Based Camp - Conspiracy： Why Did the Mormon Church Ban the Term ＂Mormon＂？ (Hint： Math)

00:00:00.000 elisa grenfield and for her part of the conspiracy theory what she was investigating was

00:00:06.360 the question of why are there so many mormon influencers it's not a conspiracy theory basically

00:00:12.200 it is a hundred percent proven from my perspective there was a fact that she found that she thought

00:00:17.860 was just an odd curiosity oh so silly so silly that this is the case i don't think this is an

00:00:24.300 odd curiosity at all i think that this explains everything so i asked an ai algorithm when did

00:00:32.440 mormon influencers start to rise in popularity disproportionately oh and perplexity said it was

00:00:38.320 in 2001 remember i said that was when they first started discouraging the term mormon and then

00:00:44.780 recently there's been a rebranding to further discourage the use of the term mormon among

00:00:49.000 church members would you like to know more hello i am so excited to be here with you today simone

00:00:55.040 this episode is going to be one of the malcolm goes into a conspiracy theory although i don't think

00:01:01.120 that this one is a conspiracy theory i think it's actually proven in the data at this point

00:01:06.220 and it's very interesting now i should note one this is not going to be like an anti-mormon episode

00:01:13.720 that's what you're here for anti-mormon content yeah sorry we're mormon stands so mormon stands

00:01:19.800 even our theological beliefs i've been told by mormons they align enough with mormon theological

00:01:25.520 beliefs that some mormons would consider us more like inactive members or members not in good standing

00:01:31.660 with the church but that theologically they're pretty similar so yeah someday we'll get our temple

00:01:37.020 recommends cards it's okay malcolm the day will come maybe i know right the day will come the

00:01:43.680 day will come i guess we're not going to tithe so probably not i would never do that i just don't

00:01:48.440 believe in the central church concept and i suppose we're very against that yeah but that aside that

00:01:56.520 aside i believe i have discovered the solution to a question i was wondering a long time and i will set

00:02:05.660 up the question okay yes throughout the 90s so just a little background on the term mormon mormon was

00:02:12.360 originally used as a term not necessarily derogatory but just by people outside of the mormon church to

00:02:18.120 refer to people at the mormon church because it comes from the book of moroni right that's where you

00:02:23.460 get the word mormon right like it's not like an insulting term or anything like that mormons

00:02:28.160 reappropriated the word throughout like the 80s and the 90s and it became a mainstream word within the

00:02:33.020 church for members of the church it started to become unfavorable for church members and there was uh hold on

00:02:40.800 i'll pull up the exact wording here in starting around 2001 the church encouraged the full use of

00:02:50.140 its name and discouraged the use of mormon church although mormon was still widely accepted among

00:02:57.320 church members so you've got to keep in mind these dates here because they're going to turn out to be

00:03:01.340 important so the first move against the term mormon was a lighter push that came in 2001 but then there

00:03:10.760 was a much heavier push in august of 2018 in which and by the way what the thesis of this video is going

00:03:19.240 to be on is why did these pushes happen because i'll explain why they don't make logical sense from the

00:03:26.720 perspective that they're being laid out by the church as of august 2018 i'll just read basically

00:03:32.180 what ai says about this and what it said the church's explanation was okay the church of jesus

00:03:37.940 christ of latter-day saints has had a long-standing so since 2001 preference for using its full name

00:03:44.180 rather than nicknames like mormon or lds church but this policy was strongly emphasized and formalized in

00:03:50.320 august 2018 here's a summary of the key points uh divine directive president nelson stated that this

00:03:58.760 change was revealed to him by god emphasizing quote the importance of the name he has revealed for his

00:04:05.820 church in quote new guidelines the church has issued a style guide that discourages the use of quote

00:04:11.900 unquote mormon church lds church and mormonism it encourages using the full name quote the church of

00:04:19.060 jesus christ of latter-day saints or shortened versions like quote unquote the church or quote

00:04:26.020 the church of jesus christ in quote so first of all you've got to understand how insane this request is

00:04:33.840 just from an outsider's perspective okay he wants you to not use it's this new proclamation doesn't

00:04:40.280 just ban the use of mormon it bans the use or discourages the use of lds and so he's okay you either

00:04:48.140 have to use the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints which who's going to do that except for

00:04:55.140 devout mormons right right or shortened versions the church or the church of jesus christ and it's

00:05:03.960 if i'm talking to a group of christians and i'm like i'm a member of the church or the church of

00:05:09.360 jesus christ they're not gonna know or assume i'm talking about mormonism yeah that's an insane

00:05:16.360 version of a short version of the name right seems like a silly change in policy from an outsider's

00:05:23.640 perspective so let's go over their explanation for this change of policy before i get to which i think

00:05:30.280 the true explanation is for this change of policy one emphasizing christian identity the church

00:05:37.740 leadership wants to highlight that they are a christian denomination centered on jesus christ

