Alyssa Grenfell
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So different niches, different types of content on the internet make different amounts of money. You can see here off to the side that depending on the type of content you make, you're gonna make different amounts of money. For example, anything to do with money and finance makes a lot more money than a video about cooking.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The reason for this is that the money that you make off your content is driven by how much advertisers are willing to pay for it. Banks, for example, have a lot of money, and so they can drive a ton of money into advertising. So if you made Content a video about the best bank accounts to open, you could get paid approximately $12.25 for each 1,000 views on that video.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
When Google or another ad platform goes to put ads on top of that content, they will recognize it as a piece of content that advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money for. So the length of the video could be the same, the person in the video could be the same, but depending on the content, you're getting paid a wildly different amount of money for the type of content you're posting.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
A major way that Google and other advertisers figures out where to put ads is through something called keywords. So these keywords will be something like credit card or open bank account that signal to the algorithm, to the ad algorithm, that you've made content that aligns with what advertisers are looking for.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You can see here that the keyword new bank costs $25.30. That's how much advertisers are willing to pay for this keyword. So compare that to Catholic, that's a huge difference.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So if I'm making my content about finance, I'm going to see a lot more ad revenue coming my way because there are lots of advertisers who are willing to pay Google to try to capture your eye to open a new bank account with them. The church definitely does advertising online, and if I go to YouTube and type in Mormon missionary, I can see that there's an ad at the top.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This is an ad that the church paid to put there. So Mormon missionary, there's an ad in my YouTube trying to get me to meet with Mormon missionaries. So we already looked at the term Catholic. The cost per click, the ad revenue behind Catholic is $3.58. If you look at the term Baptist, the cost per click is $1.26. I tried looking up a religion that's a little closer to Mormonism.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Jehovah's Witness is an American religion. If you want to advertise using the key term Jehovah's Witness, it's going to cost you $4.64. The cost per click for the term Mormon is $24.71. And if you recall, the Mormon church has more money than Wells Fargo.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And the reason that that number is so high, I believe, is because there is a multi-billion dollar organization that is funneling money into ad spend around the term Mormon.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Hi, my name is Alyssa Grenfell, and I am an ex-Mormon content creator and author. I was very Mormon growing up. I grew up in a very devout home, and then I left the church when I was about 23 after serving a Mormon mission and getting married in a Mormon temple and doing all the Mormon things.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And now I make content around what, you know, the history of the churches, current church teachings, the doctrine, personal experiences. And that is kind of the focus of what I put on the Internet.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Some of my earliest memories really are just discussing my wedding dress, discussing my husband, writing letters to my future husband, talking about purity. learning homemaking skills. I'm eight years old, ironing a shirt, talking about taking care of my future family. And it's, I think, past just the idea that everyone probably should learn how to take care of a home or cook a meal.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But it was very much posed as, this is your divine role from God. And even there's something called a patriarchal blessing, which is kind of
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I would like call it Mormon fortune telling a little bit where a very important man within the church lays his hands on your head and basically is supposed to be speaking as if he's speaking from God and kind of telling you what's going to happen in your future.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Much of my patriarchal blessing was about how I was going to be a mother in Zion and how I was going to, like, it was all just about my future children, basically, and my role as a wife and mother and And to think that a man is saying basically the most important things about your future and it's all encompassed around motherhood and wifehood.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And then to read, you know, now I read my husband's patriarchal blessing and a lot of men's patriarchal blessings is not about their children, their future children. And so if you compare what women are taught, if you compare that with what men are taught, it's also very different. So you could, you know, I think I might have been able to like stomach it if...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The boys were also learning how to take a girl on a date or how to also watch children or change a diaper. But the boys were often doing that, like playing basketball or doing, you know, water rafting or doing Boy Scouts, learning to tie knots, you know, just more traditional boyhood kind of things.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I think there was the actual kind of training around motherhood and family, but then there was the religious training element of gender roles as divinely appointed upon you.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I think it's really hard because it's very difficult to kind of see outside of yourself and to question the systems you're raised in and embroiled in, especially systems that you're taught as the most moral way to live. I feel like
