Alyssa Grenfell is a delightfully happy and upbeat exMo YouTuber

[Marcus]

Lol, remember when it was twice on Sundays?

Before my time, thank God!

Although I hear the church back then was much more community oriented and fun.

Yes, roadshows, dance festivals, speech festivals, week-long ward camping trips, cooking contests at the ward dinners, cultural Relief Society lessons on weekday evenings that brought in performers, primary on Wednesday afternoons, girls camp and boys camp, actual use of the kitchen for FUN purposes, basketball etc.

And all within walking distance (two short blocks), at least for me.

[honorentheos]

Anti-Mo: "The Church isn't true because the anti-Mo YouTube Influencer is still smiling."
Anti-Mo: "Now I have an excuse to not move my smiling lazy butt to Church for two hours."

Does pretending criticisms of the Church are trivial make you feel better about spending two hours on a Sunday reinforcing your commitments to an organization founded on lies?

[honorentheos]

Before my time, thank God!

Although I hear the church back then was much more community oriented and fun.

Yes, roadshows, dance festivals, speech festivals, week-long ward camping trips, cooking contests at the ward dinners, cultural Relief Society lessons on weekday evenings that brought in performers, primary on Wednesday afternoons, girls camp and boys camp, actual use of the kitchen for FUN purposes, basketball etc.

And all within walking distance (two short blocks), at least for me.

I had similar experiences. Split church on Sunday where we came home and went back, Wednesday primary, Ward events being community events including father-son camps and the week long Ward camping trips. The latter often being the stay at home moms and older ward members chaperoning the kids the first few days until the majority of dads came at the end of the week and Saturday. The Thanksgiving Friday/Saturday all day and night basketball round robin was a tradition that I believe has disappeared in my home ward as well.

[honorentheos]

Critic of Mormonism: Joseph Smith engaged in widespread cheating on Emma and turned it into the temple sealing in which he was sealed first to another woman rather than Emma.

Mo: That's not proven!

Temple Lot Case: Well, actually...

Mo: Meat Commerce!

[Everybody Wang Chung]

"If the Mormon Church isn't going to honestly portray its history, then it can't complain when others do it for them." -- Trey Parker discussing his South Park episode "Meet The Mormons"

Thanks Drumdude! I've never even heard of Alyssa Grenfell before. It looks like her YouTube channel alone has over 130 million views (132,552,376 views).

The Church lost the social media war, a long time ago. There are now thousands and thousands of people just like Alyssa on social media that are educating the world and defining Mormonism.

The LDS blogger/social media influencer with the biggest following by far, is Dan McClellan. However, he is almost universally disliked among the apologists for being critical of the historicity of the Book of Mormon and a number of Church teachings. It seems the Church just can't win when it comes to social media, no matter how many millions and millions it gives to Scripture Central, Ward Radio or any number of LDS bloggers.

At least they still have Robert Boylan and Jacob Hansen.

[drumdude]

At least they still have Robert Boylan and Jacob Hansen.

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is lucky to be in such culpable hands

[Moksha]

At least they still have Robert Boylan and Jacob Hansen.

So what is Dr. Peterson, canned ham already?

Alyssa Grenfell is fun to watch and the Church is lucky to have Dr. Dan McClellan.

[Marcus]

At least they still have Robert Boylan and Jacob Hansen.

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is lucky to be in such culpable hands

[Manetho]

The Church lost the social media war, a long time ago. There are now thousands and thousands of people just like Alyssa on social media that are educating the world and defining Mormonism.

Grenfell actually has a video asking "Why are there so many Mormon influencers?" The upshot is that online ad spending depends a lot on how much money advertisers will pay for videos that include a certain keyword, so that, e.g., videos about finance tend to make more money because banks will pay a lot to place their ads on those videos. Grenfell uses a tool that determines the advertising price for videos with particular keywords and finds out that the keyword "Mormon" is worth many times as much as keywords for other religious groups, and worth almost as much as the keywords "new bank". She hypothesizes that the LDS church is spending money to boost Mormon-related content without directly or traceably sponsoring that content. A lot of what it's boosting will be lifestyle videos by individual Mormons who look happy and prosperous, as influencers are wont to do, and thus put a happy face on the public perception of Mormon life. But by increasing the prominence of Mormon-related content of any kind, the church also increases the prominence of ex-Mormon critics of the church.

[Equality]

I had never heard of her before. I left the church in 2008 after blogging for a couple years, after discovering the DAMU in 2005, after discovering the Bloggernacle in 2004.

I followed the Mormon Stories arc, and occasionally pop in here to see what's what. But I've been largely ignorant of the development of Mormon criticism for the last 10 years or so.

I watched her video on the Secret Lives of Mormon Women and a couple others, and I have to say that she has got to be the most effective, and from the Mormon Church's perspective, the single most dangerous ex-Mormon critic ever. Way more than Packham or the Tanners. Way more than John Dehlin or Jeremy Runnels or any of the others from the "blogging and podcast" era.

The fact that she is getting hundreds of thousands of views on her long-form YouTube videos has got to be causing major cog dis with members.

I watched the video of her with her husband describing their exit from the church, and it's amazing to me that 20 years after the formation of the Bloggernacle and the explosion of availability of damaging information about the church, the Brethren still have absolutely no plan to deal with members discovering the stuff they were never taught growing up in the church. They've really just been sticking their collective heads in the sand and apparently still have no idea how to deal with it.