00:05:43.520 using mormon was seen as obscuring this core identity but they're not even using lds they're

00:05:50.100 not using a shortened version that would immediately catch on within popular parlance so it's clearly not

00:05:56.720 going to recenter jesus in the mind of the general public so i don't buy this explanation right okay yeah

00:06:03.260 divine revelation in august 2018 russell m nelson the president of the church announced that god had

00:06:10.000 instructed him to emphasize the full name of the church and discontinue the nicknames like mormon

00:06:14.700 maybe but i'm gonna present strong evidence that he there okay people need to understand how mormon

00:06:20.820 think and relate to god when a mormon had i brought a mormon like a business decision or something like

00:06:26.240 that or if i brought the head of the church like a decision like a marketing decision he would then

00:06:31.700 always especially if it was a big one like the name of the church pray to god to see what god had to

00:06:36.420 say about it that is just the way mormons relate to god they always ask god for answers to their

00:06:41.520 questions so i'm not denying that the head of the church went and prayed to god and then felt

00:06:47.560 comfortable with this change it's just that from a mormon perspective that's not a particularly

00:06:52.160 profound thing to have done he does that every day with all sorts of little questions it's not what

00:06:57.500 you may be thinking of you're a secular person we're like you're imagining like god talking to him

00:07:03.100 or something like that or a vision coming in front of him and talking to him okay i don't see that as

00:07:08.560 a big reason to do this three accurate representation church leaders believe that using the full name

00:07:14.360 the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints more accurately represents their beliefs and focuses

00:07:19.380 so again they're trying to and i actually think this has hurt the church a lot we've done another

00:07:23.440 episode on this trying to normalize the church as a mainstream christian denomination which i think

00:07:28.800 removes a lot of what makes mormonism more theologically interesting than some of the other

00:07:32.600 it's almost to do so requires one to make one's harder religion that is to say a religion that

00:07:39.740 that is stronger ultimately in the face of of mainstream society but also less convenient

00:07:44.380 a softer religion which is more weak more likely to be subject to high attrition

00:07:48.220 not as good at imparting fitness etc yeah okay four distinguishing from other groups the church aims

00:07:55.400 to differentiate itself from splinter groups especially those practicing polygyny who might also be

00:08:00.840 associated with the term mormon splinter groups i'm sorry the mainstream church practice polygyny i

00:08:06.220 understand that the church today can prove it that's not true joseph smith did this righam young did this

00:08:11.040 all of your early prophets did this and now do i think that the church is trying to actually

00:08:16.040 differentiate itself from those churches those groups no how do i know that they're not actually

00:08:21.180 trying to differentiate themselves from those groups really heavily because this is what more ex-mormons

00:08:25.140 think right they're like oh it's the church trying to distance themselves from their past

00:08:28.220 if they were doing that they wouldn't have chosen a comically long name that nobody but devout

00:08:33.700 mormons are going to use if they had done that they would have chosen another short form name

00:08:39.040 that non-mormons could use to distinguish mormons that was obviously mutually exclusive to the mormon

00:08:45.000 community five a rebranding effort this change is part of a broader rebranding initiative including

00:08:49.940 updates to the website materials and even renaming of well-known entities like the mormon

00:08:54.820 tabernacle choir i do think it was a rebranding issue but not for the reasons you may think

00:09:00.060 audience what do they call the choir now wait motab is no longer what are they called well google it if

00:09:05.360 you want what's the mormon tabernacle choir called now uh next historic context while the nickname

00:09:12.700 mormon has been used since the 1830s the church has periodically attempted to move away from it

00:09:16.840 the tabernacle choir at temple square why okay it's one thing to rebrand it's another thing of

00:09:23.340 sorry we're no longer mormons we're the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints it's too much

00:09:28.480 you guys have to oh very frustrating and then the final explanation that's given here is revelation

00:09:35.100 based leadership the lds church believes in ongoing revelation so do we so again this is why we're

00:09:41.580 theologically pretty similar to mormons i believe i have found the answer to this and the dates line

00:09:47.240 up really tightly and the person who did most of the legwork in figuring out this conspiracy theory

00:09:55.260 was a youtuber i knew her from the female host of zelf on the shelf but she also has her own channel

00:10:01.560 where she released this particular conspiracy theory elisa grenfield and for her part of the

00:10:08.060 conspiracy theory it's not a conspiracy theory basically it is a hundred percent proven from

00:10:12.840 my perspective and i'll go over it it's impossible that this isn't what's happening so what she was

00:10:17.900 investigating she just didn't put these two particular dots together what she was investigating was

00:10:23.720 the question of why are there so many mormon influencers right and there have been many by the way

00:10:30.900 what would be a you know my conspiracy theory answer but what would be your answer to the first

00:10:36.120 question why do you think mormons before i came up with this theory tried to make the change to

00:10:41.320 having mormons call it the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints what other ex-mormons online have

00:10:48.120 said is that it is to distance themselves from controversies associated with the church i haven't

