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

Malcolm Collins
Elisa Grenfeld. And for her part of the conspiracy theory, what she was investigating was the question of why are there so many mormon influencers? It's not a conspiracy theory. Basically, it is 100% proven. From my perspective, there was a fact that she found that she thought was just an odd curiosity.

So silly, so silly that this is the case. I don't think this is an odd curiosity at all. I think that this explains everything. So I asked an AI algorithm, when did Mormon influencers start to rise in popularity disproportionately and perplexity? Said it was in 2001.

Remember I said that was when they first started discouraging the term Mormon. And then recently there's been a rebranding to further discourage the use of the term Mormon among church members. Would you like to know more? Hello. I am so excited to be here with you today.

Simone. This episode is going to be one of the malcolm goes into a conspiracy theory. Although I don't think that this one is a conspiracy theory. I think it's actually proven in the data at this point. And it's very interesting.

Now, I should note one, this is not going to be like an anti mormon episode of that's what you're here for. Anti Mormon content. Yes. Sorry, we're Mormon stans. So Mormon stands.

Even our theological beliefs, I've been told by Mormons, they align enough with Mormon theological beliefs that some Mormons would consider us more like inactive members or members not in good standing with the church, but that theologically they're pretty similar. So yeah, someday we'll get our temple recommends cards. It's okay, Malcolm. The day will come. Maybe.

I know, right? The day will come. The day will come. I guess we're not going to tithe, so. Probably not.

I would never do that. I just don't believe in the central church concept. And I suppose we're very against that. Yeah, but that aside. That aside, I believe I have discovered the solution to a question I was wondering a long time, and I will set up the question.

Okay. Yes. Throughout the nineties. So just a little background on the term Mormon. Mormon was originally used as a term, not necessarily derogatory, but just by people outside of the Mormon church to refer to people of the Mormon church.

Because it comes from the Book of Moroni. Right. That's where you get the word Mormon. Right? Like, it's not like an insulting term or anything like that.

Mormons re appropriated the word throughout, like, the eighties and the nineties, and it became a mainstream word within the church for members of the church, it started to become unfavorable for church members, and there was. Hold on, I'll pull up the exact wording here. In starting around 2001, the church encouraged the full use of its name and discouraged the use of Mormon church, although Mormon was still widely accepted among church members. So you've got to keep in mind these dates here because they're going to turn out to be important. So the first move against the term Mormon was a lighter push that came in 2001, but then there was a much heavier push in August of 2018 in which, and by the way, what the thesis of this video is going to be on is why did these pushes happen?

Because I'll explain why they don't make logical sense from the perspective that they're being laid out by the church as of August 2018. I'll just read basically what AI says about this and what it said. The church's explanation was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints has had a longstanding, so since 2001, preference for using its full name rather than nicknames like Mormon or LDS Church. But this policy was strongly emphasized and formalized in August 2018. Here's a summary of the key points.

Divine directive president Nelson stated that this change was revealed to him by God, emphasizing, quote, the importance of the name he has revealed for his church. New guidelines the church has issued a style guide that discourages the use of, quote unquote Mormon church, LDS Church and Mormonism. It encourages using the full name, quote, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints, or shortened versions like, quote unquote the church or quote the Church of Jesus Christ. End quote. So first of all, you've got to understand how insane this request is, just from an outsider's perspective, okay.

He wants you to not use it's, this new proclamation doesn't just ban the use of Mormon, it bans the use or discourages the use of lds. And so he's okay, you either have to use the church of Jesus Christ of latter day Saints, which, who's going to do that except for devout Mormons? Right. Right. Or shortened versions, the church or the Church of Jesus Christ.

And it's like, if I'm talking to a group of Christians and I'm like, I'm a member of the church or the Church of Jesus Christ, they're not going to know or assume I'm talking about mormonism. That's an insane version of a short version of the name. Right. Seems like a silly change in policy from an outsider's perspective. So let's go over their explanation for this change of policy.

Before I get to which I think the true explanation is for this change of policy, one emphasizing christian identity, the church leadership wants to highlight that they are a christian denomination centered on Jesus Christ. Using Mormon was seen as obscuring this core identity. But they're not even using lds. They're not using a shortened version that would immediately catch on within popular parlance. So it's clearly not going to recenter Jesus in the mind of the general public.

