Water Dog wrote:No, they are horrible. As much as I wish the opposite were true, they are awful as speech's go. They come across as very confident speakers, but they have a very obviously teleprompted and vain repetitious tone to them. This is why people fall asleep and after every conference people crack jokes about how each apostle reminds them of this or that. Many of the speakers, especially the women, also tend to be very patronizing and have a sappy primary-like tone and way about them when they speak. They put on an show of being super-spiritual but it is sickeningly fake and transparent. No real person talks like this. Very few of the talks are down to earth or at all feel real. At first viewing this may not be apparent however. After endless years of conference, it becomes quite repetitious. It's to the point for me that I literally can't listen to certain speakers. Even if for once it's actually a good talk from this person, their tone and style of speech is so predictable and comical that I can't take their message seriously. And I know plenty of TBMs who feel that way too. It would be nice, for once, just once, to see someone go off script and say things that were obviously off-the-cuff. You know, actually be guided by the spirit.
That said though a lot of the messages are very good. Very inspiring messages, some good stories, moral lessons, etc. And I usually can find at least one or two talks that I really liked. Usually the best talks come from the general authorities, someone I've never heard from. Sometimes the regular appearances surprise me. But honestly, are any of the messages more inspiring than someone like Joel Osteen? I've listened to some of his stuff that I actually thought was really good. He kept me engaged and the message was really good. The LDS speakers are generally horrible as keeping people engaged.
Never, ever, have I heard anything in conference that was powerful and inspiring at the level of great historical speeches that we could reference though. No dream speeches, not even a tear down this wall. It's scripted and generally lacks genuine passion. People will get teary-eyed, but in a sappy way, not a let's go to war way. I think people who tend to be emotional in their approach to faith will probably like the talks a lot better than I do. Honestly, the talks almost feel negative to me at times, like they are aimed at helping people generally maintain faith in things that are depressing. I know you're depressed, life is miserable, but persevere, keep the faith.
Dog, the fact that there are people like you in the church recognizing this means that it can still evolve and get better. It might be that the inspiration will need to come from the bottom up, too.