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
even after leaving, I've had a lot of moments where I have to kind of question if my desire to pursue a certain path is coming from the real, quote, real me versus if it's coming from the conditioning I received as a young person. And I think that in following some of those paths, I have often found that I'm still kind of living in this reactionary state where instead of looking toward
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
what God wants me to do, I'm often kind of living in a way that is reacting to, I just want to do the opposite of Mormonism, even though that's still kind of living my life according to Mormonism. It's just now I'm living the opposite way instead of kind of somewhere in the middle of this, like, what I really want kind of idea that people have.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Yeah, I think initially it was very difficult and even kind of admitting it to myself was really difficult. Like you mentioned earlier, I had all of these experiences kind of culminate where, for example, I had a really strong what I felt like was an answer from God that I was going to go on my Mormon mission to Italy.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I wrote it in my journal and I wrote, you know, I know I'll go to Italy as sure as I know God lives. And it felt like a little testimony, my claim to faith on the topic. And when I opened my mission call, it was to Denver, Colorado, not Italy. And I still served a full Mormon mission. I still went to Denver, Colorado. I still was in the church for years after that.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But I think that is kind of the easiest to encapsulate example of these moments that kind of hit me over and over again where I would...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
have these really strong feelings, major revelations that I was using to kind of walk through life, only to realize that they were either wrong or that if I had made my own decisions about my own life without consulting God, I probably would have chosen better than, quote, God was choosing for me. So as I kind of came to that realization over years and years later,
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
my first year teaching, my dad had given me a blessing that I was meant to be a teacher and that, of course, I'm going to trust this blessing above all else. I didn't pursue any other career paths. And then my first year as a teacher, I realized I absolutely hated it and was not cut out for it. And it was giving me a lot of mental health issues.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
About halfway through the school year, broke to my husband, hey, I think I might not believe in this anymore. After a lot of conversations, we both decided that we wanted to leave together after reading a lot of church history for him, after lots of conversations, like I said. So it was really helpful.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
One of my favorite pictures of our whole marriage is us holding our coffee cups for the first time. For most people, such a simple, straightforward thing is like drinking your morning cup of coffee. This is our first ever cup of coffee. I think I was about 24 at that point. didn't grow horns, didn't fall beneath the floor. Everything proceeded as normal. It was very underwhelming.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Most sins after you leave the church, most sins as an ex-Mormon, you're like, this is pretty underwhelming. I also, one of my favorite memories is the first time I went to after
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
after work drinks with my co-workers they're kind of everybody's getting to know each other and they're like why did you come to New York and I start talking about Utah and Mormonism and leaving the church and garments the religious underwear the temple endowment the prayer circle the ceremony the oaths and the handshakes and I just remember it was a probably a group of 15 people but as I'm just talking more and more people stop their conversations and just lean in to be like wait are you talking about leaving the cult right now
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And just like I could it was kind of affirming to me to have. And I, you know, I always have those experiences talking to people. They don't know much about Mormons because you can tell from the look on their face that you're not the crazy one for thinking you were really like raised in a very crazy religion.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Whereas, you know, if you if you're kind of talking to people in Utah, maybe they'll kind of act like, oh, this is all very normal. You know, of course. Mormons wear garments, but to someone who's never interfaced with the religion, it is probably 10 to 20 times stranger and odder than people who are familiar with it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So that kind of surprise on people's faces has been healing for me in some ways because it helps me feel like I'm not the sinner. I'm not the crazy one. It was what I was raised in. And that normalcy is not what... I experienced as a kid learning to iron shirts as an eight-year-old and writing letters to my husband about how I was saving myself for him. So yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I think that one of my first Mormon memories is that there's a YouTuber who would go around and film the temple ceremonies. I remember probably when I was like late middle school, early high school, coming across the thumbnail of, you know, secrets inside a Mormon temple. Oh, okay. I remember thinking to myself, I didn't click on it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I remember I had friends at school who would say, you can see what happens in the temple if you go on YouTube. And I remember, that's probably what they're talking about. It's right there. I didn't click on it. And as a Mormon kid, you very much learned the term anti-Mormon literature. that that's a whole thing you're warned against, that you shouldn't look at anti-Mormon literature.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
