreading Mormon values
Speaker 2: online got a trophy. And I don't know if you
Speaker 2: feel the same way. But I was really surprised because
Speaker 2: I thought of Mormon culture as so conservative in its
Speaker 2: gender roles that actively encouraging women to speak at all
Speaker 2: would be a non starter. But that's not true at all,
Speaker 2: If talks given by Mormon leaders during the early blogging
Speaker 2: era are to be believed.
Speaker 3: These blogs, blogs.
Speaker 2: Et cetera were viewed to be an extension of the
Speaker 2: Mormon mission and a way to get the word out.
Speaker 2: I'm pulling this from an LDS news post from two
Speaker 2: 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 media,
Speaker 5: to contribute to a national conversation about the Church of
Speaker 5: 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 the sidelines while others, including our critics,
Speaker 5: attempt to define what the church teaches, he said. While
Speaker 5: 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 online
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 2: This feels like a skeleton key to a lot of
Speaker 2: Mormon content. Why Mormons are so online, whether they are
Speaker 2: overtly discussing their religion or not, Modern Mormon missionaries will
Speaker 2: very often vlog their experiences. This is from a missionary
Speaker 2: named Grayson Hardman from last year all.
Speaker 9: Right, we're all proselyting through it in the heat. We
Speaker 9: just had our very.
Speaker 1: First contact really of the day in person.
Speaker 4: What happened not interesting.
Speaker 2: Posting is all but baked into the religion in the
Speaker 2: modern day, probably in a sour dough that took five
Speaker 2: hours to make. By the time Mormon tradwives and mommy
Speaker 2: bloggers become mainstream famous, they're not wearing their religion on
Speaker 2: their sleeve as much.
Speaker 3: It's more of a soft pitch.
Speaker 2: You usually find out their Mormon whereas if you scroll
Speaker 2: all the way down to the beginning of their profile,
Speaker 2: they often used to be more overt about the values
Speaker 2: they held. But again, to connect it back to that piece,
Speaker 2: this heating to espouse a vision of an ideal Mormon
Speaker 2: family without defensiveness belligerence, it kind of makes sense. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to Ballerina Farm. Because Hannah Nielman starts in the
Speaker 2: waning days of mommy blogging, she kind of straddles different
Speaker 2: eras of social media and Mormons online. She starts mommy
Speaker 2: blogging on we Took the Train in the twenty ten's
Speaker 2: at the end of the mommy blogging trend, and then
Speaker 2: is at the forefront of the Instagram and TikTok Mormon
Speaker 2: mommy blogs, which are wildly different in tone. They're not
Speaker 2: at all confessional and are far more defined by their
Speaker 2: esthetic and this sense of faral certainty. So to give
Speaker 2: you an idea of how her narrative voice shifts, here's
Speaker 2: an example of how Hannah would speak in her early
Speaker 2: blogging days in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 7: I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and
Speaker 7: just how grateful I really am that I am right
Speaker 7: here right now. Two people. One was a past pageant coach,
Speaker 7: the other a fellow dancer I want to dance with.
Speaker 7: Ask me if I was really happy to have given
Speaker 7: up those dreams for where I am today.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy.
Speaker 7: I am so at peace. I have a husband who
Speaker 7: is mine forever. Together, we have a beautiful baby boy
Speaker 7: who is full of purity and joy. I get to
Speaker 7: dance and teach as much as possible, and I love that,
Speaker 7: of course, But there is nothing more rewarding than seeing
Speaker 7: my family here right now. I really feel like the
Speaker 7: luckiest girl in the world. So yep, I am happy.
Speaker 7: Goal for the week, only eat out once.
Speaker 2: It's still praising the lifestyle. But even acknowledging her own
Speaker 2: insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had
Speaker 2: about her religion is not something you would see today.
Speaker 2: In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling
Speaker 2: with I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood.
Speaker 3: Am I doing the right thing?
Speaker 2: She also talks about going to McDonald's and loving it,
Speaker 2: something that wildly differs from her current stance as a
Speaker 2: tradwife slash farm to table influencer. In these early days,
Speaker 2: she's working part time teaching dance while raising her eldest son,
Speaker 2: trying to sort of find a balance between traditional values
Speaker 2: and what her passions are. This is not at all
Speaker 2: what Ballerina Farm content sounds like. Here's a post from
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 10: Today, we're making some Turkish eggs. So we started off
Speaker 10: by straining some of Daniel's homemade yogurt in a cheesecloth
Speaker 10: and hung that so it could get a bit thicker.
Speaker 9: Can I wash my butter?
Speaker 10: I also like to run under some cold water to
Speaker 10: get it really nice and washed.
Speaker 2: So Hannah starts as a completely different kind of Mormon influencer.
Speaker 2: When I started looking for an answer to this question
Speaker 2: why there are so many Mormon women that are successful online.
Speaker 2: I was seeing the same answer over and over. Well,
Speaker 2: it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot.
Speaker 2: The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful,
Speaker 2: and Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that
Speaker 2: now consists of eight children, and they quickly expand this
Speaker 2: success to start a series of businesses. They start a
Speaker 2: beef farm, they start a lifestyle brand, and Hannah goes
Speaker 2: from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok and Instagram creator,
Speaker 2: racking up millions of views on her videos of making
Speaker 2: meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm
Speaker 2: to table and family first lifestyle, and doing it all
Speaker 2: in full makeup and these cottage core flowy dresses.
Speaker 3: There's also quiet.
Speaker 2: Advertisements in Ballerina Farm content for most of her videos.
Speaker 2: You can find affiliate codes on her website for basically
Speaker 2: anything you saw her use in the course of the video.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, Hannah had two hundred thousand Instagram followers.
Speaker 3: Now she has ten million.
Speaker 2: So the days where Hannah was teaching Dan's part time
Speaker 2: are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just
Speaker 2: running a business and making meals, and as these responsibilities
Speaker 2: pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing
Speaker 2: all of this, Like, surely someone is helping with the
Speaker 2: kids and the business, right because the kids are homeschooled
Speaker 2: and the meals took hours, and Hannah appeared to be
Speaker 2: making content and co running multiple businesses while also upholding
Speaker 2: conservative values. That's a lot of jobs, but we're not
Speaker 2: really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the content's appeal
Speaker 2: is that Hannah made this all look so easy, and
Speaker 2: as she was doing all of this, she continued to
Speaker 2: compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of missus
Speaker 2: America in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three.
Speaker 13: What you're all flipping out about is her looking smoking
Speaker 13: hot and participating in Miss World right after she gave birth.
Speaker 13: I mean, like, I think the placenta probably hadn't even
Speaker 13: come out when she was putting on her ball gown.
Speaker 13: I mean, she is, That was quick. That was a
Speaker 13: quick turnaround. So she's in your head about that. But
Speaker 13: why was she not in your head before? I think
Speaker 13: you guys just haven't been following her closely enough.
Speaker 2: She's projecting the super mom image, right it's unclear to
Speaker 2: viewers how it's attained, and you get the feeling that
Speaker 2: it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot
Speaker 2: of other people working just outside the frame, or both,
Speaker 2: because the alternative is, well, what the fuck is wrong
Speaker 2: with me? But this virtuousness, this emphasis on disciplining the body,
Speaker 2: the emphasis that ball gowns aside my marriage and family
Speaker 2: are the most important thing, that's a solid ad for Mormonism.
Speaker 2: And even so the Ballerina farm family doesn't often reference
Speaker 2: the Mormon Church online, it's implied they get ready for
Speaker 2: church on camera. There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender
Speaker 2: roles in nuclear families. But for someone who comes across
Speaker 2: their content by chance, there's nothing that screams these are
Speaker 2: Mormons unless you know what to look for in terms
Speaker 2: of home decorror, and this feels by design. You don't
Speaker 2: build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in
Speaker 2: the US according to Pew research, behind dominant Protestant and
Speaker 2: Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist,
Speaker 2: agnostic end quote nothing in particular unquote.