So I don't buy this explanation. Right. Okay. Yeah. Divine revelation.

In August 2018, Russell M. Nelson, the president of the church, announced that God had instructed him to emphasize the full name of the church and discontinue the nicknames. Like Mormon maybe, but I'm gonna present strong evidence that there, okay. People need to understand how Mormon think and relate to God. When a Mormon had I brought a Mormon, like a business decision or something like that, or if I brought the head of the church, like a decision, like a marketing decision, he would then always, especially if it was a big one, like the name of the church, pray to God to see what God had to say about it.

That is just the way Mormons relate to God. They always ask God for answers to their questions. So I'm not denying that the head of the church went and prayed to God and then felt comfortable with this change. It's just that from a Mormon perspective, that's not a particularly profound thing to have done. He does that every day with all sorts of little questions.

It's not what you may be thinking of. You're a secular person where, like, you're imagining like, God talking to him or something like that, or a vision coming in front of him and talking to him. Okay. I don't see that as a big reason to do this. Three, accurate representation.

Church leaders believe that using the full name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints more accurately represents their beliefs and focuses. So again, they're trying to. And I actually think this has hurt the church a lot. And we've done another episode on this, trying to normalize the church as a mainstream christian denomination, which I think removes a lot of what makes Mormonism more theologically interesting than some of the other churches. It's almost, to do so requires one to make one's harder religion, that is to say, religion that is stronger ultimately in the face of mainstream society, but also less convenient, a softer religion, which is more weak, more likely to be subject to high attrition, not as good at imparting fitness, et cetera.

Yeah. Okay. Four distinguishing from other groups, the church aims to differentiate itself from splinter groups, especially those practicing polygyny who might also be associated with the term Mormon splinter groups. I'm sorry, the mainstream church practice polygyny. I understand that the church today can prevent.

That's not true. Joseph Smith did this, Brigham Young did this. All of your early prophets did this. And now do I think that the church is trying to actually differentiate itself from those churches, those groups? No.

How do I know that they're not actually trying to differentiate themselves from those groups really heavily? Because this is what more ex Mormons think, right? They're like, oh, it's the church trying to distance themselves from their past. If they were doing that, they wouldn't have chosen a comically long name that nobody but devout Mormons are going to use. If they had done that, they would have chosen another short form name that non Mormons could use to distinguish Mormons that was obviously mutually exclusive to the mormon community.

Five, a rebranding effort. This change is part of a broader rebranding initiative, including updates to the website materials and even renaming of well known entities like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I do think it was a rebranding issue, but not for the reasons you may think. Audience, what do they call the choir now? Wait, Motap is no longer.

Simone Collins
What are they called? Well, google it if you want. What's the Mormon tabloid choir called now?

Malcolm Collins
Next. Historic context. While the nickname Mormon has been used since the 1830s, the church has periodically attempted to move away from it. The tablmacker choir at Temple Square. Why?

Simone Collins
Okay. It's one thing to rebrand. It's another thing of, sorry, we're no longer Mormons. We're the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. It's too much.

You guys have to. Oh, very frustrating. And then the final explanation that's given here is revelation based leadership. The LDS church believes in ongoing revelation. So do we.

Malcolm Collins
So again, this is why we're theologically pretty similar to Mormons. I believe. I have found the answer to this, and the dates line up really tightly. And the person who did most of the legwork in figuring out this conspiracy theory was a youtuber. I knew her from the female host of self on the shelf, but she also has her own channel where she released this particular conspiracy theory, Elisa Grenfell.

And for her, part of the conspiracy theory. It's not a conspiracy theory. Basically, it is 100% proven from my perspective, and I'll go over it. It's impossible that this isn't what's happening. So what she was investigating, she just didn't put these two particular dots together.

What she was investigating Washington. The question of why are there so many mormon influences? Right. And there have been many. By the way, what would be a use know my conspiracy theory answer?

But what would be your answer to the first question? Why do you think Mormons, before I came up with this theory, tried to make the change to having Mormons call it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. What other ex Mormons online have said is that it is to distance themselves from controversies associated with the church. I haven't had any particular. I just, I thought maybe it had to do with trying to refocus people's attention on Latter day Saints or Jesus Christ, instead of just being like, oh no, we're not this whole angel Moroni, whatever.