They're just trying to destroy your testimony. And so I remember just thinking to myself, oh, this is anti-Mormon content and I shouldn't watch it. And so when I was still in high school, I think if I came across anything disfavorable about the church, I immediately just... turned my brain off and thought, you know, this is Satan. They told me about this.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so because they told me about this, that's how I know that they are kind of foreseeing or foretelling the future because they're warning me of this thing that I shouldn't look at.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
That's a good question. And I mean, I feel like my whole childhood was kind of trad wife content. I feel like to some extent, I think that it's also a question of platform because I feel like Instagram is meant for curation. And TikTok is kind of meant to question curation and to criticize curation. So I think that
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
a lot of trad wife content kind of came up in the Instagram age, which is beautiful children, beautiful dresses, lovely sourdough. And it's very curated. It's often photos instead of videos. So it's harder to pick apart a curated photo instead of A video where there's like a voice in the background or, you know, you can pause the screenshot and say, what's the picture on their wall?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So I think that the kind of transition away from Instagram into TikTok is also what kind of opened my mind more to...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The Tradwife movement in specificity, I guess, because prior to that, I just see, you know, beautiful kind of like a lot of people say that the Mormon Tradwife movement came from Mormon mommy bloggers, which were super prevalent in the early 2000s, which a lot of recipe making and DIY stuff. And so it's kind of like this.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
movement kind of rematerialized onto Instagram after they already had their original audience on the blogging side of things. I think where it kind of hit its head is when we turn more to a TikTok type of investigation of things where people are no longer looking for perfection or they're not looking to follow people that their posts just feel like a Pinterest board. I think Mormonism is very...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
pinteresty uh mormons love pinterest too in my in my experience so i think that that is what has kind of kicked back against trad wives is that for a long time i think people just unquestioningly consumed the beautiful content and when there's a voiceover to a photo and the photo is not just it's a pretty photo of kids and some bread now it's
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I made this for my husband or I made this for my family. And there's more of a narrative. The new video form of the Tradwife content is narrative. And so it is developing much more of an ideology, in my opinion, behind the curated video, the pictures that we once had. And I think, too, Mormons are taught to be so missionary-minded that...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
If someone is Mormon, they've probably talked about it at some point. I mean, the Mormon church literally expressly says you should be talking about being Mormon online. You're told that explicitly.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so that also is an element of I think Mormon influencers are louder about their religion than a lot of influencers because they are acting on that kind of command from the prophet to speak loudly and speak often about their religion.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Yeah, in my opinion, the prevalence of people who are influencers mentioning Mormonism is greatest in their early stages. When they're first getting an audience, when they're first kind of finding their voice, I think once people reach like a critical mass of no longer just having Mormon followers, they have a lot of just general interest in their platforms. It's almost like a graph where
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
the bigger they get, the less they mention Mormonism. Because I think they realize that it's unpopular to a general audience, but it's very popular with an audience that you're growing early on. So I think that, you know, for example, I know Ballerina Farm used to have a blog specifically about Mormonism.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But if you Google, is so-and-so Mormon, you can always find an answer because they talked about it a lot early on. And there's always like an early interview. Same with Brooklyn Bailey. They're not really tradwifes. stuff anymore, but they just have a big YouTube channel. And they talked quite a bit about Mormonism early on, and now it essentially never appears. I think one of them has left.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I'm not sure. Initially, to grow their audience, they're talking a lot about Mormonism because Mormons will follow you because they know you're Mormon.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And then after they get big, they see it as maybe a bit more of a risk or maybe that because they have more money and they're like a little bit less beholden to their community, maybe they're less likely to talk about it because they kind of can take on their own form of what they want to be talking about on the Internet.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So many Christians, I think if they see Mormon content and don't know it's Mormon content or just like, you know, even trad wife content obviously appeals to kind of a more far right ideology. And I think all of those people, if they come across, you know, trad wife content in general, they'll upvote it or like it or interact with it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The hard thing for Mormons is that a lot of people just, especially like evangelical Christians, do not really like Mormons. And especially they don't like that they're trying to kind of co-op, then they would say the Christian movement or whatever and say they're Christians.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