Speaker 3: If you're six.
Speaker 2: Places behind Nothing in particular and want to keep growing
Speaker 2: your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their
Speaker 2: often controversial religion, So in most places, I've seen Ballerina
Speaker 2: Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church and
Speaker 2: for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like
Speaker 2: queer and trans rites and open abortion access. I understand
Speaker 2: why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering, and for people who
Speaker 2: work on farms that are not bankrolled by JetBlue, the
Speaker 2: account scans as even more of a performance. And then
Speaker 2: this past summer. Ballerina Farm has been a popular point
Speaker 2: of discussion for years with evangelizing followers and snark blogs
Speaker 2: with readership in the six figures, but she comes to
Speaker 2: widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile
Speaker 2: written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was
Speaker 2: a very disturbing dynamic. Main takeaways from the article include
Speaker 2: Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane. It
Speaker 2: turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned,
Speaker 2: and he specifically requested to be set on said plane
Speaker 2: beside Hannah, making it the most expensive predatory meetcute I've
Speaker 2: ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a year
Speaker 2: in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but was
Speaker 2: overruled by Daniel. She was engaged a month later and
Speaker 2: was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation.
Speaker 3: There are, of course.
Speaker 2: People working on Ballerina Farm and for their company, they
Speaker 2: were just never acknowledged as existing in the content. However,
Speaker 2: Hannah is not allowed to have nanny's to help her
Speaker 2: at home, and the article implies that this is Daniel's choice,
Speaker 2: and he describes Hannah as becoming so exhausted by caring
Speaker 2: for the eight children that she will sometimes collapse for
Speaker 2: a week at a time, which plays into the Mormon
Speaker 2: and just generally fundamentalist belief that women's suffering is virtuous.
Speaker 2: But to a modern audience, hearing this dynamic within such
Speaker 2: a wealthy family felt fucked up. Hannah and Daniel did
Speaker 2: not believe involuntary abortion, something their content suggested but never stated,
Speaker 2: and that Hannah's identity prior to their marriage and especially
Speaker 2: her relationship with Dance, had been slowly choked out by
Speaker 2: Ballerina Farm and the Mormon lifestyle. And this story had
Speaker 2: reach not only because it was upsetting, but because it
Speaker 2: seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who had been asking how Ballerina Farm quote.
Speaker 3: Unquote did it all.
Speaker 2: The article suggests that the answer is by sacrificing parts
Speaker 2: of herself and being exhausted to the point of not
Speaker 2: being able to function. Something I thought was interesting while
Speaker 2: examining the reaction to this story was that non Mormons
Speaker 2: tended to find Daniel Neil as the villain of this
Speaker 2: story because it's him who is constantly correct, negging and
Speaker 2: suppressing Hannah throughout the profile as written. But ex Mormon
Speaker 2: influencers are careful to add a little bit of nuance
Speaker 2: to this. Their suggestion is more, does Daniel come off
Speaker 2: as an entitled asshole? Yes, but both Daniel and Hannah
Speaker 2: are playing their role here. It doesn't excuse the behavior,
Speaker 2: but ex Mormon YouTubers like Jordan and Mackay note that
Speaker 2: Daniel was playing the part of the devout Mormon husband
Speaker 2: to the hilt here. And what I'll say in Ballerina
Speaker 2: Farm's defense, While I find the details of this story
Speaker 2: really dark, I do believe Hannah Nielman when she says
Speaker 2: that she believes this is the correct way to live,
Speaker 2: and the rest of us can make of it what
Speaker 2: we will. Hannah has, of course condemned this piece in
Speaker 2: 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 2: And her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I
Speaker 2: think this article might have helped her in the long run.
Speaker 2: But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question,
Speaker 2: why is this a ten million follower account? Hanna Nielman
Speaker 2: has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset,
Speaker 2: and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did.
Speaker 2: So is she an asset to the Mormon Church? The
Speaker 2: answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without
Speaker 2: talking to people who have been Mormons themselves, who intimately
Speaker 2: understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the
Speaker 2: Internet that is built around ex Mormon content, primarily on
Speaker 2: YouTube and TikTok as an I'm writing this, there are
Speaker 2: plenty of creators who have left the church explaining their
Speaker 2: personal experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas, and oppression
Speaker 2: experience within the LDS. Often accounts of their childhood and
Speaker 2: their mission and why they ultimately left. Like pro Mormon content,
Speaker 2: ex Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've
Speaker 2: watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode.
Speaker 2: Some resources I've used are the long running Mormon Stories podcast,
Speaker 2: which has been going since two thousand and five, and
Speaker 2: a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be
Speaker 2: talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's
Speaker 2: what I'll leave you with. If Mormonism is nowhere near
Speaker 2: the country's most popular religion but is disproportionately represented on
Speaker 2: our social media, then what is there left to look to? Then?
Speaker 2: Money and the algorithm, Alissa Grenfell explains in part two
Speaker 2: via then. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone
Speaker 2: Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me.
Speaker 2: Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Soghy Lichtterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 2: theme song is.
Speaker 3: By Sad thirteen and Pet.
Speaker 2: Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson my Kat's flea
Speaker 2: Casper and by Pet Rockford who will outlive us all
Speaker 2: Bye the Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where
Speaker 2: we take a look at the Internet's characters of the
Speaker 2: day to see how their moment affected them and what
Speaker 2: it says about the Internet and us.
Speaker 3: My name's Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: And this is part two of a series trying to
Speaker 2: answer a question that I honestly thought would be easier
Speaker 2: to answer, Why is the Internet so dominated by Mormon
Speaker 2: mommy influencers? So if you haven't listened to part one yet,
Speaker 2: I recommend you do because this is a frustratingly complicated question.
Speaker 2: Last time we talked about the origins of the Mormon Church.
Speaker 2: It stands on race, gender, and sexuality cliff notes not great,
Speaker 2: and it's history of intersecting with conservative leaning social media
Speaker 2: trends among women. So think mommy blogs of the two thousands.
Speaker 2: Mormon women were at the top of that boom and
Speaker 2: were more open about their religion than many influencers are today.
Speaker 2: Think about another ongoing trend, that's a whole subject unto itself,
Speaker 2: one I'd like to dedicate more time to in the future.
Speaker 2: Mormon women's intersection with major multi level marketing schemes, schemes
Speaker 2: that rely on salespeople spending a lot of their own
Speaker 2: money with usually diminishing returns if you don't get in
Speaker 2: on the ground floor. Utah has the highest concentration of
Speaker 2: MLMs in the country, and the door to door element.
Speaker 2: Isn't that unlike the missionary spirit that the devout embark
Speaker 2: on on behalf of the Church of Latter day Saints
Speaker 2: or the LDS when they're young adults, sales as a mission. Actually,
Speaker 2: if you're into obscure documentaries as much as I am,
Speaker 2: one of the most famous contemporary failed MLM schemes was
Speaker 2: actually founded by a Mormon couple, that being Lularo, the
Speaker 2: ugly leggings company that was busted in a massive legal
Speaker 2: scandal in the twenty tens.
Speaker 1: You tell the.
Speaker 8: People you love they're in a pyramid scheme, and they go, no,
Speaker 8: I'm not, You're just a hater. I own my own business.
Speaker 8: I'm very successful.
Speaker 9: My orders would smell disgusting.
Speaker 8: It was just insane. The amount of hoops had to
Speaker 8: jump through to get them to ever admit that their
Speaker 8: product was faulty.
