More than 2, I'm sure, but exactly 2 since Jeff published his memo:

https://postmormon.org/

I guess it's not coming back - more so because of the rise of reddit/exmormon I imagine.

It had a good, long ride. I never posted on that board, but there was a time when I read it regularly. It often had lengthy, thoughtful discussions about various topics. I also enjoyed the exit stories. Lots of meetups were posted for those who were interested. One problem that I had with the board is that some threads got rather raunchy, and that's what finally drove me away.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2019 11:01AM by summer.

"Raunchy" as in sexual?

Yes. I saw what I would consider raunchy (overly sexualized) posts multiple times. They were too explicit for my tastes. They had the tone of 20-year-olds engaging in locker room talk. I honestly have never minded the occasional discussions on RfM regarding sexual mismatches, pornography, etc. I am far from being a prude. But the posts on PostMo crossed a line for me -- just not anything I was interested in seeing. Different boards for different tastes, I suppose.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2019 12:02PM by summer.

Interesting.

I was there for a while, really liked it. There were some crazy posts from a woman named something like Harlot, but I didn't notice a ton of that.

Perhaps I had disengaged by then.

I noticed an increase in those kinds of posts perhaps two years or so before the board imploded. By the time it imploded, I was long gone.

That's really sad. Such a shame.

Well there was a tone that was not very friendly right before it was hacked or tanked. Maybe it was a game, but there were multiple threads about having sex with your bishop and stake president and other church leaders. I don't consider myself a prude.

I just didn't open or read those threads. It became a site where most of the content could be labeled as NSFW. Sometimes there were porn links that were disguised as blogs.

What I didn't like was that the active posters regularly attacked people that were trying to figure out who they were after leaving the church. It was not a safe harbor and they were regularly attacked for being stupid for not leaving the church sooner. I posted there, but I don't really miss the website.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2019 02:22PM by messygoop.

I must have missed those last few years. Sex with bishops? I don't remember that whole range of stuff.

It wasn't the coziest, most comfortable, wonderful, exciting place I've ever been... and yeah it's been a couple years.

R.I.P.. PoM

in b 4 ~ 9/17/2010 repost ~

Ziller opened his eyes. Without rising from the bed he scanned the room for signs of something, anything recognizable.

It was a typical motel room: the bed, dresser, sink, cheap towels, and crappy wall art were all familiar - familiar in the sense that this particular motel room could be any motel room any where.

As he mouthed the words, “How did I get here?” his tongue felt like it was stuck to the side of a snakeskin boot.

Ziller closed his eyes again in an attempt to discourage the little man inside his skull who was trying to hammer his way out, electrical storms played out across his eyelids.

“I wonder where “here” is,” he mumbled.

Ziller snatched a matchbook from the ashtray on the side table and read, "Close Cover Before Striking”.

Ziller checked his pockets. No wallet, no keys, no cell phone. Just a crumpled paper napkin scrawled with "tHURSdAy, sEpTEmBER 16th --- nO lATER tHAN tHE wEEKEND!"

He needed coffee.

Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

Ziller opened the motel room door while shielding his eyes from the rays of the blazing noonday sun that bore into his cranium like a laser.

He shuffled across a gravel parking lot to a lonely country bar where a lone pick-up truck was parked outside. The sign on the door said “Recovery from Mormonism Board”.

As his eyes adjusted to the light inside, he found himself alone in a room of worn red leatherette booths and lime green patterned carpeting. A large dance floor crowned with a vintage mirrored disco ball stood empty. Aged karaoke equipment was piled in a corner.

"We ain't open yet."

Ziller startled at the voice and turned to see a little old balding man with large ears and glasses pushing a broom. He looked like a white Yoda.

“Oh my heck,” thought Ziller. “It's Spencer W. Kimball! But he's dead! So Ziller must be friggin’ dead too and Hell is a nasty motel in BFE!”

"I really can’t say when we will be open again either,” Spencer W. Kimball added. “The administrators went to the City to get a part.”

"All I want is a cup of coffee. You gotta have some coffee,” Ziller pleaded.

"Make it yourself." Kimball nodded toward an ancient Bunn-O-Matic behind the bar.

“The middle of downtown Hell and you can't get a decent cup of black,” Ziller muttered.

As the coffee began to brew Ziller sat at the window and stared out at a river moving in the distance - the River Styx.

As he allowed his eyelids to rest he could hear the brook calling to him, babbling in an almost ominous way like the sound of a gurgling, steaming Bunn-O-Matic. Oh yeah.