lot of tension between are they christians aren't they christians so i think that that's another difficulty that they kind of have to interface with is that their content by its nature of being kind of traditionally minded appeals to this audience of of a more like conservative republican audience but if they're too overt about their specific religion i think you know if if you're viewing it which i do a little bit more as kind of like a brand that they're selling versus like their quote true real life or what
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. You know, if they're just kind of waking up each morning, rolling out of bed, posting their pictures and not really wondering about audience retention or who sees what when and how can I reach the broadest number of people. So it's hard to get into the mind of these people, really.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Yeah, every interview I've ever spoken to is like, why are there so many Mormon influencers? And I think they often ask it almost like in this secret, like, can you tell me the answer? Like, like I have this secret that I'm keeping. And if I could just explain it like, like then that would explain the phenomenon.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I think it's, you know, I think something like women journal and there was the mommy bloggers and blogging is like journaling. And then once they're blogging, then they're on Instagram and it feels easy to understand, but I agree. Like it feels kind of thin because it's,
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Lots of people journal, and it doesn't mean that you're going to be famous one day just because you were journaling a lot when you were a little kid. But when I was posting my videos, especially initially, I'm still learning YouTube. I think my first YouTube video was like 10 months ago or something. I'm still under one year of learning this whole platform and stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But I would have people say, so funny, I just got an ad for the Mormon church while I was watching this video. And I... thinking, it's so funny that they are advertising on my content, which obviously, if you understand the back end, the Mormon church purchases ad space through Google, Google AdSense, and then Google AdSense looks for content that is relevant to put the ad on top of.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So it's not like the Mormon church is saying, we like Alyssa Grenfell. Definitely not saying that. But the algorithm is basically looking for people saying Mormon, Mormon, Mormon, or Utah or whatever, and then putting their ad space, their ad spend behind that content. And I also kind of in tandem with that was on the YouTube subreddit and looking up stuff about YouTube and realizing that my
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
CPM and my RPM, which is kind of how much you make off of your videos was way higher than basically almost anyone else was quoting that like my average kind of pay per view or pay per click or whatever was much higher than just kind of your average channel. I used to do some SEO for a previous employer.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I went and looked at the ad spend estimated behind different keywords because people don't realize that the ad spend behind something like crafting is not the same as the ad spend behind something like open a new credit card. Because it's basically the ad spend is proportionate to how much the advertiser is willing to spend to get the eyes of the viewer.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So I realized basically when I went and looked at the ad spend behind some of these terms that the ad spend was as high as very expensive advertising terms. So like to open a new credit card was $30 per click. and something like crafting or maybe like the sourdough bread is like $2. It's very low. So when I looked at Mormon terms, like Mormon missionary was $30 and Utah influencer was $19.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Mormon was $25. And these are ad spends that are phenomenally high, especially when compared even with another religion. Catholicism or Catholic is $2. Judaism or Jew is maybe $4.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Yeah. And it felt like people don't realize that the Mormon church is the richest church on the planet. It's similar to the net worth of Disney. Yeah. Which I also had no idea. The value of Disney, I think it's potentially even worth more than Disney. So it felt like there has to be some connection between the high ad spend on these keywords. I'm seeing it literally in my content.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I'm seeing that I'm making more off of my videos than the average YouTuber. And then extending that to Utah influencers, which is that when they're making content, they're making more money.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And basically realizing that because there's more money to be had out in Utah, that it can just support a far larger number of creators, especially in that phase of getting off the ground, right when they're talking about Mormonism the most, right when they're kind of like, let me try influencing for a bit, right?