Speaker 9: I would sometimes open bags and they'd be wet.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to recruiting for MLMs, Mormon women
Speaker 2: tend to be excellent marks. Because of the rigid gender
Speaker 2: roles of the religion that encourage many women to stay
Speaker 2: at home. Things like Luloo might be the only opportunity
Speaker 2: for them to make a living on their own, not
Speaker 2: to mention the close knit Mormon communities offering a ton
Speaker 2: of customers. It's not quite that simple, but you see
Speaker 2: where I'm going with this, And of course, there is
Speaker 2: significant crossover with Mormon women and the current, if somewhat dwindling,
Speaker 2: tradwive content that's become extremely popular on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: We talk about this quite a bit in the first
Speaker 2: part of the series, specifically about users from mom Talk,
Speaker 2: the stars of the new show The Secret Lives of
Speaker 2: Mormon Wives, and Ballerina farm, a ten million follower influencer
Speaker 2: who presents stay at homestead lifestyle while say It with Me,
Speaker 2: selling that idea to her followers as a part of
Speaker 2: what is very much a job unto itself.
Speaker 3: The more I think about.
Speaker 2: It, tradwives are actually not straying from these similarly flawed
Speaker 2: girl boss archetypes the way that they think they are.
Speaker 2: But that's for another day, because now we're going to
Speaker 2: forge into.
Speaker 3: Part two, shall we?
Speaker 2: Even with the context I've given you, I was still
Speaker 2: confused because, yes, white heteroconservatism sells online, we know that,
Speaker 2: But why this religion, specifically, what about Mormon content is
Speaker 2: bringing them to the top of your feed ex Mormon
Speaker 2: influencer Alyssa Grenfell has been asking this question too. She
Speaker 2: was raised an extremely devout Utah Mormon, went on a mission,
Speaker 2: got married at an LDS temple the whole nine yards. Eventually,
Speaker 2: like one in three young Mormons today, she left the
Speaker 2: church in her twenties with her husband after they both
Speaker 2: found themselves questioning the values they'd grown up with. For
Speaker 2: Alissa's husband, the radicalizing issue was the church's stance on
Speaker 2: gay marriage, and for Alisa, it was a series of
Speaker 2: crises of faith over and over. What Alyssa felt God
Speaker 2: wanted for her was directly contradicted by priests and her father.
Speaker 2: She was called to do a mission two thousand miles
Speaker 2: away from where she expected she was told by her
Speaker 2: father that God needed her to be a teacher when
Speaker 2: she had no interest in teaching and didn't feel she
Speaker 2: had the natural skill set to do it. So eventually
Speaker 2: the two leave the Mormon Church. They start drinking coffee
Speaker 2: and cocktails and Alyssa was motivated to join YouTube after
Speaker 2: self publishing her first book, and while she's been on
Speaker 2: YouTube for less than a year, she already has nearly
Speaker 2: a quarter million subscribers, and my favorite video of hers
Speaker 2: presents a pretty compelling theory. Alyssa suggests that sure, Mormon
Speaker 2: tradwife content does play into the algorithm as far as esthetics,
Speaker 2: but it's very possible that the Church of Latter day
Speaker 2: Saints itself is bankrolling these Mormon mommy influencers without the
Speaker 2: influencers being able to say for sure that it's them.
Speaker 2: Here's a clip from that video.
Speaker 9: So different niches, different types of content on the Internet
Speaker 9: make different amounts of money. You can see you're off
Speaker 9: to the side that depending on the type of content
Speaker 9: you make, you're gonna make different amounts of money. For example,
Speaker 9: anything to do with money and fining makes a lot
Speaker 9: more money than a video about cooking. The reason for
Speaker 9: this is that the money that you make off your
Speaker 9: content is driven by how much advertisers are willing to
Speaker 9: pay for it. Banks, for example, have a lot of
Speaker 9: money and so they can drive a ton of money
Speaker 9: into advertising. So if you made content a video about
Speaker 9: the best bank accounts to open, you could get paid
Speaker 9: approximately twelve dollars and twenty five cents for each one
Speaker 9: thousand views on that video. When Google or another ad
Speaker 9: platform goes to put ads on top of that content,
Speaker 9: they will recognize it as a piece of content that
Speaker 9: advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money for.
Speaker 9: So the length of the video could be the same,
Speaker 9: the person in the video could be the same, but
Speaker 9: depending on the content, you're getting paid a wildly different
Speaker 9: amount of money for the type of content you're posting.
Speaker 9: A major way that Google and other advertisers figures out
Speaker 9: where to put ads is through some than called keywords.
Speaker 9: So these keywords will be something like credit card or
Speaker 9: open bank account. That signal to the algorithm, to the
Speaker 9: ad algorithm that you've made content that aligns with what
Speaker 9: advertisers are looking for.
Speaker 2: Alyssa only started investigating this search term question when she
Speaker 2: was getting repeated feedback that her viewers were getting ads
Speaker 2: for the Mormon Church on her videos, which is weird
Speaker 2: because Alyssa's content is doing the opposite of encouraging people
Speaker 2: to join the church. And what's more, when she looked
Speaker 2: into the amount that she was making on YouTube and
Speaker 2: the amount of algorithmic preference she was getting less than
Speaker 2: a year into her time versus other creators, she was
Speaker 2: getting a lot more engagement and making a lot more money.
Speaker 2: Why she explains more in the video.
Speaker 9: You can see here that the keyword new bank costs
Speaker 9: twenty five dollars and thirty cents. That's how much advertisers
Speaker 9: are willing to pay for this keyword. So compare that
Speaker 9: to Catholic that's a huge difference. So if I'm making
Speaker 9: my content about finance, I'm going to see a law
Speaker 9: more ad revenue coming my way because there are lots
Speaker 9: of advertisers who are willing to pay Google to try
Speaker 9: to capture your eye to open a new bank account
Speaker 9: with them. The Church definitely does advertising online, and if
Speaker 9: I go to YouTube and type in Mormon missionary, I
Speaker 9: can see that there's an ad at the top. This
Speaker 9: is an ad that the church paid to put there.
Speaker 9: So Mormon missionary. There's an ad in my YouTube trying
Speaker 9: to get me to meet with Mormon missionaries. So we
Speaker 9: already looked at the term Catholic. The cost per click
Speaker 9: the ad revenue behind Catholic is three dollars and fifty
Speaker 9: eight cents. If you look at the term Baptist, the
Speaker 9: cost per click is a dollar twenty six cents. I
Speaker 9: tried looking up a religion that's a little closer to Mormonism.
Speaker 9: Jehovah's Witness is an American religion. If you want to
Speaker 9: advertise using the key term Jehovah's Witness, it's going to
Speaker 9: cost you four dollars and sixty four cents. The cost
Speaker 9: per click for the term Mormon is twenty four dollars
Speaker 9: and seventy one cents. And if you recall, the Mormon
Speaker 9: Church has more money than Wells Fargo. And the reason
Speaker 9: that that number is so high, I believe is because
Speaker 9: there is a multi billion dollar organization that is funneling
Speaker 9: money into ad spend around the term Mormon.
Speaker 2: So this theory isn't and can't be proven without the
Speaker 2: LDS being straightforward about their finances, which will never happen.
Speaker 3: So I'll let Alissa take it.
Speaker 2: From here without any further ado. Here is my interview
Speaker 2: with the fantastic Alissa Grenfell.
Speaker 6: Hi.
Speaker 9: My name is Elsa Grenfell and I am an ex
Speaker 9: Mormon content creator and author. I was very Mormon growing up.
Speaker 9: I grew up in a variant about home, and then
Speaker 9: I left the church when I was about twenty three,
Speaker 9: after serving a Mormon mission and getting married in a
Speaker 9: Mormon temple and doing all the Mormon things. And now
Speaker 9: I make content around what you know, the history of
Speaker 9: the church's current church teachings, the doctrine, personal experienceperiances, and
Speaker 9: that is kind of the focus of what I put
Speaker 9: on the internet.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up like like,
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about Mormon culture outside of what
Speaker 2: was in pop culture when I was growing up growing
Speaker 2: up in the Mormon Church. I know that you've made
Speaker 2: a significant amount of content about this. How are women
Speaker 2: specifically treated and sort of how are you conditioned to
Speaker 2: view yourself?
