Who is Jeremy Orbe Smith...

[_Bond James Bond]

A socialist poseur. He is nothing but a paradigm of the intellectually bankrupt faux art scene that was birthed from the unholy union of the New Left and secular-influenced pop art, a fine example of the degradation in modern society and the downfall of high art and classic liberalism's intellectual spirit and zeitgeist. No more is needed as I've summed him up thusly as I have already summed him up.

[Guest]

Greetings from Starbase Kolob, earthlings! I come in peace.

So here's the thing. I had no particular interest in signing up for a board I almost never read, but recent events have made such a thing seem necessary, if only for my own peace of mind; before today, the only contact I had here was through Dr. Shades, who has been unfairly blamed for my sins by acting as a go-between messenger. I originally asked him to post the following email exchange to this thread, but I was persuaded that the message would be better-received straight from the Ancient Astronaut's proboscis. So, for what it's worth, I submit for your consideration (with a few clarifying sentences edited in from the original version) :

Hi Dr. Shades ~

Sorry to be a pain, but I was hoping you'd do me a big favor and post a copy of this entire email in that "Who Is Jeremy Orbe-Smith" thread on MD. (Though I'll understand if you don't.) I don't mean to make you a go-between messenger, I just wanted to get my side out there, if possible. I don't plan to respond after this.

Dear MD peeps:

LDSToronto commented in what is now a locked thread on MD&D:

"MD is sensitive to censorship and you kicked the hornet's nest. Upon your request, Shades removed the URL to your site from a poster's sig line. This irritated some of MD's citizens, as it violated the spirit of freedom on that board. What you witnessed was as much a protest against Shades as it was a signal to you. Perhaps you'd care to explain why you want to prohibit people from posting URLs to your website?"

Well, here goes. First, I should note that I disagree with your characterization of the events. My "whisper campaign" consisting of a single email to Dr. Shades (and a single four-word follow-up thanking him for the reply) was prompted when I did a vanity search on my name on Google Images (which I do on occasion to see if my art is being shared with anyone who'll appreciate it. I like to get feedback, and I get the occasional contact this way -- one person even got a pic of mine done as a tattoo! Which was pretty cool).

I was a little bewildered, then, when the search returned a bunch of photos of LDS leaders with lolcat-like captions edited in. I clicked on one of the pictures and found myself at MD of all places, and all the pics were posted by Darth; they came up in the search engine because he had a link to my blog in his signature. (I have no idea who Darth is. If he's a member of MD&D, then I have no memory of us ever interacting. Except for the past few days, I haven't followed MD at all, except from what few references I hear about it on the other board. The only people I know on MD are those who post at MD&D too.)

Frankly, I don't appreciate having my name being associated with that kind of personalized mockery, but since I'm not a member of MD and have no wish to be at this time (no offense, as I said to Dr. Shades) I couldn't contact Darth to talk to him/her directly (as, again, I have no idea who this person is, or why they'd bother ironically linking to someone they apparently despise for no reason other than to throw rotten tomatoes, which is such a waste of energy that it just leaves me bemused and befuddled). So I sent an email to Dr. Shades, reproduced here in full:

Hi Dr. Shades ~

Bit of a quandary. On Mormon Discussions there is a member (Darth J) who has a link to my blog (jeremy-orbe-smith.tumblr) listed in his/her signature. Very flattering, but I'd really actually prefer not to be linked in anyone's actual siggy except my own. Thing is, I'm not a member of your forum, and have no particular desire to be one at this time (no offense, of course), and this means that I haven't been able to find any contact information to get in touch with Darth directly. I was hoping I could get a proxy to let him/her know that while I appreciate the interest, I'd rather the link be taken down.

Thanks,

~ Jeremy

Dr. Shades replied with:

I just sent a message to him, requesting that he remove it.

And I ended our exchange with:

Thanks a bunch, man. :)

... and that was it. I didn't think it was some big statement, or a shrill demand for censorship; I didn't even request that the mods take the link down on my behalf, though upon rereading I can understand how my email might have been read as such a request. Such was not my intent, so I'd appreciate it if the energy expended on excoriating Dr. Shades could be focused on something more productive, like learning how to paint. If I could have talked to Darth directly through a PM, I would have; I just wanted to appeal to this individual in the hope that I wouldn't have to be associated with his photos and the posts of his which have a negative view of the LDS church. Basically, I wanted to let him know that I'd rather prefer him not to link to me, and he could respond however he would. (I was, I admit, naïvely kinda hoping he'd treat me like something resembling a fellow human being.) (And again, I have so little idea of who this person is that I just had to go back through this response and change all the references I had written to "he/she" into definite "he"s, since I'd forgotten that Dr. Shades mentioned the person's gender in his email until I copied it to include here.)