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You know, before they get the brand sponsorship, before they get all the clicks for the commissions on Amazon, whatever. Like, I think I just... basically took what was happening to me and thought, what's happening to me is happening to all these Utah Mormon influencers. They're being paid the same amount.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Like if a guy is making finance content about investing in the S&P and they're making videos about sourdough, those people are making the same amount of money, which is highly irregular. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And cutting anyone else, you know. And I think that maybe to them it's worth it. I mean, I haven't seen those comments of, I just got an ad for the Mormon church. I'm still getting those comments. So I don't know, like, I don't think I outed them to the point that they're changing their strategy or anything. But it is kind of funny to realize that they are kind of engineering their own crisis and
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
By making it so that it's profitable enough to be a YouTuber talking about Mormonism, that they are kind of supporting the YouTuber's little, you know, rent payment or whatever. Right. So the YouTuber can keep going and keep making the negative videos. And that's a very funny little cycle, considering I once paid 10% of my income to the church, and now I'm slowly making it back. Right.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The most fascinating was that the term, the search term, Utah influencer, I think. Utah influencer made about $19 per click. So if you compare that with New York City influencer, San Francisco influencer, places where you assume that's the influencer capital of the world, because that's especially of the US, those are all under $5.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So like I said, it's almost three times... They're making three times as much. So a woman... A woman with her kids in New York, a woman with her kids in LA, and a woman with her kids in Lehigh, Utah. The woman in Lehigh, Utah will probably make three times as much the ad revenue. With a lower cost of living, right? And lower cost of living. And probably her husband already has a job.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
because he's been kind of trained to be the breadwinner just like she's been trained to be the housewife as far as the church benefiting from it i think i think it definitely does i think i've had people tell me through comments or i've had some emails of people saying that ballerina farm just her content made them google you know mormons looking started looking to the church considering getting a visit from the missionaries consider getting a book of mormon and
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's kind of like a very soft advertisement, in my opinion, where it's not someone coming on and saying, I'd like to talk to you about why you should join the church. But when you see a lifestyle presented that's very alluring and very beautiful, and you think to yourself, what is this about this person that made this lifestyle possible?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
and you realize they're part of the church, I think it kind of gives a higher level of influence to potentially someone who's curious and wondering what they can do to kind of live that life that they're seeing fantasized.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The church had a ton of success from Donnie and Marie Osmond. Because they're Mormon, they're raised Mormon, still Mormon to this day. And they were phenomenal brand ambassadors for the church throughout their kind of heyday. Gladys Knight is also Mormon, and she did a concert at our ward in Kentucky at our big congregation. She's another example of someone who became a bit of a brand ambassador.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
She's doing concerts. I think pre-internet and before gay issues, the awareness around LGBTQ issues, those people did really well. Typically, it seems like they mostly stayed in the church. The church had a lot of success with these famous people being brand ambassadors for them. Whereas now, they've had it, I think, in more recent years, backfire more often than they've had it work.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Like with David Archuleta. So David Archuleta was very well known within the church. He also gave concerts for the church. He served a Mormon mission. You can find a picture of him in the Mormon Chabernacle Choir where they did a slow zoom on him. And he was another poster child and another famous person. And He's the sweetest, you know, if you've ever heard him in interviews, he's so sweet.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
He's like, he just has the kindest presence. And so I think he was kind of the perfect example of a great Mormon and a great ambassador. And then in like a few years ago, he came out as gay. He also kind of simultaneously came out as leaving the church. And now has written a song about, you know, I'd rather go to hell than not love the people who I love.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And in many ways has kind of been a reverse of all of the kind of quote good he would have done for the image of the Mormon church. Now he's just basically a living, breathing example of the church's bigotry towards gay people.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
because the church really tried to up their proximity to his image from a PR perspective, really hurt them now that they are no longer able to, you know, now they've been damaged by, by his coming out against them and saying, Hey, this church is homophobic. So I think that that's another reason they don't want to maybe formally say
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