Coffee and biochemistry are tied together in ways still yet unexplained by science. The effects of the first few sips began to enter the arterial framework around Ziller’s temples. His skin tightened. The crud in his nose and throat began to soften. His heart-rate increased and began the task of pumping toxins from his brain-pan. As his grey matter bathed in the caffeine laced elixir, things began to become a little less hallucinatory.

As the scales dropped from Ziller’s eyes he could see that Yoda’s name tag read “Bob” and that he was actually just a lowly custodian.

Ziller began to think that he might be wrong about being dead on the banks of the River Styx after all.

More coffee.

As the gears in his head began turning more freely, Ziller considered ways to figure out where he was without someone calling the police. Still, each thought he processed was like moving a pile of bricks.

"You okay, friend?” the custodian asked. “You were hammering it pretty hard last night. You and all your apostate buddies."

Ziller finally landed on the right question, "What is that over there?” He pointed out the window to the river where boats were playing on the current and friends and lovers were picnicking on its grassy banks.

“www.postmormon.” said the custodian still sweeping.

Ziller looked blank.

"dot org." the custodian added for clarity, stopping to light a pipe.

Ziller took a long contemplative sip of coffee.

“www.postmormon.org.” Ziller said. “Ziller just might check that out.”

Ziller

Personally, I love red leatherette, but to each his own. ;)

ya ~ agreed ~


RfM will always be the best hangout on the Apostasy River ~

I really liked it when I first discovered it, but it changed. A lot of people got mad and left.Not sure why. The mods were not great. They had favorites and were quite inconsistent.I had trouble with two of them and finally left.One of them was a conspiracy theorist who got huffy when anyone disagreed. By then most of the posters I liked were gone anyway. The mods worried about stupid things such as newbies being offended by posting the number of times each member had posted or semi nude artwork as avatars, but they didn't seem to understand that newbies might have bigger problems with raunchy posts and anti religious preaching.They also seemed to be developing an anti intellectual stance in many areas. On top of that ,it was very slow due to the exodus of posters. I got sick of it and quit going.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2019 11:38PM by bona dea.

I stayed there less than a year. I tried, but I was just never made to feel very welcome. And when I left, I mentioned that I was moving on and I thanked everyone for their time.

One person said, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." No one else even replied. That's when I knew I was making the right decision.

I recall that site many years ago, but mostly glanced through the research. There was some Joe Smith stuff there if I'm remembering right.

I haven't missed it since it's been gone.

Not that much to miss. It had dried up and gone stale before it went offline anyway.

Exactly. It was pretty much dead when I left. If there had been new and interesting posts I would have stuck around even if I had issues with the mods. Everyone I liked was gone and the same posts were on the first page for days.I think the heavy handed moderation did them in

Several years ago, I wanted to know if there was someone, somewhere, who could explain why I couldn't seem to muster the same profound feelings toward Mormonism that everyone else around me did. So I threw a few words into the Google search bar, and sent them off. I forget exactly what I typed, but one of the top results was an exit story on Postmormon. I knew then, for the first time with certainty, that there was nothing wrong with me. I'll always be grateful for those exit stories.

I liked it at first but became disgruntled because Jeff wanted everyone to put on their nice face for the site when his billboard went up in case any TBMs came to the site.

One guy said no because that would be no different than mormons doing that to outsiders. He got banned for that, and I knew that was it for me.

I agree with Jeff Ricks on that one. Being civil is an attribute and standard of discourse we should all try to uphold and promote all the time whether Mormon or Ex-Mormon.

I liked PostMormon as there didn't seem to be as much censorship for content. I would prefer censorship of lack of civility and propriety in discussions.

However,Jeff wasn't always civil himself and he was way too concerned about what newbies thought, but only on selective subjects.

Exactly. I want to clarify. People were not even fighting. He was the one who escalated things. They we’re having disagreements on topics such as sex, and he handed out warnings and bannings just because he wanted to give the false impression that ex mormons are all super nice for newcomers.

I am all for civility but he wanted phoniness and that rubbed me the wrong way.

I commented once that I.disliked Sam Harris and gave some general reasons such as his Islamophobia. He demanded rudely that I cite references. I told him that I had borrowed the book, read it some time ago and returned it. Under the circumstances, I would have had to get another copy and do some research in order to meet his demands. I refused. He would not let it go. He was a real jerk about the whole things and all because I didn't agree with him.

I liked poster Dalai Mamma - but she left 4 or 5 years ago.

She was great.