00:10:54.300 had any particular i just i thought maybe it had to do with trying to refocus people's attention on

00:11:00.960 latter-day saints or jesus christ instead of just being like oh no we're not a this whole angel

00:11:07.400 moroni whatever the book of mormon no it's not that it's jesus christ and saints and the latter day

00:11:14.800 i don't know i really don't know yeah um so she was trying to find out why mormons are disproportionately

00:11:22.680 present in the mommy blogging community everything like that because this is something they are

00:11:26.160 disproportionately present but i think that she also found out another mystery that she hadn't

00:11:32.620 thought she was looking for and the other history is why are ex-mormons so disproportionately large in

00:11:40.460 the leadership of the atheist community and in the publicly viral voices in the atheist community

00:11:46.200 and her answer would actually explain why that's true as well so i historically thought this was a

00:11:52.080 cultural thing um i believe the mainstream answer to this mormons are genetically isolated for a period

00:11:59.060 and culturally quite distinct from other groups when you interact with mormons and ex-mormons they

00:12:05.040 feel quite different than other groups they're generally more pleasant they're better at social

00:12:09.360 hierarchy fights which seem to have been very important in their community history and they are

00:12:13.580 intensely interested in what the public thinks of them and appearing normative which i think is what's

00:12:18.440 destroying the church right now i think that's always been the mormon black pill is the mormon desire

00:12:22.780 to fit in and be just another christian when i think their strengths is that they're not just other

00:12:26.880 christians but the explanations people have had historically for why mormon influencers had more

00:12:32.920 reach was lds culture so an emphasis on journaling and scrapbooking and memory keeping this is not

00:12:38.900 commanded from the church it's just something that is just really common likely it's been argued a descent of

00:12:44.880 their church practices of genealogy and stuff like that i don't know i think it's like a family focus

00:12:49.900 and a self-perception focus which is really important to mormons so they are because they're

00:12:55.020 so interested in what the public thinks of them they are more interesting or more likely to do things

00:13:00.680 like blog or put their family online they're also more likely to do this because of stay-at-home

00:13:05.860 motherhood which is more common in the lds community and they might i don't know the other answers

00:13:13.240 i'm reading here are just not strong but those are the reasons that i had bought into so now

00:13:18.100 first part of the conspiracy theory i'm gonna roll out um and this was all discovered by alisa

00:13:25.560 grinfeld gotta give her full credit for this lovely person i'd love to have her on the show if she ever

00:13:29.880 watches our stuff we should ask um yeah we should actually reach out you can make a note so the mormon

00:13:36.340 church as a corporate entity is the most wealthy church in the world at 236 billion dollars so that

00:13:43.880 makes it as a corporation around the size of shell the gas company or pepsi and it's bigger than

00:13:49.700 companies like disney or mcdonald's so you've got to keep in mind that um mormons ties 10 of their

00:13:57.620 income which is more than other religions and there's also more devout mormons it's a proportion of

00:14:02.800 the mormon population than there are many other religions and for a body of that size they're

00:14:08.420 going to be doing marketing so like how much marketing are they probably doing if we compare

00:14:13.840 them to a company like pepsi they'd be putting in 3 billion to 3.5 billion on ads a year historically

00:14:21.480 what the mormon church had done built billion with a b yeah there's i i believe they're spending at

00:14:26.940 least 3 billion on ads a year holy smokes and it makes sense for them every member they get

00:14:32.180 outside of the religious motivation is a 10 tithe payer that's huge from a church perspective

00:14:38.740 historically what they would do is they would sign contracts with people um but a number of those

00:14:43.880 contracts ended up blowing up in their face because the people would then end up supporting gay rights

00:14:50.160 and criticize the church for that or end up becoming gay themselves which of course if you are supporting

00:14:54.980 someone who is theatrically gifted and has a large online following of course they're more likely to turn

00:15:00.400 to have to be gay that is just a thing right and then they're going to have an intrinsic beef with

00:15:04.080 the church so i can see why the church would want to move away from that model so here you've got a

00:15:08.140 mystery how is the church advertising these days we don't know the church doesn't release this data

00:15:12.900 now we're going to talk a little about the world of online advertising both simone and i simone used

00:15:18.340 to be the director of marketing of hub pages which was at the time the 45th highest traffic

00:15:21.420 website in the united states and then bought by squidoo and yes hub pages acquired squidoo thank

00:15:26.560 you very much let's just make that clear sorry so you were a quite an expert i think we still have

00:15:33.340 some people from your hub pages days who watch us even now she was a meme in that community and they

00:15:37.800 created your image and memes and stuff and you've been internet famous for a very long time but um

00:15:44.240 you helped a lot of them earn money but people who don't know what hub pages did what they did as a

00:15:48.020 company is you could publish articles to them and make money it was like a we taught people how to

00:15:54.980 write content online that actually people were searching for so instead of blogging about your