Simone Collins
The book of Mor. No, it's not that. It's Jesus Christ and saints and the latter day. I don't know. I really don't know.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah. And so she was trying to find out why Mormons are disproportionately present in the mommy blogging community, everything like that, because this is something they are disproportionately present. But I think that she also found out another mystery that she hadn't thought she was looking for. And the other history is why are ex Mormons so disproportionately large in the leadership of the atheist community and in the publicly viral voices in the atheist community? And her answer would actually explain why that's true as well.

So I historically thought this was a cultural thing. I believe the mainstream answer to this. Mormons are genetically isolated for a period and culturally quite distinct from other groups. When you interact with Mormons and ex Mormons, they feel quite different than other groups. They're generally more pleasant, they're better at social hierarchy fights, which seem to have been very important in their community history, and they are intensely interested in what the public thinks of them and appearing normative, which I think is what destroying the church right now.

I think that's always been the Mormon black pill, is the Mormon desire to fit in and be just another christian when I think there's strength so that they're not just other christians. But the explanations people have had historically for why Mormon influencers had more reach was Lds culture. So an emphasis on journaling and scrapbooking and memory keeping. This is not commanded from the church. It's just something that is just really common.

Likely, it's been argued innocent of their church practices of genealogy and stuff like that. I don't know. I think it's like a family focus and a self perception focus, which is really important to Mormons. So they are, because they're so interested in what the public thinks of them, they are more interesting or more likely to do things like blog or put their family online. They're also more likely to do this because of stay at home motherhood, which is more common in the LDS community.

And they might. I don't know. The other answers I'm reading here are just not strong. Those are the reasons that I had bought into. So now, first part of the conspiracy theory.

I'm gonna roll out. Do it. And this was all discovered by Elisa Grenfell. Gotta give her full credit for this lovely person. I'd love to have her on the show.

If she ever watches our stuff, we should ask her. Yeah, we should actually reach out. You can make a note. So the Mormon church as a corporate entity is the most wealthy church in the world at $236 billion. So that makes it as a corporation around the size of shell, the gas company, or Pepsi.

And it's bigger than companies like Disney or McDonald's. So you got to keep in mind that Mormons ties 10% of their income, which is more than other religions. And there's also more devout Mormons. It's a proportion of the Mormon population than there are of many other religions. And for a body of that size, they're going to be doing marketing.

So, like, how much marketing are they probably doing? If we compare them to a company like Pepsi, they'd be putting in 3 billion to 3.5 billion on ads a year. Historically, what the Mormon church had done. Built billion with a b. Yeah, there's.

I believe they're spending at least 3 billion on ads a year. Holy smokes. And it makes sense for them. Every member they get outside of their religious motivation is a 10% tithe payer. That's huge from a church perspective.

Historically, what they would do is they would sign contracts with people, but a number of those contracts ended up blowing up in their face because the people would then end up supporting gay rights and criticize the church for that, or end up becoming gay themselves, which, of course, if you are supporting someone who is theatrically gifted and has a large online following, of course they're more likely to turn out to be gay. That is just a thing, right. And then they're going to have an intrinsic beef with the church. So I can see why the church would want to move away from that model. So here you've got a mystery.

How is the church advertising these days? We don't know. The church doesn't release this data. Now we're going to talk a little about the world of online advertising, both Simone and I. Simone used to be the director of marketing of Hub pages, which was at a time the 45th highest traffic website in the United States and then bought by squidoo.

Simone Collins
And yes, hub pages acquired Squidoo, thank you very much. Let's just make that clear. So you were a quite an expert. I think we still have some people from your hub pages days who watch us even now. She was a meme in that community, and they created your image and memes and stuff.

Malcolm Collins
And you've been Internet famous for a very long time, but you helped a lot of them earn money. But people who don't know what Hub pages did, what they did as a company, is you could publish articles to them and make money. It was like a, we taught people. How to write content online that actually people were searching for. So instead of blogging about your life or writing poetry, for example, my top performing articles for some time were how to get rid of raccoons and how to kiss a boy, which was ironic because I just googled it myself.