Speaker 9: Some of my earliest memories really are just discussing my
Speaker 9: wedding dress, discussing my husband, writing letters to my future husband,
Speaker 9: talking about purity, learning homemaking skills, ironing. You know, I'm
Speaker 9: eight years old ironing a shirt talking about, you know,
Speaker 9: taking care of my future family. And it's I think
Speaker 9: past just the idea that you know, everyone probably should
Speaker 9: learn how to take care of a home or cook
Speaker 9: a meal, but it was very much posed as this
Speaker 9: is your divine role from God. And even you know,
Speaker 9: there's something called patriarchal blessing which is kind of I
Speaker 9: would like call it Mormon fortune telling, a little bit
Speaker 9: where a very important man within the church lays his
Speaker 9: hands on hit your head and basically is supposed to
Speaker 9: be speaking as if he's speaking from God and kind
Speaker 9: of telling you what's going to happen in your future.
Speaker 9: Much of my patriarchal blessing was about how I was
Speaker 9: going to be a mother in Zion and how I
Speaker 9: was going to like it was all just about my
Speaker 9: future children basically and my role as a wife and mother.
Speaker 9: And to think that a man is saying basically the
Speaker 9: most important things about your future and it's all encompassed
Speaker 9: around motherhood and wilfhood. And then to read you know,
Speaker 9: now I read my husband's patriarchal blessing and a lot
Speaker 9: of male men's patriarchal blessings is not about their children,
Speaker 9: their future children. And so if you can compare the
Speaker 9: what women are taught, if you compare that with what
Speaker 9: men are taught, it's also very different. So you could,
Speaker 9: you know, I think I might have been able to,
Speaker 9: like stomach it if the boys were also learning how
Speaker 9: to take a girl on a date or how to
Speaker 9: also watch children or change a diaper. But the boys
Speaker 9: were often doing bad like playing basketball or doing you know,
Speaker 9: hot water rafting, or doing boy scouts, learning to tie
Speaker 9: not you know, just more traditional boyhood kind of things.
Speaker 9: I think there was the actual kind of training around
Speaker 9: motherhood and family, but then there was the religious element
Speaker 9: of gender roles as divinely appointed upon.
Speaker 2: You as I was sort of learning more about you
Speaker 2: as you were coming of age, all of these gut
Speaker 2: feelings thinking that I'm being guided by God towards this person,
Speaker 2: towards this mission location, towards this job, receiving different answers
Speaker 2: that not that weren't in your gut. What does it
Speaker 2: like to process that doubt?
Speaker 9: I think it's it's really hard because it's very difficult
Speaker 9: to kind of see outside of yourself and to question
Speaker 9: the systems you're raised in a bord especially systems that
Speaker 9: you're taught as the most moral way to live. I
Speaker 9: feel like, even after leaving, I've had a lot of
Speaker 9: moments where I have to kind of question if my
Speaker 9: desire to pursue a certain path is coming from the
Speaker 9: real quote, real me versus if it's coming from the
Speaker 9: conditioning I received as a young person. And I think
Speaker 9: that in following some of those paths, I have often
Speaker 9: found that I'm still kind of living in this reactionary
Speaker 9: state where instead of looking toward what God wants me
Speaker 9: to do, I'm often kind of living in a way
Speaker 9: that is reacting to I just want to do the
Speaker 9: opposite of Mormonism, even though that's still kind of living
Speaker 9: my life according to Mormonism, it's just how I'm moving
Speaker 9: the opposite way instead of kind of somewhere in the
Speaker 9: middle of this like what I really want kind of
Speaker 9: idea that people have.
Speaker 2: How do you move forward with so much of your
Speaker 2: life has been structured around being removed?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think initially it was very difficult, and even
Speaker 9: kind of admitting it to myself was really difficult. Like
Speaker 9: you mentioned earlier, I had all of these experiences kind
Speaker 9: of culminate where, for example, I had a really strong
Speaker 9: what I felt like was an answer from God that
Speaker 9: I was going to go on my Mormon mission to Italy.
Speaker 9: And I wrote it in my journal and I wrote,
Speaker 9: you know, I know I'll go to Italy as sure
Speaker 9: as I know God lives. And it felt like a
Speaker 9: little you know, testimony my claim to faith on the topic.
Speaker 9: And when I opened my mission call, it was to Denver, Colorado,
Speaker 9: not Italy. And you know, I still served a full
Speaker 9: Mormon mission. I still went to Denver, Colorado. I still
Speaker 9: was in the church for years after that. But I
Speaker 9: think that is kind of the easiest to encapsulate example
Speaker 9: of these moments that kind of hit me over and
Speaker 9: over again where I would have these really strong feelings,
Speaker 9: major revelations that I was used to kind of walk
Speaker 9: through life, only to realize that they were either wrong
Speaker 9: or that if I had made my own decisions about
Speaker 9: my own life without consulting God, I probably would have
Speaker 9: chosen better than quote God was choosing for me. So
Speaker 9: as I kind of came to that realization over years
Speaker 9: and years, my first year teaching, my dad had given
Speaker 9: me a blessing that I was meant to be a teacher,
Speaker 9: and that of course I'm going to trust this blessing
Speaker 9: above all else. I didn't pursue any other career paths.
Speaker 9: And then my first year as a teacher, I realized
Speaker 9: I absolutely hated it and was not cut out for it,
Speaker 9: and it was giving me a lot of mental health issues.
Speaker 9: About halfway through the school year, broke to my husband, Hey,
Speaker 9: I think I might not believe in this anymore. After
Speaker 9: a lot of conversations, we both decided that we wanted
Speaker 9: to leave together after reading a lot of church history
Speaker 9: for him, after lots of conversations, Like I said, so,
Speaker 9: it was really helpful. One of my favorite pictures of
Speaker 9: our whole marriage is us holding our coffee cups for
Speaker 9: the first time. For most people, such a simple, straightforward
Speaker 9: thing is like drinking your morning cup of coffee. This
Speaker 9: is our first ever cup of coffee. I think I
Speaker 9: was about twenty four at that point. Didn't grow horns,
Speaker 9: didn't fall beneath the floor, everything proceeded as normal. It
Speaker 9: was very underwhelming. Most sins after you leave the church,
Speaker 9: most sins. As an ex Mormon, you're like, this is
Speaker 9: pretty underwhelming. I also, one of my favorite memories is
Speaker 9: the first time I went to after work drinks with
Speaker 9: my coworkers. They're kind of everybody's getting to know each
Speaker 9: other and like, why did you come to New York?
Speaker 9: And I start talking about Utah Mormonism and leaving the
Speaker 9: church and garments, the religious underwear, the temple endowment, the
Speaker 9: prayer circle of the ceremony, the oaths and the handshakes,
Speaker 9: and I just remember it was probably a group of
Speaker 9: fifteen people, but as I'm just talking, more and more
Speaker 9: people to stop their conversations and just lean in to
Speaker 9: be like, wait, are you talking about leaving a cult
Speaker 9: right now? And just like I could. It was kind
Speaker 9: of affirming to me to have And you know, I
Speaker 9: always have those experiences talking to people they don't know
Speaker 9: much about Mormons, because you can tell from the look
Speaker 9: on their face that you're not the crazy one for
Speaker 9: thinking you were raised in a very crazy religion. Whereas
Speaker 9: you know, if you're kind of talking to people in Utah,
Speaker 9: maybe they'll kind of act like, oh, this is all
Speaker 9: very normal. You know, of course Mormons were garments, but
Speaker 9: to someone who's never interfaced with the religion, it is
Speaker 9: probably ten to twenty times stranger and odder then people
Speaker 9: who are familiar with it, So that kind of surprise
Speaker 9: on people's faces has been healing for me in some
Speaker 9: ways because it helps me feel like I'm not the sinner,
Speaker 9: I'm not the crazy one. It was what I was
Speaker 9: raised in, and that normalcy is not what I experienced
Speaker 9: as a kid, learning to iron shirts as an eight
Speaker 9: year old and writing letters to my husband about how
Speaker 9: I was saving myself for him.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you're coming of age alongside the Internet and
Speaker 2: you're growing up with these very rigid beliefs. What was
Speaker 2: your relationship with the Internet as you were coming of
Speaker 2: age into your early adulthood.