00:16:00.480 life or writing poetry for example my top performing articles for some time were how to get rid of raccoons

00:16:06.260 and how to kiss a boy which was ironic because i i just just googled it myself boy and you wrote an

00:16:13.540 article i kissed a boy i kissed one boy so before me she has one boy

00:16:17.620 i so i i love that that is so the early internet you so like the trick to it was you would do some

00:16:26.540 keyword research on google basically if there was some search that got a lot of volume but the

00:16:31.060 results were really bad writing an article on this platform and you got a lot of search volume and

00:16:35.560 then you'd get a lot of searches and so that's how we taught people to make money but yes sir but

00:16:38.940 certainly we learned about online ads one issue that we had on the website and this will help to

00:16:42.400 explain your point you're going to make is that people would constantly try to write articles

00:16:46.060 articles on subjects that had very high paying ads so a lot of people they wanted to talk about

00:16:51.120 celebrity gossip and entertainment and write articles like that my job as their director of

00:16:56.400 marketing and managing their community was to try to dissuade people from doing that because that did

00:17:01.600 not generate revenue for them or for the company instead we wanted them to write about much more

00:17:06.640 productive segments that had higher paying ads so personal finance is an example cars is an example

00:17:14.200 sometimes things like pets would was a good example one of the one of the most high profiting authors on

00:17:20.260 the site at the time that i was working there actually wrote dog food reviews and we're all pretty

00:17:24.940 sure that she tried the dog food because she kept talking about like the flavor profiles of it she made a lot

00:17:30.480 of money even with dog food right yeah there's this term in silicon valley at least there was at the

00:17:35.160 time of actually dog fooding like testing your own product and she like literally dog fooded which is

00:17:39.920 great but anyway so the point was like the holy grail of online subjects at the time do you know what it

00:17:45.580 was in terms of high ad revenue in terms of make money online no mesothelioma the type of cancer that

00:17:52.200 results from exposure to asbestos and at the time perhaps like because law firms were trying to do

00:17:58.480 class action suits against it for whatever reason ads related to mesothelioma were incredibly high

00:18:05.300 paying one click on that could sometimes be like over a hundred dollars or something so you'd really

00:18:09.660 want to write an article about it that people searched for because it was really high people

00:18:13.840 running a lot about electronics too really successful people would park on the names of future iphones

00:18:19.000 so that when the search volume for those would actually go up they'd have these very detailed amazing

00:18:25.000 position for seo articles just waiting for once that search volume was there and then all the ads

00:18:29.640 would be for electronics stores selling the iphone and then they make money so anyway this would

00:18:33.860 explain part of the theory okay so cpm is cost per thousand views okay and that's what you make

00:18:40.960 off of an ad for a thousand views and you can look this up this is public so an example of an extremely

00:18:45.820 high cpm thing would be new bank or mesothelioma or yeah buy a car there's a new bank you're going to

00:18:51.120 get 25 and 30 cents per per thousand views just pretty good yeah and here on the screen i have

00:18:56.020 put the cpms for youtube niches in 2023 make money online is 13 and 52 cents digital marketing is 12

00:19:04.020 and 42 cents finance and investing is 12 25 cents if you look at something like cars which simone said

00:19:10.360 was on the higher end that's 423 things have really changed since yeah then you get down to lower

00:19:16.660 things like lifestyle 347 fashion and clothing 313 entertainment 275 tech and gadgets by the way is

00:19:23.780 really low now at only 239 that's so interesting i wonder what's changed when cooking's at 250

00:19:30.160 i think a lot of this also depends on how you're making money so this is cpms but most people who are

00:19:35.980 making money on selling clothing cooking gadgets etc online are making money through amazon affiliate links

00:19:42.360 or something similar where you like literally get rewarded when someone buys after clicking through

00:19:47.260 to your length that you actually put in there so anyway there are different ways to do this but

00:19:50.340 back to cpms if you're a catholic the term catholic so let's compare some other religious terms here

00:19:57.500 right the cpm is a 358 baptist it's 126 jehovah's witnesses it's 464 so these are all about what i would expect

00:20:07.700 right mormon 1421 wow missionaries 3181 3181 to give you an idea of how insane that is gosh

00:20:24.360 mormon missionaries is significantly higher than new bank okay in terms of how much somebody's willing to

00:20:32.860 pay to pay to that literally the highest on the chart of profitable new to niches is make money

00:20:38.160 online which is 1352 the mormon church just plain mormon church is significantly above that and mormon

00:20:47.160 missionaries is more than double that incredible the amount of money that you would have to pour in

00:20:55.240 to ads in this space to get the numbers that high is billions at least given the number of mormon content

00:21:06.160 creators this means that a mormon content creator is earning on average more per per video that they're

00:21:15.820 putting out than somebody who is creating seo optimized perfect content to get people to sign up

00:21:23.400 with banks or financial advisors isn't that crazy hold on so it hasn't gotten fully so so you might be