Simone Collins
I kissed a boy. I kissed one boy. Before me, she has one boy who. She kissed one boy. I love that.

Malcolm Collins
That is so the early Internet, you. Said the trick to it was you would do some keyword research on Google. Basically, if there was some search that got a lot of volume, but the results were really bad. Writing an article on this platform meant you got a lot of search volume and then you get a lot of searches. And so that's how we taught people to make money.

Simone Collins
But yes, certainly we learned about online ads. One issue that we had on the website, and this will help to explain your point you're going to make, is that people would constantly try to write articles on subjects that had very high paying ads. So a lot of people, they wanted to talk about celebrity gossip and entertainment and write articles like that. My job as their director of marketing and managing their community was to try to dissuade people from doing that, because that did not generate revenue for them or for the company. Instead, we wanted them to write about much more productive segments that had higher paying ads.

So personal finance is an example, cars is an example. Sometimes things like pets was a good example. One of the most high profiting authors on the site at the time that I was working there actually wrote dog food reviews. And we're all pretty sure that she tried the dog food because she kept talking about the flavor profiles of it, of money. Even with dog food.

Malcolm Collins
Right? Yeah. There's this term in Silicon Valley, at least there was at the time of actually dog fooding, like testing your own product. And she, like, literally dog fooded, which is great. But anyway, so the point was, like the holy grail of online subjects at the time.

Simone Collins
Do you know what it was in terms of high ad revenue, in terms. Of make money online? No. Mesothemioma, the type of cancer that results from exposure to asbestos. And at the time, perhaps like, because law firms were trying to do class action suits against it for whatever reason, ads related to mesothemioma were incredibly high paying.

One click on that could sometimes be like over $100 or something. So you'd really want to write an article about it that people searched for because it was really high. People writing about electronics too, really successful people would park on the names of future iPhones so that when the search volume for those would actually go up, they'd have these very detailed, amazing position for SEO articles, just waiting for once that search volume was there and then all the ads would be for electronic stores selling the iPhone. And then they make money. So anyway, this would explain part of your theory.

Malcolm Collins
Okay, so CPM is cost per thousand views. Okay. And that's what you make off of an ad for a thousand views. And you can look this up. This is public.

So an example of an extremely high. CPM thing would be new bank or mesothemia or. Yeah, by car, new bank. You're going to get $25.30 per thousand views. Just pretty good.

Simone Collins
Yeah. And here on the screen, I have put the cpms for YouTube niches in 2023, make money online is $13.52. Digital marketing is $12.42. Finance and investing is $12.25. If you look at something like cars, which Simone said was on the higher end, that's 423.

Things have really changed since I. Yeah. Then you get down to lower end things like lifestyle. 347. Fashion and clothing.

Malcolm Collins
313. Entertainment. 275. Tech in gadgets, by the way, is really low now at only 239. That's so interesting.

I wonder what's changed when cooking's at 250. I think a lot of this also depends on how you're making money. So this is cpms, but most people who are making money on selling clothing, cooking, gadgets, et cetera, online are making money through Amazon affiliate links or something similar where you, like, literally get rewarded when someone buys after clicking through to your link that you actually put in there. So anyway, there are different ways to do this. But back to cpms.

If you're a Catholic, the term Catholic. So let's compare some other religious terms here. Right? The CPM is 358. Baptists, it's 126.

Jehovah's Witnesses, it's 464. So these are all about what I would expect, right? Mormon 1421. Wow. Mormon missionaries 31 81, 3181.

To give you an idea of how insane that is, gosh, Mormon missionaries is significantly higher than new bank. Okay. In terms of how much somebody's willing to pay to that. Literally the highest on the chart of profitable newtoo niches is make money online, which is 1352. The Mormon church, just plain Mormon church, is significantly above that.

And Mormon missionaries is more than double that. Incredible. The amount of money that you would have to pour in to ads in this space to get the numbers that high is billions, at least given the number of Mormon content creators. This means that a Mormon content creator is earning on average more per per video that they're putting out than somebody who is creating SEO optimized, perfect content to get people to sign up with banks or financial advisors. Isn't that crazy?