To be honest, I don't understand why someone would even want to give my stuff exposure, given how terribly it is apparently received. Call me thin-skinned, but I've never understood that kind of mockery; it just seems like a waste of time and energy to me. There's a whole world out there to explore, and this is what people do with their time? I'd rather focus on things that inspire me than point others out for public ridicule. As Ferris Bueller once asked: "I mean really, what's the point?"

I don't mean to go on about this -- I'm just trying to clarify, not whine about a misunderstanding. The whole thing just seems amusingly bizarre to me. I really don't see myself as some big dangerous "mopologist"; I'm a broke 26-year-old history student posting about stuff I find interesting. Personally, I think posting a stranger's Facebook page to a hostile audience is downright creepy, but ymmv. Post away; may it bring you and your friends much ... joy, or whatever.

(And a sincere thank you to the few people who stood up in my defense; I apologize for the fact that, as you can see, the conflagration was not entirely unprovoked, though I think it's been blown up to a rather silly and melodramatic degree. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the kind words you folks said about me, and I'll try to live up to them in the future.)

for what it's worth,

~ Jeremy

Kolob out.

[_JeremyOrbeSmith]

My point, really, as I wrote on MD&D ( http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/577 ... are-great/ ), might be conveyed best by Horus and Lady Anhaï:



(Yeah, even you uber-conservative Mo's. Get your acoustic guitars and come sing kumbaya with me and the other hippies. Let down your hair and put a flower behind your ear, it'll feel fantastic.)

[_gramps]

You are a Mormon hippie?

Can such a thing actually exist?

[_Chap]

You are a Mormon hippie?

Can such a thing actually exist?

If it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

[_LDSToronto]

Jeremy - seems you do have the ability to create an account and post. Why didn't it occur to you to just do that in the first place? And furthermore, if google is returning stuff you don't like when you perform a vanity search, you can also use google to find out how easy it is to better affect your search results.

H.

[_Blixa]

Thank god the photo and personal information got (re)moved---but how long did that take?
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Thanks for your kind comments, Moksha, but I'm sorry you were mislead by the tone-deaf to think my post was written in absolute sincerity. A bit of consciously overblown prose as a gentle joke is unfathomable to someone whose own relation to the English language is a crime against humanity. Bond's parody is close, but nowhere near as vain and clueless.

(I'm no fan of Joseph Campbell.)
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A Mormon hippie nearly 50 years after the fact? I think such a term might need a prefix or two, but otherwise it's probably right on time, for better or worse.
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Interplanetary transmission to Kolob: To some degree you got caught in some Shadesian crossfire. But, LDST's suggestion about tweaking search results is surely useful information, is it not?

[_Buffalo]

At least his views are animated and fecund, growing out of the rich loam of early Mormonism and entangling with the tendrils of other beliefs, traditions and myths.

If I had written this, I would be immediately attacked mercilessly for thesaurus mongering, unnecessarily flowery prose and uses of "big words" that reek of condescension and intellectual snobbery.

The problem isn't that you use elevated language, the problem is that you do it amateurishly and for the purposes of appearing pedantic. Also, holy redundancy, Batman.

[_static]

I read it.

No, you didn't. He was actively trying to get things censored here.

We've now heard from the horse's mouth, so to speak. It wasn't as you suspected. It was much more benign.

So how about an answer to my question?

(I'm no fan of Joseph Campbell.)

That's too bad. I guess you have some knowledge of Mr. Campbell that I am lacking, because when I attended one of his lectures (in the 80s) he seemed like an extremely nice individual who was passionate about his research. He was also a very good story-teller.

[_Fence Sitter]

The attention to Jeremy's work does seem a bit strange. I mean it's not like he is some mediocre apostate anti-Mormon photographer from Utah trying to bring down the Church all by himself with intentionally misleading pictures about 'normal' Mormon life,