00:21:32.800 like oh that might be a coincidence new york influencer 526 los angeles influencer 461 texas influencer 631

00:21:43.660 all about what you'd expect right yeah new york influencer 1890 1890 these are insanely high amounts

00:21:53.900 these are insanely high amounts somebody is pouring an astronomical amount of money into this

00:21:59.840 then to your point about the amount that the lds church is likely paying on ads why are mormon

00:22:07.700 influencers more seen than other influencers there's basically no other answer to this unless there's

00:22:13.560 some other company out there pouring billions into mormon targeted ads yeah um which there isn't

00:22:20.420 there just isn't obviously so why would they be overcharging for ads so there's a few things

00:22:27.320 one is if they are uh paying mormons this way like mormon influencers this way one they don't have any

00:22:35.120 negative pr risks because they're not paying them directly yeah so there's no one yeah yeah there is

00:22:40.340 you don't have to invest in someone also it saves a lot of time and money generally speaking because

00:22:45.940 you're not reaching out to these people coordinating with them exactly emails it's not that intense

00:22:51.240 two they're getting a 10 discount because these people will 10 if these are tithing mormons though and i

00:22:58.040 have something to say about this later if you want no why don't you say it right now so there are a lot

00:23:04.280 mormon influencers but one thing it's discussed on the genre of mormon influencers is why do so many

00:23:10.220 mormon influencers dress like thirst traps like they're in basically thong bikinis and there's a

00:23:15.300 lot of discussion oh maybe they're not endowed yet or mormons have varying policies on when it's

00:23:20.420 appropriate to wear your garments etc like maybe for swimming you don't they're still wearing like

00:23:25.660 extremely revealing bikinis and also taking a lot more revealing photos i think that a lot of people

00:23:31.020 because there are these really high ads and it pays to be a mormon influencer quote-unquote mormon

00:23:37.960 you say you're mormon is that a lot of actually not practicing mormons not tithing not wearing

00:23:43.260 garments are just getting in the genre and basically saying they're mormon just like right now a lot of

00:23:48.440 people are saying that they're autistic because it's trendy to be autistic but they're not actually

00:23:52.900 autistic and i think a lot of these people are not actually mormon they're mormon because it pays to

00:23:57.780 be mormon if you know what i mean i just think that there are a lot of mormon influencers who

00:24:02.920 probably don't tie who clearly don't wear garments negative externalities of this ad campaign yeah

00:24:07.980 exactly and i think that's really interesting this ad campaign before we go further is one it ends up

00:24:13.860 elevating anti-mormon influencers as well so yeah that's the reason why there's so like ex-mormons you

00:24:20.880 say in the atheist community they can't say don't show ads on ex-mormon if it's mormon content it's

00:24:26.820 mormon content i.e it's stuffed with mormon keywords and people who look for mormon keywords

00:24:31.940 are watching it so yeah it's going to artificially elevate ex-mormons it's also keep in mind the

00:24:38.300 rules that these people are playing with are the same the church isn't able to disproportionately

00:24:42.880 elevate the more chaste mormons and guys being guys they're going to click on the thirstier girls

00:24:49.120 yeah that's yeah the thirst trap mormons the not really mormon mormons are going to be the ones

00:24:52.840 get more views because they are hotter i also think on the shelf or whatever her name is for

00:24:58.220 her side project didn't seem to realize she thought that the way that this was elevating mormon content

00:25:03.520 which is definitely a way is that it was providing them with more money to do this which made this a

00:25:08.680 more viable side income for mormon moms which made it more likely that they would end up creating this

00:25:13.800 type of content or young mormon women i don't think that is the key thing i think the key thing that

00:25:19.820 she didn't seem to realize is that whether it's instagram or youtube or anything like that these

00:25:25.460 platforms are in the business of making money they will disproportionately show people content with a

00:25:31.100 higher cpm than content with a lower cpm it literally boosts the term mormon in the algorithm

00:25:38.160 itself to have a higher cpm on that term right just like when i worked at hub pages we didn't just

00:25:44.500 encourage people to not write about entertainment and instead write about personal finance because we

00:25:51.180 made money too when they made money we needed them to do that yeah so you disproportionately showed

00:25:56.980 content to users on higher paid topics yeah okay so one no this isn't about paying the families

00:26:05.980 necessarily this is about influencing the algo which it is doing so one additional piece of information

00:26:12.200 that zelf on the shelf didn't seem to be aware of but now we're going to talk about my part of the

00:26:17.640 conspiracy theory because there was a fact that she found that she thought was just an odd curiosity

00:26:23.920 so silly so silly that this is the case i don't think this is an odd curiosity at all i think that this

00:26:31.500 explains everything so i asked an ai algorithm when did mormon influencers start to rise in popularity

00:26:39.160 disproportionately oh and perplexity said it was in 2001 remember i said that was when they first

00:26:46.700 started discouraging the term mormon and then recently there's been a rebranding to further