Hold on. So it hasn't gotten fully. So, so you might be like, oh, that might be a coincident. New York influencer 526. Los Angeles influencer 461.

Texas influencer 631. All about what you'd expect, right? Yeah. Utah Influencer 18 9018. These are insanely high amounts.

These are insanely high amounts. Somebody is pouring an astronomical amount of money into this. Then to your point about the amount that the Lds church is likely paying. On ads, why are Mormon influencers more seen than other influencers? There's basically no other answer to this.

Unless there's some other company out there pouring billions into Mormon targeted ads, which there isn't. There just isn't, obviously. So why would they be overcharging for ads? So there's a few things. One is if they are paying Mormons this way, like Mormon influencers this way, one, they don't have any negative pr risks because they're not paying them directly.

Simone Collins
Yeah, there's no one. Yeah, yeah. There is nothing. You don't have to invest in someone. Also, it saves a lot of time and money, generally speaking, because you're not reaching out to these people, coordinating with them emails.

It's not that intense. They're getting a 10% discount because these people 10% back. If these are tithing Mormons, though, and I have something to say about this later if you want, why don't you. Say it right now. So there are a lot of Mormon influencers.

But one thing that's discussed on the genre of Mormon influencers is why do so many Mormon influencers dress like thirst traps, like they're in basically thong bikinis? There's a lot of discussion, oh, maybe they're not endowed yet, or Mormons have varying policies on when it's appropriate to wear your garments, etcetera. Like maybe for swimming you don't, but they're still wearing like, extremely revealing bikinis and also taking a lot more revealing photos. I think that a lot of people, because there are these really high ads and it pays to be a mormon influencer, quote unquote Mormon. You say you're Mormon.

Is that a lot of actually not practicing Mormons, not tithing, not wearing garments, are just getting in the genre and basically saying they're Mormon, just like right now, a lot of people are saying that they're autistic because it's trendy to be autistic, but they're not actually autistic. And I think a lot of these people are not actually mormon. They're Mormon because it pays to be mormon, if you know what I mean. I just think that there are a lot of Mormon influencers who probably don't tie, clearly don't wear garments. The negative externalities of this ad campaign.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's really interesting ad campaign, before we go further, is one, it ends up elevating anti mormon influencers as well. So that's the reason why there's like. Ex Mormons, you say in the atheist. Community, they can't say don't show ads on ex Mormon.

Malcolm Collins
If it's Mormon content, it's Mormon content. That is, it's stuffed with Mormon keywords and people who look for Mormon keywords are watching it. So, yeah, that's going to artificially elevate ex Mormons. It's also keep in mind the rules that these people are playing with are the same. The church isn't able to disproportionately elevate the more chaste Mormons.

And guys being guys, they're going to click on the thirstier girls. Yeah, that's, yeah, the thirst trap Mormons, they're not really mormon. Mormons are going to be the ones that get more views because they are hotter. Or whatever her name is for her side project didn't seem to realize, she thought that the way that this was elevating Mormon content, which is definitely a way, is that it was providing them with more money to do this, which made this a more viable side income for Mormon moms, which made it more likely that they would end up creating this type of content, or young Mormon women. I don't think that is the key thing.

I think the key thing that she didn't seem to realize is that whether it's Instagram or YouTube or anything like that, these platforms are in the business of making money. They will disproportionately show people content with a higher CPM than content with a lower CPM. It literally boosts the term Mormon in the algorithm itself to have a higher cpm on that term. Right. Just like when I worked at hub pages, we didn't just encourage people to not write about entertainment and instead write about personal finance because we made money too.

Simone Collins
When they made money, we needed them to do that. Yeah. So you disproportionately showed content to users on higher paid topics. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins
So one, no, this isn't about paying the families necessarily. This is about influencing the algo, which it is doing. So one additional piece of information that Zelf on the shelf didn't seem to be aware of. But now we're going to talk about my part of the conspiracy theory, because there was a fact that she found that she thought was just an odd curiosity, so silly, so silly that this is the case. I don't think this is an odd curiosity at all.

I think that this explains everything. So I asked an AI algorithm, when did Mormon influencers start to rise in popularity disproportionately? And perplexity said it was in 2001. Remember I said that was when they first started discouraging the term Mormon. And then recently there's been a rebranding to further discourage the use of the term Mormon among church members.