Speaker 9: Oh, I think that one of my first Mormon memories
Speaker 9: is that there is there's a YouTuber who would go
Speaker 9: around and film the temple ceremonies. I remember, probably when
Speaker 9: I was like late middle school, early high school, coming
Speaker 9: across the thumbnail of you know, secrets inside a Mormon Temple,
Speaker 9: and okay, I remember thinking to myself, you know, I
Speaker 9: didn't click on it. And I remember I had friends
Speaker 9: at school who would say, you know, you can see
Speaker 9: what happens in the temple if you go on YouTube,
Speaker 9: and I remember, like, you know, that's probably what they're
Speaker 9: talking about. It's right there. I didn't click on it,
Speaker 9: and I you know, as a Mormon kid, you very
Speaker 9: much learned the term anti Mormon literature, that that's a
Speaker 9: whole thing you're warned against, that you should you shouldn't
Speaker 9: look at anti Mormon literature. They're just trying to destroy
Speaker 9: your testimony. And so I remember just thinking to myself, Oh,
Speaker 9: this is anti Mormon content, and I shouldn't watch it.
Speaker 9: And so when I was still in high school, I
Speaker 9: think if I came across anything disfavorable about the church,
Speaker 9: I immediately just turned my brain off and thought, you know,
Speaker 9: this is Satan. They told me about this, and so
Speaker 9: because they told me about this, that's how I know
Speaker 9: that they are kind of foreseeing or foretelling the futures,
Speaker 9: because they're warning me of this thing that I shouldn't
Speaker 9: look at.
Speaker 2: So you grow up alongside the Internet and then you
Speaker 2: start to see this influx of influencers who I first
Speaker 2: just saw labeled as trad wives, the like Mormon aspect
Speaker 2: and not you know whatever hashtag. Not all tradwives are Mormon,
Speaker 2: but many of them are. Many of the most successful
Speaker 2: influencers are the Utah Mormon based or create the content
Speaker 2: that really appeals. So when did you start noticing this
Speaker 2: content and yeah, what did you make of it?
Speaker 9: That's a good question, And I mean, I feel like
Speaker 9: my whole childhood was kind of tradwife content in a way.
Speaker 9: I feel like to some extent, I think that it's
Speaker 9: also a question of platform, because I feel like Instagram
Speaker 9: is meant for curation, and TikTok is kind of meant
Speaker 9: to question curation and to criticize curation. So I think
Speaker 9: that a lot of trad wife content kind of came
Speaker 9: up in the Instagram age, which is beautiful children, beautiful dresses,
Speaker 9: lovely sour dough, and it's very curated. It's often photos
Speaker 9: instead of videos, so it's harder to pick apart a
Speaker 9: curated photo instead of a video where there's like a
Speaker 9: voice in the background, or you know, you can pause
Speaker 9: the screenshot and say, what is what's the picture on
Speaker 9: their wall? So I think that the kind of transition
Speaker 9: away from Instagram into TikTok is also what kind of
Speaker 9: opened my mind more to the trad wife movement in specificity,
Speaker 9: I guess because prior to that, I just see, you know,
Speaker 9: beautiful kind of like a lot of people say that
Speaker 9: the Mormon tradwife movement came from Mormon mommy bloggers, which
Speaker 9: were super prevalent in the early two which is a
Speaker 9: lot of recipe making and DIY stuff. And so it's
Speaker 9: kind of like this movement kind of re materialized onto
Speaker 9: Instagram after they already had their original audience on the
Speaker 9: blogging side of things. I think where it kind of
Speaker 9: hit its head is when we turn more to a
Speaker 9: TikTok type of investigation of things, where people are no
Speaker 9: longer looking for perfection or they're not looking to follow
Speaker 9: people that their post their posts just feel like a
Speaker 9: Pinterest board. I think Mormon is in very pinteresty. Mormon's
Speaker 9: love findst to in my in my experience. So I
Speaker 9: think that that is what has kind of kicked back
Speaker 9: against tradwifs is that for a long time, I think
Speaker 9: people just unquestioningly consumed the beautiful content. And when there's
Speaker 9: a voice over to a photo and the photo is
Speaker 9: not just it's a pretty photo of kids and some bread,
Speaker 9: Now it's I made this this for my husband or
Speaker 9: I made this for my family, and then you know,
Speaker 9: and there's more of a narrative, Like the new video
Speaker 9: form of the tradwife content is narrative and so it
Speaker 9: is developing much more of an ideology, in my opinion,
Speaker 9: behind the curative video the pictures that we once had,
Speaker 9: and I think two Mormons are taught to be so
Speaker 9: missionary minded that if someone is Mormon, they've probably talked
Speaker 9: about it at some point. I mean, the Mormon Church
Speaker 9: literally expressly says you should be talking about being Mormon online.
Speaker 9: You're told that explicitly, and so that also is an
Speaker 9: element of I think Mormon influencers are louder about their
Speaker 9: religion than a lot of influencers because they are acting
Speaker 9: on that kind of command from the prophet to speak
Speaker 9: loudly and speak often about their religion.
Speaker 2: It seems also because of how the algorithm works at
Speaker 2: any given point in time, there have been times where
Speaker 2: I have gotten content piped to me from a Mormon influencer,
Speaker 2: but the content that I get it's not immediately clear.
Speaker 2: Where a lot of tradwave accounts that have ended up
Speaker 2: in my feed it takes me a little while to
Speaker 2: catch on that there is a specific religious element.
Speaker 9: Is that something you've also noticed?
Speaker 2: Do you feel that there's sort of any reasoning behind
Speaker 2: that because you're saying, you know, the church wants you
Speaker 2: to talk about your religion as much as possible, But
Speaker 2: it feels like with some influencers, to what end was
Speaker 2: not always clear to me right away.
Speaker 9: Yeah, in my opinion, the prevalence of people who are
Speaker 9: influencers mentioning Mormonism is greatest in their early stages, when
Speaker 9: they're first getting an audience, when they're first kind of
Speaker 9: finding their voice. I think once people reach like a
Speaker 9: critical mass of no longer just having Mormon followers, they
Speaker 9: have a lot of just general interest in their platforms.
Speaker 9: It's almost like a graph where the bigger they get,
Speaker 9: the less they mention Mormonism because I think they realize
Speaker 9: that it's unpopular to a general audience, but it's very
Speaker 9: popular with the audience that you're growing early on. So
Speaker 9: I think that you know, for example, I know Ballerina
Speaker 9: Farm used to have a blog specifically about Mormonism, but
Speaker 9: if you google is so and so Mormon, you can
Speaker 9: always find an answer because they talked about it a
Speaker 9: lot early on, and there's always like an early interview.