00:26:51.360 discourage the use of the term mormon among church members she found another interesting little thing

00:26:57.060 here mormon church as a search term priced at 14 21 mormon mystery rates as a search term

00:27:05.120 priced at 31 81 lds 225 latter-day saint 283 no one is buying ads on those terms what huh you may be

00:27:21.460 asking why would the church have done this why would the church if it is the church that's bidding up

00:27:27.140 these terms not bid up the terms that only mormons would use and that's your answer right there

00:27:33.700 the reason they made this name change is you have a problem if you're using this ad campaign

00:27:39.280 who searches the term mormon most

00:27:41.920 mormons mormons search the term mormon most a mormon is more likely than any other person online

00:27:50.160 to be asking where is my my nearest local mormon temple they're the most likely people in google to

00:27:57.320 be looking for quote-unquote mormon content clicks from mormons are wasted money for the lds church

00:28:05.920 okay yeah you don't want to convert someone who you've already converted you don't want to be

00:28:10.740 paying for ads for somebody who you don't want to be that idiot amazon.com that advertises a

00:28:16.060 refrigerator to you the moment after you buy a refrigerator oh yeah we actually pitched that

00:28:21.600 to am a fun story about how inefficient amazon is so at one point we were interviewing an amazon this

00:28:26.580 was a while ago amazon has fixed this problem since then but amazon used to have this problem

00:28:29.780 where they would um pitch you products after you had bought a very expensive product that obviously

00:28:36.320 you're only going to buy once in a long period of time like a refrigerator is a great example of this

00:28:40.160 it would constantly be in your recommended and i suggested that they have a low income employees

00:28:45.160 i was like interviewing i was like i have this idea for a program i wanted to start for you guys

00:28:48.540 for low wage workers and like the third world to mark all products as single-time purchases or

00:28:54.180 yeah like they have m turk they have the resources yeah i was like you guys could use m turk do this

00:29:01.200 and it would dramatically like it would be billions of dollars a year different for amazon this one

00:29:06.340 change to their algorithm and it would be very easy for me to do the program and execute it i was like

00:29:10.680 okay so if i did this or to get this program how do i pitch that to my higher-ups and they're like

00:29:15.620 you could write a pitch to do that but you wouldn't necessarily get on the team that was doing it even if

00:29:21.000 it was accepted and i was like and i was like if their financial compensation is accepted they're

00:29:25.200 like not really i was like wow you are a terribly run company that is how you keep greenlighting these

00:29:30.340 garbage woke shows because you are the bureaucracy of bureaucracies and amazon higher-ups if you want

00:29:36.980 me to come in and clean things out i can guarantee you you will be making at least 13 percent more

00:29:41.820 the next year but anyway let's go back in here because like little things like that like how did they

00:29:47.300 not think of that and why do they not have a system that would allow a smart person to come

00:29:50.940 in and implement that when it was so low cost to implement but anyway back to the topic at hand

00:29:56.260 here um the problem that you have if you're one of these organizations is that people who are already

00:30:03.120 bought in who are already tithing are clicking these search terms more than any other group so you're

00:30:08.780 just wasting tons of money well what's the best way to get around that you change the church's name

00:30:14.780 among the devout to something that people outside of the devout circles will never ever use like

00:30:21.520 jesus christ church of latter-day saints they didn't plan on the general public to stop using

00:30:27.460 the term mormon they were just trying to get the devout mormons to stop using the term mormon

00:30:33.140 that is why the name change happened this isn't like a bad thing from a theological perspective even if

00:30:39.340 he knew this and he prayed to god about this i'm sure god was like yeah that's a especially if god's a

00:30:44.300 mormon where where am i where are we oh my god hello newcomers and welcome uh i'm the hell director

00:30:55.520 and for those of you who were a little confused uh you are dead and this is hell so abandon all hope

00:31:02.200 and yada yada yada hey wait a minute i shouldn't be here i was a totally strict and devout protestant

00:31:07.800 i thought we went to heaven yes well i'm afraid you were wrong i was a practicing jehovah's witness

00:31:12.880 you picked the wrong religion as well i'm afraid it was the mormons yes the mormons were the correct

00:31:18.760 answer but yeah of course of of course it's the right thing to do it's the efficacious way to reach

00:31:26.360 people and to not waste your followers tithing money which is obviously a sinful thing to do

00:31:32.740 nothing about this is below board exactly it's just that they were doing this program secretly

00:31:37.540 and that i find absolutely fascinating i also think there was a secondary reason behind the

00:31:44.400 rebrand to the impossible name that no one's ever going to do which is this was the height of victim

00:31:50.920 culture and i think the church was trying to force those who criticized it to call it a term they

00:31:57.100 categorized as a slur so that they could say that these individuals shouldn't be taken seriously as

00:32:02.900 critics because they were using a term that was derogatory about the church itself

00:32:10.260 interesting now do you have any thoughts simone i will say part of this seems quite wasteful