She found another interesting little thing here. Mormon church as a search term priced at 1421 Mormon missionaries as a search term priced at 3181 lds, 225 latter day Saint, 283. No one is buying ads on those terms. What? Huh?

You may be asking, why would the church have done this? Why would the church, if it is the church that's bidding up these terms, not bid up the terms that only Mormons would use? And that's your answer right there. The reason they made this name change is you have a problem if you're using this ad campaign. Who searches the term Mormon?

Most Mormons. Mormons search the term Mormon. Most a Mormon is more likely than any other person online to be asking, where is my nearest local Mormon temple? They're the most likely people in Google to be looking for quote unquote Mormon content clicks from Mormons are wasted money for the Lds church. Okay.

Simone Collins
Yeah. You don't want to convert someone who you've already converted. You don't want to be paying for ads for somebody who, you don't want. To be that idiot. Amazon.com comma, that advertising advertises a refrigerator to you the moment after you buy a refrigerator.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah, we actually pitched that to Amazon. A fun story about how inefficient Amazon is. So at one point we were interviewing in Amazon, this was a while ago. Amazon has fixed this problem since then. But Amazon used to have this problem where they would pitch you products after you had bought a very expensive product that obviously you're only going to buy once in a long period of time.

Like a refrigerator is a great example of this. It would constantly be in your recommended and I suggested that they have a low income employees. I was like interviewing, I was like, I have this idea for, I wanted to start for you guys, for low wage workers and like the third world to mark all products as single time. Purchases or multi, like they have mturk, they have the resources. Yeah.

I was like, you guys could use mTurk do this and it would dramatically like, it would be billions of dollars a year different for Amazon. This one change to their algorithm and it would be very easy for me to do the program and execute it. I was like, okay, so if I did this or to get this program, how do I pitch that to my higher ups? And they're like, you could write a pitch to do that, but you wouldn't necessarily get on the team that was doing it even if it was accepted. And I was like, and I was like at their financial compensation, if they accept it and they're like, not really.

I was like, wow, you are a terribly run company. That is how you keep green lighting these garbage woke shows because you are the bureaucracy of bureaucracies and Amazon higher ups. If you want me to come in and clean things out, I can and guarantee you you will be making at least 13% more the next year. But anyway, let's go back in here because like little things like that, like how did they not think of that? And why do they not have a system that would allow a smart person to come in and implement that when it was so law cost to implement?

But anyway, back to the topic at hand here. The problem that you have if you're one of these organizations is that people who are already bought in, who are already tithing are clicking these search terms more than any other group. So you're just wasting tons of money. What's the best way to get around that? You change the church's name among the devout to something that people outside of the devout circles will never, ever use, like Jesus Christ Church of Latter day Saints.

They didn't plan on the general public to stop using the term Mormon. They were just trying to get the devout Mormons to stop using the term Mormon. That is why the name change happened. This isn't like a bad thing from a theological perspective. Even if 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 Mormon. Where. Where am I? Where are we? What's happening?

Held Director
Hello, newcomers, and welcome. I am the hell director. And for those of you who were a little confused, you are dead and this is hell. So abandon all hope and yadda, yadda, yadda. Hey, wait a minute.

I shouldn't. I was a totally strict and devout Protestant. I thought we went to heaven. Yes, well, I'm afraid you were wrong. I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness.

You picked the wrong religion as well. I'm afraid it was the Mormons. Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer. But, yeah, of course. Of course it's the right thing to do.

Malcolm Collins
It's the efficacious way to reach people and to not waste your followers tithing money, which is obviously a sinful thing to do. Nothing about this is below board. Exactly. It's just that they were doing this program secretly and that I find absolutely fascinating. I also think there was a secondary reason behind the rebrand to the impossible name that no one's ever going to do, which is this was the height of victim culture.

And I think the church was trying to force those who criticized it to call it a term they categorized as a slur so that they could say that these individuals shouldn't be taken seriously as critics because they were using a term that was derogatory about the church itself. Interesting. Now, do you have any thoughts, Simone? I will say part of this seems quite wasteful, especially because so many not. Actually, I would say, best role model Mormon influencers are becoming Mormon influencers.