Speaker 9: Same with Brooklyn and Bailey. They're not really tradwife stuff anymore,
Speaker 9: but they just have a big YouTube channel and they
Speaker 9: talked quite a bit about Mormonism early on, and now
Speaker 9: it essentially never appears. I think one of them has left,
Speaker 9: I'm not sure. Initially to grow their audience, they're talking
Speaker 9: a lot about Mormonism because Mormons will follow you because
Speaker 9: they know your Mormon. And then after they get big,
Speaker 9: they see it as maybe a bit more of a risk,
Speaker 9: or maybe that because they have more money and they're
Speaker 9: like a little bit less beholden to their community, maybe
Speaker 9: they're less likely to talk about it because they kind
Speaker 9: of can take on their own form of what they
Speaker 9: want to be talking about on the internet. So many Christians,
Speaker 9: I think if they see Mormon content and don't know
Speaker 9: it's Mormon content or just like you know, even tradwife
Speaker 9: content obviously appeals to kind of a more far right ideology,
Speaker 9: and I think all of those people, if they come
Speaker 9: across you know, trad wife content in general, they'll upvote
Speaker 9: it or like it or interact with it. The hard
Speaker 9: thing for Mormons is that a lot of people, just
Speaker 9: especially like evangelical Christians, do not really like Mormons, and
Speaker 9: especially they don't like that they're trying to kind of
Speaker 9: co op. Then they would say the Christian movement or
Speaker 9: whatever and say they're Christians, and there's a lot of
Speaker 9: tension between are they Christians, aren't they Christians? So I
Speaker 9: think that that's another difficulty that they kind of have
Speaker 9: to interface with, is that their content, by its nature
Speaker 9: of being kind of traditionally minded, appeals to this audience
Speaker 9: of a more like conservative Republican audience. But if they're
Speaker 9: too overt about their specific religion, I think, you know,
Speaker 9: if you're viewing it, which I do a little bit
Speaker 9: more as kind of like a brand that they're selling
Speaker 9: versus like their quote truth, real life or whatever, then
Speaker 9: they are recognizing that there's a risk to the brand
Speaker 9: in bringing that to the forefront. Now a brand is
Speaker 9: large enough that it's kind of reaching a mass audience.
Speaker 9: But I don't know, I don't know if I'm just
Speaker 9: jaded or something like, if I'm viewing them too much
Speaker 9: as like business minded versus if they just you know,
Speaker 9: if they're just kind of waking up each morning, rolling
Speaker 9: out of bed, posting their pictures and not really wondering
Speaker 9: about audience retention or who sees what when, and how
Speaker 9: can I reach the broadest number of people. So it's
Speaker 9: hard to get into the mind of these people really.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more with Alyssa Grenfell. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to sixteenth minute. I sort of had to wear
Speaker 2: something like temple garments in my youth, but it was
Speaker 2: these shoulder to me stinky cotton shirts I wore underneath
Speaker 2: my back brace. And unfortunately there's no question about my
Speaker 2: personality that can't be answered with the sentence I wore
Speaker 2: a back brace for my entire adolescence. And now we
Speaker 2: continue our conversation with X more influencer and great theory
Speaker 2: havever Alyssa Grenfell. As I was sort of learning more
Speaker 2: about a recent subject I was covering, I found that
Speaker 2: out that the family was Mormon, but didn't really talk
Speaker 2: about it, and a lot of people were saying like, oh,
Speaker 2: you should do an episode of but like why are
Speaker 2: there so many successful Mormon women in the influencing space?
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned sort of the most popular answer given,
Speaker 2: which is what I was encountering a lot, which was
Speaker 2: that young Mormon women are taught to journal a lot,
Speaker 2: so that's probably why they're successful at influencing. Doesn't not
Speaker 2: make sense, but felt just like a very incomplete answer.
Speaker 2: Could you take me through What made you start asking
Speaker 2: this question? Because people were telling you that they were
Speaker 2: getting ads for the Mormon Church on your content. That
Speaker 2: was how that started, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, every interview I've ever spoken to is like why
Speaker 9: are there so many Mormon influencers? And I think they
Speaker 9: often ask it almost like in this secret, like can
Speaker 9: you tell me the answer? Like like I have this
Speaker 9: secret that I'm keeping, and if I could just explain it,
Speaker 9: like like then that would explain the phenomenon. And it's
Speaker 9: I think it's you know, I think something like women
Speaker 9: journal and there was the mommy bloggers, and blogging is
Speaker 9: like journaling, and then once they're blogging, then they're on
Speaker 9: Instagram and it feels easy to understand. But I agree,
Speaker 9: like it feels kind of thin because lots of people
Speaker 9: journal and it doesn't mean that you're going to be
Speaker 9: famous one day just because you were journaling a lot
Speaker 9: when you were a little kid. But when I was
Speaker 9: posting my videos, I you know, especially initially, I'm still
Speaker 9: like learning YouTube. I think my first YouTube video was
Speaker 9: like ten months ago or something. I'm still under one
Speaker 9: year of learning this whole platform and stuff. But I
Speaker 9: would have people say so funny, I just got to
Speaker 9: ad for the Mormon Church while I was watching this video,
Speaker 9: and I, you know, thinking it's so funny that they
Speaker 9: are advertising on my content, which, obviously, if you understand
Speaker 9: the back end, the Mormon Church purchases ad space through
Speaker 9: Google Google ad Sense, and then Google ad Sense looks
Speaker 9: for content that is relevant to put the ad on
Speaker 9: top of. So it's not like the Mormon Sure's saying
Speaker 9: we like Alyssa Grenfell definitely not saying that, but the
Speaker 9: algorithm is basically looking for people saying Mormon, Mormon, Mormon
Speaker 9: or Utah or whatever and then putting their ad space
Speaker 9: their AdSpend behind that content. And I also, kind of
Speaker 9: in tandem with that, was on the YouTube subreddit and
Speaker 9: looking at the stuff about YouTube and realizing that my
Speaker 9: CPM and my RPM, which is kind of how much
Speaker 9: you make off of your videos, was way higher than
Speaker 9: basically almost anyone else was quoting that, like my average
Speaker 9: kind of pay per view or pay per click or
Speaker 9: whatever was much higher than just kind of your average channel.
Speaker 9: I used to do some SEO for a previous employer,
Speaker 9: and I went and looked at the ads spend estimated
Speaker 9: behind different keywords. Because people don't realize that the AD
Speaker 9: spend behind something like crafting is not the same as
Speaker 9: the AD spend behind something like open a new credit card,
Speaker 9: because it's basically the ad spend is proportionate to how
Speaker 9: much the advertiser is willing to spend to get the
Speaker 9: eyes of the viewer. So I realized, basically when I
Speaker 9: went and looked at the ad spend behind someothies terms,
Speaker 9: that the ad spend was as high as very expensive
Speaker 9: advertising terms. So like to open a new credit card
Speaker 9: was thirty dollars per click, and something like crafting or
Speaker 9: maybe like sour dough bread is like two dollars. It's
Speaker 9: very low. So when I looked at Mormon terms like
Speaker 9: Mormon missionary was thirty dollars and Utah influencer was nineteen dollars,
Speaker 9: Mormon was twenty five dollars. And these are ad spends
Speaker 9: that are phenomenally high, especially when compared even with another religion.
Speaker 9: You know, Catholicism or Catholic is two dollars. Judaism or
Speaker 9: jew is maybe four dollars.
Speaker 2: As someone raised Catholic, I was like, wow, Catholics found
Speaker 2: dead in a ditch. A profitable not a profitable YouTube
Speaker 2: grip I was truly blown away with how many times
Speaker 2: higher those keywords were scanning.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and it felt like people don't realize that the
Speaker 9: Mormon Church is the richest church on the planet. It's
Speaker 9: similar to the net worth of Disney, you know, so
Speaker 9: I mean, which I also have no idea the value
Speaker 9: of Disney. I think it's potentially even worth more than Disney.
Speaker 9: So it felt like there has to be some connection
Speaker 9: between the high ad spend on these keywords. I'm seeing
Speaker 9: it literally in my content. I'm seeing that I'm making
Speaker 9: more off of my videos than the average YouTuber, and
Speaker 9: then extending that to Utah influencers, which is that when
Speaker 9: they're making content, they're making more money, and basically realizing
Speaker 9: that because there's more money to be had out in Utah,
Speaker 9: that it can just support a far larger number of creators,
Speaker 9: especially in that phase of getting off the ground, right
Speaker 9: when they're talking about Mormonism the most, right when they're
Speaker 9: kind of like, let me try influencing for a bit, right,
Speaker 9: you know, before they get the brand sponsorship, before they
Speaker 9: get all the clicks for the commissions on Amazon whatever. Like,
Speaker 9: I think I just basically took what was happening to
Speaker 9: me and thought, what's happening to me is happening to
Speaker 9: all these Utah Mormon influencers. They're being paid the same amount.