00:32:20.100 especially because so many not actually i would say best role model mormon influencers are becoming

00:32:26.320 mormon influencers however i've also noticed that some very not mormon type people

00:32:33.200 follow and secretly love following mormon influencers online now so the church has done a pretty good job

00:32:42.140 at raising its profile in mainstream media and exposing a lot of people to the mormon lifestyle

00:32:47.600 and getting them to see it and think mormons oh whatever right they hate gays but then oh but

00:32:55.500 their lives are so nice they look so happy they're playing the game as well as they can given that

00:33:01.200 their hands are tied with this gerontocracy ruling the church yeah the problem that the modern culture

00:33:06.800 is just not conducive to mormonism if you look at even like a girl defined husband deconstructing or

00:33:13.980 deconverting from the church and she is likely one of them it's likely on a pathway to deconvert like

00:33:18.960 that's as mormon a poster child as you have for our generation but i think that sadly we're

00:33:25.420 seeing a lot of them deconvert and a comment on our discord and people should check out the discord

00:33:29.940 it is so interesting as interesting as the episodes i will try to remember to include a link um but i

00:33:35.780 actually thought that this was the user on the discord was called cap i don't know cattle pa3 i can't

00:33:43.160 pronounce this but three people might be wondering why three on the discord everybody lists their child

00:33:47.540 count at the end of their name which i absolutely love wonderful props for three weird yeah props for

00:33:55.340 three congratulations yeah well done and they said and this comes from a perspective like us like

00:34:02.060 we're not mormons we can't quite bite the bullet on the centralized church ourselves and some of the

00:34:07.160 theological teachings and the alcohol prohibition it reminds me of when the story of the it was the

00:34:14.280 head of the i believe russian and they brought various preachers to come and try to convince them

00:34:23.080 to convert to their religion and the muslims said you can't drink alcohol and they're like oh okay go

00:34:29.200 away i'm done i don't need to listen to anything else we're not gonna do that one anyway so this person

00:34:35.460 said i love the culture of lds but i think they're a dead man walking it's over for them i think there are

00:34:41.940 a number of sects that simply cannot survive the internet information age they relied on concealing

00:34:46.820 inconsistencies and obvious fabrications in their doctrine that the internet now lays bare in a way that they're

00:34:52.800 unable to counter there is a wave of young mormons going online and being forced to confront the

00:34:57.680 reality that their religion is so obviously fabricated and is a collection of embarrassingly

00:35:02.580 shamelessly lifted masonic rituals and they're falling away in mass lds has a maximum one more

00:35:09.420 generations lifespan worse of relevance in my opinion if that barring some kind of apocalyptic world

00:35:16.000 change where the internet disappears it's happening to my own childhood religion seventh day adventism

00:35:21.920 and so this is a person from a very hard culture as well yeah just go online and find out uncomfortable

00:35:27.860 facts about ellen g white that is not a mormon by the way that's from his church and the church

00:35:32.940 foundation and doctrine that you used to never encounter in an entire lifetime of conversation

00:35:38.080 communion church education etc the fallout is brutal and devastating this could be an interesting

00:35:43.820 podcast topic for malcolm in the way belief systems medically evolved but didn't have selective

00:35:50.040 pressures to survive the information age and are currently smashing into the squared circle or i

00:35:57.160 think he means a cube into a squared circle and i think that is really what's happening was in

00:36:01.660 mormonism now it's a culture that was a very well evolved culture it was a very emotionally healthy

00:36:07.720 culture when i look at mormons they seem to be just delightful people even ex-mormons that i say if you

00:36:12.260 grow up in a religion you get most of the benefits of that religion even if you deconvert your kids are the

00:36:16.420 ones they're really going to suffer for your deconversion but mormonism as it is often presented

00:36:23.440 to practitioners and outsiders i.e i call it south park mormonism which is a pretty good example of what

00:36:30.800 your average mormon normie thinks is not a compelling religion in the information age just too many

00:36:38.420 inconsistencies joseph smith did too many horrible things and mormons are still required to uplift these

00:36:43.800 individuals how does the mormon church get around it i think they can the fact that our belief system

00:36:47.580 is considered nominally mormon by more many people you need to accept a few things you need to go with

00:36:52.560 the david defense david i'm sorry what i mean is david of david and goliath david of david and

00:36:57.400 basheba was a complete douche canoe but he was still favored by god that you can go to the david and

00:37:03.440 basheba story for a story of his supreme douchiness being a horrible dog poop human being doesn't mean

00:37:10.700 that you aren't a prophet of god the problem is mormons won't say that about joseph smith which

00:37:15.980 i think is the kind of pill they need to bite in order to get through the information age just be

00:37:21.460 like hey king david right that gets you through that second is they need to embrace their weirdness

00:37:28.040 stop trying to be a normal christian church that's what's interesting about them that's what protects

00:37:33.180 them the more they try to be normal christians the more they lose what makes mormonism special and