Simone Collins
However, I've also noticed that some very not mormon type people follow and secretly love following Mormon influencers online now. So the church has done a pretty good job at raising its profile in mainstream media and exposing a lot of people to the mormon lifestyle and getting them to see it and think, mormons. Oh, whatever. Right, they hate gays. But then their lives are so nice.

They look so happy. They're playing the game as well as they can. Given hands are tied. Was this geriatocracy ruling the church? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins
The problem that the modern culture is just not conducive to Mormonism. If you look at even like a girl defined husband deconstructing or deconverting from the church, and she is likely one of them, it's likely on a pathway to deconvert. Like that's as Mormon a poster child as you have for our generation. But I think that sadly, we're seeing a lot of them deconvert. And I a comment on our discord and people should check out the discord.

It is so interesting. As interesting as the episodes. I will try to remember to include a link, but I actually thought that this was the user on the discord was called cap. I don't know, cattle pa three. I can't pronounce this, but three people might be wondering why three on the discord, everybody lists their child count at the end of their name, which I absolutely love.

Simone Collins
Wonderful props for three. Weird. Yeah. Props for three. Yeah, well done.

Malcolm Collins
And they said, and this comes from a perspective like us, like, we're not Mormons. We can't quite bite the bullet on the centralized church ourselves, and some of the theological teachings and the alcohol prohibition. It reminds me of when the story of the, it was the head of the, I believe, Russian, and they brought various preachers to come and try to convince them to convert to their religion. And the Muslim said, you can't drink alcohol. And they're like, oh, okay, go away, I'm done.

I don't need to listen to anything else. We're not gonna do that one anyway. So this person 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 a number of sects that simply cannot survive the Internet information age.

They relied on concealing inconsistencies and obvious fabrications in their doctrine that the Internet now lays bare in a way that they're unable to counter. There is a wave of young Mormons going online and being forced to confront the reality that their religion is so obviously fabricated and is a collection of embarrassingly shamelessly lifted masonic rituals, and they're falling away en masse. LDS has a maximum one more generation's lifespan worth of relevance, in my opinion, if that, barring some kind of apocalyptic world change, where the Internet disappears, it's happening to my own childhood religion, 7th day Adventism and so this is a person from a very hard culture as well. Yeah, just go online and find out uncomfortable facts about Ellen G. White.

That is not a Mormon, by the way. That's from his church and the church foundation and doctrine that you used to never encounter in an entire lifetime of conversation, communion, church education, etcetera. The fallout is brutal and devastating. This could be an interesting podcast topic for Malcolm in the way belief systems medically evolved, but didn't have selective pressures to survive the information age and are currently smashing into the squared circle, or I think he means a cube into a square circle. And I think that is really what's happening within Mormonism now.

It's a culture that was a very well evolved culture. It was a very emotionally healthy culture. When I look at Mormons, they seem to be just delightful people, even ex Mormons, that I say, if you grow up in a religion, you get most of the benefits of that religion. Even if you deconvert, your kids are the ones they're really going to suffer. Four year deconversion.

But Mormonism, as it is often presented to practitioners and outsiders, that is, I call it South Park Mormonism, which is a pretty good example of what your average Mormon Normie thinks is not a compelling religion in the information age. Just too many inconsistencies. Joseph Smith did too many horrible things and Mormons are still required to uplift these individuals. How does the mormon church get around it? I think they can, in fact, that our belief system is considered dominantly mormon by many people.

You need to accept a few things. You need to go with the David defense. David, sorry, what I mean is David of David and Goliath. David of David and Bathsheba was a complete douche canoe, but he was still favored by God. You can go to the David and Bathsheba story for a story of his supreme douchiness.

Being a horrible dog poop human being doesn't mean that you aren't a prophet of God. The problem is, is Mormons won't say that about Joseph Smith, which I think is a kind of pill they need to bite in order to get through the information age. Just be like, hey, King David, right? That gets you through that. Second is they need to embrace their weirdness.

Stop trying to be a normal christian church. That's what's interesting about them. That's what protects them. The more they try to be normal christians, the more they lose what makes Mormonism special and different, which I think is just a huge strategic problem for them. And the final difference is they need to get much more comfortable with the.