Speaker 9: Like if a guy is making finance content about investing
Speaker 9: in the S and P and they're making videos about sourdough,
Speaker 9: those people are making the same amount of money, which
Speaker 9: is highly irregular.
Speaker 2: I had no idea how much money the Mormon Church has.
Speaker 2: As you explained the video, the Church is welcome to
Speaker 2: pour as much money into these keywords as they like,
Speaker 2: but they can't control whether the keywords are being talked
Speaker 2: about favorably. So it seems like there's like a world
Speaker 2: where the Mormon Church is accidentally cutting you checks for
Speaker 2: talking about why you let.
Speaker 9: Anyone else you know? And I think that maybe to
Speaker 9: them it's worth it. I mean, I haven't seen those
Speaker 9: comments of I just got an ask for the Mormon Church.
Speaker 9: I'm still getting those comments, so I don't know, Like,
Speaker 9: I don't think I added them to the point that
Speaker 9: they're changing their strategy or anything. But it is kind
Speaker 9: of funny to realize that they are kind of engineering
Speaker 9: their own crisis by making it so that it's profitable
Speaker 9: enough to be a YouTuber talking about Mormonism that they
Speaker 9: are kind of supporting the YouTuber's little you know, rent
Speaker 9: payment or whatever. YouTuber can keep going and keep making
Speaker 9: the negative videos. And it's a very funny little cycle
Speaker 9: considering I once paid ten percent of my income to
Speaker 9: the church and now I'm slowly making it back.
Speaker 2: Tad wife influencers that started by talking about Mormonism quite
Speaker 2: a bit and probably don't talk about it as much now,
Speaker 2: they are also sort of getting cuts of this, even
Speaker 2: if they're not explicitly talking about the Mormon Church anymore.
Speaker 2: Do you think even if an influencer who started talking
Speaker 2: about Mormonism isn't anymore, does this still help the church.
Speaker 9: The most fascinating was that the term the search term
Speaker 9: Utah influencer. I think Utah influencer made about nineteen dollars
Speaker 9: per click. So if you compare that with New York
Speaker 9: City influencer, you know, San Francisco influencer, places where you assume,
Speaker 9: you know, that's the influencer capital of the world because
Speaker 9: that's especially of the US. Those are all under five dollars.
Speaker 9: So you know, like I said, it's almost three times
Speaker 9: they're making three times as much. So a woman, a
Speaker 9: woman with her kids in New York, a woman with
Speaker 9: her kids in LA and a woman with her kids
Speaker 9: in Lehigh, Utah. The woman in Lehigh, Utah will probably
Speaker 9: make three times as much the AD revenue with a
Speaker 9: lower cost of living right and lower cost of living.
Speaker 9: And you know, probably her husband already has a job
Speaker 9: because he's been kind of trained to be the bread winner,
Speaker 9: just like she's been trained to be the housewife. As
Speaker 9: far as the church benefiting from it, I think it
Speaker 9: definitely does. Think I've had people tell me through comments
Speaker 9: or I've had some emails of people saying that Ballerina
Speaker 9: Farm just her content made them Google. You know, Mormons
Speaker 9: started looking to the church, considering getting a visit from
Speaker 9: the missionaries, consider getting a Book of Mormon. And it's
Speaker 9: kind of like a very soft advertisement in my opinion,
Speaker 9: where it's not someone coming on and saying I'd like
Speaker 9: to talk to you about why you should join them
Speaker 9: at church. But when you see a lifestyle presented that's
Speaker 9: very alluring and very beautiful, and you think to yourself,
Speaker 9: what it is about this person that made this lifestyle possible,
Speaker 9: and you realize they're part of the church. I think
Speaker 9: it kind of gives a higher level of influence to
Speaker 9: potentially someone who's curious and wondering what they can do
Speaker 9: to kind of live that life that they're seeing fantasized.
Speaker 2: Final thing, I mean, I just wanted to mention and
Speaker 2: talk a little bit as far as your theory goes,
Speaker 2: is that this is a way to sort of have
Speaker 2: these posterboard influencers kind of representing, if not the church explicitly,
Speaker 2: the you know, gender roles and the ideals of the
Speaker 2: church and the day to day without having it be
Speaker 2: traced back to supposing Ballerina firm you know, wakes up
Speaker 2: tomorrow and is like I'm done with the Mormon Church.
Speaker 2: It's not like she can say and the church has
Speaker 2: been paying me this much for this long to create
Speaker 2: this content. It creates this middleman.
Speaker 9: The church had a ton of success from Donnie and
Speaker 9: Marie Osmond because they're Mormon. They're more you know, the
Speaker 9: raised Mormon, still Mormon to this day, and they were,
Speaker 9: you know, phenomenal brand ambassadors for the church throughout their
Speaker 9: kind of heyday. Gladys Knight is also Mormon, and she
Speaker 9: did a concert at our ward in Kentucky at our
Speaker 9: big congregation, and she's another example of someone who kind
Speaker 9: of became a bit of a brand ambassador. You know,
Speaker 9: she's doing concerts, and I think pre internet and before
Speaker 9: gay issues, the awareness around LGBTQ issues, those people did
Speaker 9: really well. And typically it seems like they mostly stayed
Speaker 9: in the church, and so the church had a lot
Speaker 9: of success with these famous people being brand ambassadors for them,
Speaker 9: whereas now they've had it I think in more recent
Speaker 9: years backfire more often than they've had it work, like
Speaker 9: with David Archiletta. So, David Archiletta was very well known
Speaker 9: within the church. He also gave concerts for the church.
Speaker 9: He served a Mormon mission. You can find a picture
Speaker 9: of him and the Mormon Chapter Nacle choir where they
Speaker 9: did his slow zoom on him. And he was another
Speaker 9: poster child and another famous person. And he's the sweetest
Speaker 9: you know, if you've ever heard him in interviews, he's
Speaker 9: so sweet. He's like he just has the kindest presence.
Speaker 9: And so I think he was kind of the perfect
Speaker 9: example of a great Mormon and a great ambassador. And
Speaker 9: then in like a few years ago he came out
Speaker 9: as gay. He also kind of simultaneously came outs leaving
Speaker 9: the church and now has written a song about you know,
Speaker 9: I'd rather go to health and not love the people
Speaker 9: who I love, And in many ways has kind of
Speaker 9: been a reverse of all of the kind of quote
Speaker 9: good he would have done for the image of the
Speaker 9: Mormon Church. Now he's just basically a breathing example of
Speaker 9: the church's bigotry towards gay people because the church really
Speaker 9: tried to up their proximity to his image from a
Speaker 9: pr perspective, really hurt them now that they are no
Speaker 9: longer able to you know, now they've been damaged by
Speaker 9: his coming out against them and saying, hey, this church
Speaker 9: is homophobic. So I think that that's another reason they
Speaker 9: don't want to maybe formally approach someone like a ballerina
Speaker 9: farm or any of these chadwife creators, because they know
Speaker 9: it will backfire against them. But they also know that
Speaker 9: these women are making the church look very good and
Speaker 9: very beautiful and traditional and feminine, and so I think
Speaker 9: this advertising revenue is kind of a way for them
Speaker 9: to support the blogsphere of the early two thousands through
Speaker 9: the you know, Instagrammers and YouTubers of today by giving
Speaker 9: them ad revenue.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more with Alyssa Grenf. Well,
Speaker 2: welcome back to sixteenth minute, and now we continue our
Speaker 2: conversation with Alyssa Grenfell.