00:37:38.340 different which i think is just a huge strategic problem for them um and the final difference is

00:37:45.240 they need to get much more comfortable with the because when i talk to mormons who are like very

00:37:51.260 theologically compelling they are the extreme mormon nerds right yeah orson pratt guys all right like

00:37:59.300 the people who love love love church history and studying it and the theology because actual mormon

00:38:06.900 theology is pretty sophisticated and interesting the problem is and i actually said this is the

00:38:13.400 broader problem for mormonism is mormonism if you're talking about like the intelligence level

00:38:17.420 of the kings within mormonism you know how you develop society into like oh and knights yeah like

00:38:22.780 the consequentialists the people who really study everything you need to make the who need to be very

00:38:26.880 high iq high personal agency mormonism doesn't shed the high iq kings but the deontological form of

00:38:34.820 mormonism which is for the lower iq people it is very bad at the information age so long as it presents

00:38:40.980 itself as a form of mainstream christianity it's not a form of mainstream christianity and it doesn't

00:38:45.860 provide good answers to these so i think that elevating what i call almost like the secret

00:38:50.900 mormon theology the mormon theology that like all the church nerds know to being the mainstream theology

00:38:56.940 that's taught at the pulpit that is how mormonism gets through this it'll deal with a main

00:39:01.780 a huge flow out when it starts doing this when it starts embracing all the weird stuff that's

00:39:07.080 actually theologically part of mormonism but it will keep those members and those members will be

00:39:11.300 higher fertility and they will be higher fastidiousness but it's very i don't know if

00:39:15.840 mormonism could do this because it's so against the mormon spirit i would say to um say we are weird

00:39:24.820 and we are proud of that when it is their biggest strengths i don't know if you had any final thoughts

00:39:29.140 here on on this particular post but i thought it was really powerful for me yeah that is powerful

00:39:35.400 the discord's so freaking good right yeah right uh but yeah i wish yeah it can never happen because

00:39:43.440 a big part of the mormon religion is that it makes i don't know how it achieved this

00:39:49.660 but it makes weirdness feel so normative that it almost feels more normal than mainstream culture

00:39:58.460 if that makes sense yeah that does make sense it feels they've made it they've given it as the

00:40:04.340 this disney aesthetic this main street usa aesthetic even though it's pretty freaking weird when you

00:40:09.900 actually look at it or think about it um and i think it's very impressive that the the church has done

00:40:15.320 that but that means that they obviously cannot take certain stances that would give it some strength

00:40:20.760 especially in these times yeah i think you're right i think you're right i and by the way if the church

00:40:27.040 admits like why you shouldn't be over elevating joseph smith if people are like how can the church

00:40:32.420 survive that just focus on brigham young brigham young does some bad stuff but generally he was an

00:40:37.160 awesome guy like brigham young i consider as an outsider to be the real founder of modern mormonism

00:40:42.960 and i just say joseph smith was god's tool to get brigham young the information the community to

00:40:48.700 create mormonism i think if they refocus and i think this works very well with the iterative prophecy

00:40:55.300 idea of mormonism that joseph smith is not the real founder of mormonism he's just another temple head

00:41:03.220 he helped get it there yeah so in terms of prophets we're like we ignore what they say like one of the

00:41:09.400 prophets said in the mormon community if evolution is right mormonism is wrong and like obviously most

00:41:15.940 mormons today don't buy into what he said but it's very easy mormonism has within it to discount when

00:41:21.640 particular prophets make mistakes or do bad things that's not a key to the tradition as i said the

00:41:27.360 abrahamic tradition has within a school set the david story makes it very easy to do this i just

00:41:32.680 refocus attention on brigham young and the community of intellectuals of the brigham young period

00:41:38.200 so you're not just focused on brigham young like one uncorruptible person but it's more like a

00:41:43.580 community of geniuses very much like the american founding story i think that would play out really

00:41:48.980 well for mormonism and then they can get their horse and proud in there and like a number of other people

00:41:53.180 and they get this story that even more aligns with the american story which is to say joseph smith is like

00:41:58.620 a lower importance character and who really matters is this community of intellectuals in the early day of

00:42:05.340 the church totally this is fun thanks for walking me through this i think you've built upon the

00:42:10.220 original conspiracy theory quite well and i think you're right and i love it i'm never gonna look

00:42:16.720 at a mormon influencer the same way again love you to death simone love you too we need to order

00:42:22.600 twist it into a little thing a little a little a little a doopity do yeah oh my god you are so

00:42:32.780 gay i don't i don't know what to say it's cuter that way everyone knows and doopity do is a technical

00:42:41.100 term just so you know just so you know okay so this episode is going to be very interesting i will get

00:42:58.500 started here this is one that where that a lot of research went into and i should know sorry i'll just

00:43:03.720 restart on this

Based Camp - July 10, 2024

Conspiracy： Why Did the Mormon Church Ban the Term ＂Mormon＂？ (Hint： Math)

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