approach someone like A Ballerina Farm or any of these Tradwife creators because they know it will backfire against them, but they also know that these women are making the church look very good and very beautiful and traditional and feminine.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so I think this advertising revenue is kind of a way for them to support the blogosphere of the early 2000s through the Instagrammers and YouTubers of today by giving them ad revenue.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You know, when you're a YouTuber... Or when you get ad revenue from any social media platform, it just tells you the amount and it tells you basically your cost per view. And that's it. It just says advertisers were willing to pay. And it's like a black box. They're not telling you like, this percentage came from this organization, this percentage came from this organization.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so it's like a black box in that you don't even know. So the women can just make their content and look up in the morning and be like, look, babe, look at this money I made. I'll make more content tomorrow. I'm going to tell my friends. They won't necessarily see through, kind of read the tea leaves of, why am I making this much?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I don't know if any of them are doing that, and maybe they are, and I'm just kind of one of the first to have talked about it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And it's so funny because when you say it like that, it sounds so kind of conspiratorial. You know, the Mormons, they're controlling the internet. But it is funny because I think to some extent it's True. I mean, not that they are literally holding the mouse and clicking the clicks, but in that they are exercising, I think, a pretty broad ad spend.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The way that they are actively petitioning members to go on and share the gospel, share talks, share resources about the church. And so I think that they do have a fairly coordinated PR effort for the internet specifically. Even one thing I didn't mention in that video is they have... all these people who are hired to do SEO.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And if you Google something like Bible, the Mormon Church has like their free Bible is one of the first organic things you see on Google is Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Same with, I think, Jesus Christ. Same with New Testament. You know, all of these terms that are kind of general Christian terms. The Mormon Church has one of the top organic rankings online.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
for those searches, which is very purposeful and specific, you know, in that their attempt to kind of say, hey, if someone wants a Bible, we want to be the ones giving it to them. So I think that they do, you know, it's not just conspiratorial. They have what I view to be like a very specific targeted plan for how to get people on the internet interested in Mormonism.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And it's multifaceted and they have whole departments hired for this kind of things. It just seems like the Mormon church has adapted to the internet age unusually well. I think they've definitely viewed it as a great opportunity.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I think they've also viewed it, you know, people will also talk about how the Mormon church will kind of spam the front page of Google so that ex-Mormon stuff gets...
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
further and further down right so they'll you know instead of just having one article on a subject they'll have like 10 articles on a subject and they'll try to get them all to rank so that the whole front page of google is just faithful responses to uh questions about the origins of the church they even uh put out all these essays that are about the history of the church
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
so that they can kind of counter the anti-Mormon literature. Is there anything I didn't ask that you feel like is relevant to this discussion? Sometimes I struggle with, you know, when I talk about trad wife things, I feel like people really want kind of a silver bullet answer.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I also think that I struggle sometimes with, it's not a demonization of something like a trad wife, but it's maybe the critique of Because I often feel like trad wives didn't invent motherhood. Trad wives didn't invent being a wife or being in a loving relationship and partnership.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so sometimes I struggle with the nuance of critiquing something that is genuinely human and genuinely... I think demonizing motherhood is not something we want to do. Demonizing being a loving partner is not something we want to do. But we want to critique... the approach that these accounts are kind of sharing.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And so in the critique, sometimes there's a demonization that I think is kind of dangerous and not good for families or children specifically. So I think just a final infusion of nuance is the final thing I'd want to leave. It's just that it's not something that's quite as straightforward as saying Mormon women like to journal. It's very complicated.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's about the internet, but it's also about conservatism and it's about Roe versus Wade and it's about all of these different cultural forces.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
kind of why i always say i'm anti-mormonism but i'm not anti-mormon because i think people can still be criticized obviously but i think that in a more broad sense the systems and the organizations and the dogmas are what are forming human behavior and so instead of saying this one person sucks because of this why xyz it's better and and more helpful i think more informative more educational to say this is the system that made this phenomenon exist to