Speaker 9: You know, when you're a YouTuber or when you get
Speaker 9: ad revenue from any social media platform, it just tells
Speaker 9: you the amount and it tells you basically your cost perview,
Speaker 9: and that's it. It just says advertisers were willing to pay,
Speaker 9: and it's like a black box. They're not telling you,
Speaker 9: like which this percentage came from this organization, This percentage
Speaker 9: came from this organization. So it's like a black box
Speaker 9: in that you can't you don't even know. So the
Speaker 9: women can just make their content and look up in
Speaker 9: the morning and be like, look, babe, like look at
Speaker 9: this money I made. I'll make more content tomorrow. I'm
Speaker 9: going to tell my friends. They won't necessarily see through
Speaker 9: kind of read the tea leaves of why am I
Speaker 9: making this much? I don't know if any of them
Speaker 9: are doing that, and maybe they are, and I'm just
Speaker 9: kind of one of the first they've talked about it.
Speaker 2: There's no one answer that's going to completely unlock why
Speaker 2: are there so many successful trad wife accounts at this
Speaker 2: specific moment. That answer ranges you know, far beyond Mormonism,
Speaker 2: but I think your content has just helped me have
Speaker 2: a better sense of not just you and the culture
Speaker 2: that you had to leave behind, but also who is
Speaker 2: shaping the Internet. And it seems like the Mormon Church
Speaker 2: has no small part in doing that.
Speaker 9: And it's so funny because when you say it like that,
Speaker 9: it sounds so kind of conspiratorial. It sounds, you know,
Speaker 9: the Mormons, They're controlling the Internet. But it is funny
Speaker 9: because it I think to some extent it's true. I mean,
Speaker 9: not that they are literally holding the mouse and clicking
Speaker 9: the clicks, but sure in that they are exercising I
Speaker 9: think a pretty broad ad spend the way that they
Speaker 9: are actively petitioning members to go on and share the gospel,
Speaker 9: share talks, share resources about the church, and so I
Speaker 9: think that they do have like a fairly coordinated pr
Speaker 9: effort for the Internet specifically. Even one thing I didn't
Speaker 9: mention in that video is they have all these people
Speaker 9: who are hired to do SEO. And if you google
Speaker 9: something like Bible, the Mormon Church has, like their free
Speaker 9: Bible is one of the first organic things you see
Speaker 9: on Google. Is introduced about today, say it's same with
Speaker 9: I think Jesus Christ, same with New Testament, you know,
Speaker 9: all of these terms that are kind of general Christian terms.
Speaker 9: The Mormon Church has one of the top organic rankings
Speaker 9: for those searches, which is very purposeful and specific, you know,
Speaker 9: and that their attempt to kind of say, hey, if
Speaker 9: someone wants a Bible, we want to be the ones
Speaker 9: giving it to them. So I think that they do.
Speaker 9: You know, it's not just conspiratorial. They have what I
Speaker 9: view to be like a very specific, targeted plan for
Speaker 9: how to get people on the Internet interested in Mormonism,
Speaker 9: and it's multifaceted, and have whole departments hired for this
Speaker 9: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: It just seems like the Mormon Church has adapted to
Speaker 2: the Internet age unusually well.
Speaker 9: I think they definitely viewed it as a great opportunity,
Speaker 9: and I think they've also viewed it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: People will also talk about how the Mormon Church will
Speaker 9: kind of spam the front page of Google so that
Speaker 9: ex Mormon stuff gets further and further down, so that,
Speaker 9: you know, instead of just having one article on a subject,
Speaker 9: they'll have like ten articles on a subject, and they'll
Speaker 9: try to get them all to rank so that the
Speaker 9: whole front page of Google is just faithful responses to
Speaker 9: questions about the origins of the church. They even put
Speaker 9: out all these essays that are about the history of
Speaker 9: the church so that they can kind of counter the
Speaker 9: anti Mormon literature.
Speaker 2: Is there anything I didn't ask that you feel like
Speaker 2: is relevant to this discussion?
Speaker 9: Sometimes I struggle with, you know, when I talk about
Speaker 9: tradwife things, I feel like people really want kind of
Speaker 9: a silver bullet answer. And I also think that I
Speaker 9: struggle sometimes with it's not a demonization of something like
Speaker 9: a tradwife, but it's maybe the critique because I often
Speaker 9: feel like tradwives didn't invent motherhood. Tradwives didn't invent being
Speaker 9: a wife, or like being in a loving relationship in partnership,
Speaker 9: And so sometimes have a I struggle with the nuance
Speaker 9: of critiquing something that is genuinely human and genuinely like
Speaker 9: I think, demonizing motherhood is not something we want to do,
Speaker 9: Demonizing being a loving partner is not something we want
Speaker 9: to do. But we want to critique the approach that
Speaker 9: these accounts are kind of sharing. And so in the
Speaker 9: critique sometimes there's a demonization that I think is kind
Speaker 9: of dangerous and not good for families or children specifically.
Speaker 9: So I think just a final infusion of nuance is
Speaker 9: what I is. The final thing I'd want to leave
Speaker 9: is just that it It's not something that's quite as
Speaker 9: straightforward as saying Mormon women like to journal. It's very complicated.
Speaker 9: It's about the Internet, but it's also about conservatism, and
Speaker 9: it's about roversus weighed, and it's about all of these
Speaker 9: different cultural forces.
Speaker 2: People should be allowed to live their lives comfortably however
Speaker 2: they choose to. And so it's just like, let's not
Speaker 2: go after a specific woman, Let's go after maybe the
Speaker 2: system that you can trace it back up to, which
Speaker 2: seems like a lot of what your work is trying
Speaker 2: to do is interrogate the system that creates and not
Speaker 2: you bully the byproducts of the system.
Speaker 9: That's kind of why I always say I'm anti Mormonism,
Speaker 9: but I'm not anti Mormon, because I think people can
Speaker 9: still be criticized, obviously, but I think that in a
Speaker 9: more broad sense, the systems and the organizations and the
Speaker 9: dogmas are what are forming human behavior. And so instead
Speaker 9: of saying this one person sucks because of this X
Speaker 9: y Z, it's better and more helpful. I think more informative,
Speaker 9: more educational to say this is the system that made
Speaker 9: this phenomenon exist to begin with.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much again to Alyssa for her time and patience.
Speaker 2: I really recommend her YouTube channel if you have any
Speaker 2: further questions about what it's like to grow up in
Speaker 2: the Mormon faith, what it's like to decondition oneself from
Speaker 2: a cult like upbringing, as well as some interesting interviews
Speaker 2: with fellow ex Mormons. You can also check out her
Speaker 2: book at the link in the description. So listeners to conclude,
Speaker 2: why are there so many successful Mormon wives in the
Speaker 2: influencing space today? The answer is money. Okay, see you
Speaker 2: next week. In all seriousness, thank you so much again
Speaker 2: for listening. Please remember to subscribe to the show. If
Speaker 2: you like it, leave a friendly review, tell your friends.
Speaker 2: It all helps. I had a lot of fun making
Speaker 2: this episode. I learned a lot and it was really hard.
Speaker 2: So please let me know your thoughts and for your
Speaker 2: moment of fun or I guess more of a moment
Speaker 2: of reflection. This week, here is former American Idol contestant
Speaker 2: David Argiletta talking about what he left the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3: See you next week.
Speaker 11: One day, I was just praying. I got on my
Speaker 11: knees and I said, God, if you're really there, and
Speaker 11: if you really have a purpose for me, just please
Speaker 11: take this from me. Please change because I don't want
Speaker 11: to be a wish and I don't want to be
Speaker 11: like this, and I don't know.
Speaker 10: Why I am.
Speaker 11: And I just basically heard what I understood is what
Speaker 11: was always God told me, David, you need to stop
Speaker 11: asking me this. You're asking me the wrong thing because
Speaker 11: I don't intend to change you. You've been spending over
Speaker 11: half of your life now praying about this, asking me
Speaker 11: to change something that I don't intend to change.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and
Speaker 2: iHeart Bringim. It is written, posted and produced by me
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: You amazin Ian Johnson. It is our supervising producer and
Speaker 2: our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirty and Pet.
Speaker 2: Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper,
Speaker 2: and my pet rock Bert, who will outlive us all. Bye.