Because when I talk to Mormons who are, like, very theologically compelling, they are the extreme Mormon nerds. Right? Yeah. Orson Pratt, guys. All right.

Like, the people who love, love, love church history and studying it and the theology, because actual Mormon theology is pretty sophisticated and interesting. The problem is, and actually, this is the broader problem for Mormonism, is Mormonism. If you're talking about, like, the intelligence level of the kings within Mormonism, you know how you develop society into, like, knights and knights. Yeah. Like the consequentialists of people who really study everything, who need to make the.

Who need to be very high iq, high personal agency. Mormonism doesn't shed the high iq kings, but the deontological form of Mormonism, which is for the lower iq people, it is very bad at the information age, so long as it presents itself as a form of mainstream christianity. It's not a form of mainstream christianity, and it doesn't provide good answers to these. So I think that elevating what I call almost like the secret Mormon theology, the Mormon theology that, like, all the church nerds know to being the mainstream theology that's taught at the pulpit, that is how Mormonism gets through this. It'll deal with a main, huge flow out when it starts doing this, when it starts embracing all the weird stuff that's actually theologically part of Mormonism, but it will keep those members, and those members will be higher fertility and they will be higher fastidiousness.

But it's very. I don't know if Mormonism could do this because it's so against the Mormon spirit. I would say to say we are weird and we are proud of that when it is their biggest strength. I don't know if you had any final thoughts here on this particular post, but I thought it was really powerful for me. Yeah, that is powerful.

Simone Collins
The discord's so freaking good, right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. I wish it could never happen because a big part of the Mormon religion is that it makes.

I don't know how it achieved this, but it makes weirdness feel so normative that it almost feels more normal than mainstream culture, if that makes sense. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It feels they've made it. They've given it this Disney aesthetic, this main Street USA aesthetic, even though it's pretty freaking weird when you actually look at it or think about it. And I think it's very impressive that the church has done that, but that means that they obviously cannot take certain stances that would give it some strength, especially in these times.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And by the way, if the church admits, like, why, you shouldn't be over elevating Joseph Smith. If people are like, how can the church survive that? Just focus on Brigham Young.

Brigham Young does some bad stuff, but generally he was an awesome guy. Like Brigham Young. I consider as an outsider to be the real founder of modern Mormonism. And I just say Joseph Smith was God's tool to get Brigham Young, the information and the community to create Mormonism. I think if they refocus, and I think this works very well with the iterative prophecy idea of Mormonism, that Joseph Smith is not the real founder of Mormonism.

He's just another temple head. He helped get it there. Yeah. So in terms of prophets, we're like, we ignore what they say. Like one of the prophets said in the Mormon community, if evolution is right, Mormonism is wrong.

And like, obviously, most Mormons today don't buy into what he said, but it's very easy. Mormonism has within it to discount when particular prophets make mistakes or do bad things. That's not a key to the tradition. As I said, the abrahamic tradition has within its tool set. The David story makes it very easy to do this.

I just refocused attention on Brigham Young and the community of intellectuals of the Brigham Young period. So you're not just focused on Brigham Young like one uncorruptible person, but it's more like a community of geniuses, very much like the american founding story. I think that would play out really well for mormonism. And then they can get their Orson Pratt in there and like a number of other people, and they get this story that even more aligns with the american story, which is to say Joseph Smith is like a lower importance character. And who really matters is this community of intellectuals in the early day of the church.

Simone Collins
Totally. This is fun. Thanks for walking me through this. I think you've built upon the original conspiracy theory quite well. And.

And I think you're right. And I love it. I'm never going to look at a Mormon influencer the same way again. Love you today, Simone. Love you, too.

We need to order. Twist it into a little thing. A little?

Yeah. Oh, my God, you are so good. I don't know what to say. It's cuter that way. Everyone knows and doopity do is a technical term.

Just so you know. Just so you know.

Malcolm Collins
Okay, so this episode is going to be very interesting. I will get started here. This is one where that a lot of research went into. And I should note. Sorry, I'll just restart on this.

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

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Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Background on the Term "Mormon"

2: The Rebranding Push

3: Financial and Social Implications

4: External and Internal Reactions

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

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Transcript