I rarely have come here in the past ten years. But was pretty active before about 2011.

It seems that when I was active here, most of the posts were newly minted exmos, still in shock and bewildered, wondering what to do. And people posting new discoveries of shocking information about the church. Some posts about high profile excommunications and such.

Reading the first five pages here today, it seems to have changed. I'm not seeing the big exposes, and bewildered new people. The posts seem pretty routine.

Everything is already out and easy to find now? The group of ex's is so big that people are easily finding the answers they need offline? It just feels very different now to me. But I still have the ten year old version fresh in my mind, due to not being here much since then.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/10/2021 05:58AM by DNA.

We still help those questioning or who want to leave the church, but they are fewer in number, now (at least those who stop by here.) I would say they are mainly young people who want to escape parental control.

I'm not convinced that historical issues are as big a reason for leaving as they used to be. People just seem weary of church demands, now. They just don't want to do it anymore, so they vote with their feet. I'd be interested in other people's views on this.

The historical stuff mattered to me, and I've only been out for a little over a year. But then again, I was inactive for two years before that because yes, the demands are too much.

It used to be thought of as infallible and as close to perfect as you can get. So the Historical is what got me out. Perhaps the internet made it not as shocking now.

The amount of people leaving and doing it publicly waxes and wanes as the public zeitgeist changes with current events. This swings wildly. What might have seemed like a reasonable website ten years ago to someone doubting may, to someone huffing political fumes today, seem like a bunch of woke radical liberals. Or vice versa, it might seem like it isn’t tolerant enough because it allows the less-than-Woke to speak — ironic.

Also, a lot of the fresh apostates these days are congregating on new platforms like Reddit and TikTok.

Maybe we also get to a point someday where the people who are likely to leave for the reasons we think they should already have and the rest don’t care or are not likely to leave anyways.

Social media is an experiment that liberated so many people with analog educations, but it also drives some people from that same peer group barking mad. The youth can tell what’s what a lot better in this new environment, but it’s also changing their social values and the things they care about while afflicting them with stress and anxiety levels reminiscent of the first psycho-patients who spawned modern psychology. So maybe gen z can tell fake news a lot better, but they’re also liable to melt down over some shit a boomer can take right on their nerves without caring. They find ways of pressing our buttons one way or another.

All in all, I don’t think our society is very healthy right now.

Cold-Dodger, that's an interesting insight with merit behind it based on my own observations. I'm GenX, Utah born and childhood raised. I've been following this board mostly as a lurker since 2012. Go CES Letter! lolz.

Also, there are so many other exmormon boards and resources now than there were back then.

The Exmo location with the most registered members (over 250,000) has zero tolerance for OffTopic posts, although they have nothing against trying to be funny, ya just gotta be OnTopic funny.

I think it's reasonable that most members know or keep in touch with some person who has left the church. In the past, there was a greater stigma or mystique of being "out". I am not saying that it's easier to deal with fallout of leaving a ward or dealing with an unsupportive family, but so many have gone done that road already.

I remember the scare tactics from many many years ago. If you leave, you will end up unhappy and be working at 7-11 for eternity. Those uppity blowhards got away with that because a lot of people who left the church (mostly through church discipline) seemed to disappear in the small Mormon universe. Today, it's very different.

Being excommunicated is more prestigious than it used to be.

I've been here almost 10 years and I keep hanging around because I'm still learning about how destructive the cult was and is. I was never invested in the church as much as most of those who post here.

I've been here for close to 6 years and it has helped me a lot to know that I'm not alone; I'm still decompressing from TSCC.

I really enjoy all of the posters here and it seems like I'm learning something new all of the time.

Everyone here seems to be very intelligent, educated, and many of you have a brilliant sense of humor.

Hi DNA! I remember your posts. I hope you are doing well!

There have been some changes. CZ took over board ownership from Eric K which has worked out well.

Overall, I think information about the church is available in a lot more places for anyone who questions. I also suspect some people in the church are learning to tolerate doubters among them without pushing them out as fast. Like other religions, Mormons are learning to not care about their history or origins, IMO.

I'm doing great. An example of how much better life gets after leaving, not worse.

I hope yours is going great too.

True, but so has everything else, including the church itself.

It wasn't that long ago when we regularly had questions from investigators seeing red flags and asking what the missionaries were holding back. Other posts were from newly baptized converts confused as to (a) why members were no longer showing any interest in them, and (b) how come no one told them about all the rules and expectations. "They want me to clean the church?!? I made a horrible mistake, how do I get out?" We don't see that any longer. That's good as it tells me fewer people are getting suckered in nowadays.

Hi DNA, I remember (and enjoyed) your posts. I've been coming here since 2007 and I think the biggest change is that there are nopw multiple places where the info (and even the advice can be found on the Internet. I'm thinking in particular of the Exmo Reddit (where I don't go because it's banned at work but I've seen it). I agree, new posters were often recent or half-recent converts. With the pandemic and the slow decline of the "church", we can hope there have been less of them.

All the best to you.

I was leaving at about the same time as you. This place was a great help then.

Me too

Maybe it's time we all move on
Or maybe it's not the place [anymore]

Once you’ve buried Joseph’s Myth 6ft deep in the earth does it do any good to salt the earth it grew out of so that nothing that evil ever grows out of it again?

Hopefully, it means that people are finding the right information before they ever get baptized. So they never have to be an ex-Mo.

As the world interred into the Information Age and all of the secrets-that-were-not-so-secret about Mormonism began to leak out to the wider world, I thought it would bring down the house on LD$, Inc.

But then a strange thing happened.

Nobody cared.

I've tried explaining Mormonism to people.

It's so weird they can't believe you are telling them the truth.

Some accept the cover story of Mormonism being just another Protestant Christian denomination. Others just think it's about polygamy. Most people just don't care.

So, if you try to tell them about Kolob, The War In Heaven, golden plates, Jesus in an ancient America full of white people who are somehow Semites and all the rest, it sounds so bizarre they don't believe you. A lot of people haven't seen the "Book Of Mormon" musical either, so don't count on that.


Also, Evangelicals and Mormons have largely "buried the hatchet" and joined together in the culture wars, so that tension has gone now.

So, the current generation of Mormons stay in for cultural reasons and they know about life beyond the Zion Curtain and how Mormonism is perceived.

Christians are the most persecuted group right now. You are going to see groups of Christians who didn't see eye to eye in the past work together. You might even see churches combine together.

I think Russell M Nelson's strategy is to sell the LDS faith as a Christian church because We are no longer a Christian society. The west especially the US was a Christian society in the past. The Mormons had to sell themselves as the restored church with a modern prophet and new scripture. The focus was on the Book of Mormon. You don't see that focus now. Book of Mormon scriptures will be referenced in talks but there is no more talk of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon. It's all about Jesus now.

I think what you really mean is that *some* people who call themselves "christians" are out of sorts because they can't control, dominate, and repress others they don't like for cultural reasons -- not religious -- as easily as they once did.

Prayer in school and public christmas decorations are two examples.

Why do so called "christians" endlessy argue about school prayer?

They want to assert the dominance of their culture and make others suborinate -- just like the Taliban or DAESH. They claim the Constitution was divinely inspired, but conveniently leave out freedom of religion and freedom from religious dominance. The same goes for christmas decorations. All sorts of controversy was manufactured about civil instead of religious holiday decorations.

Well, guess what. There's more than one religion in America. You can't have the state promote or repress one faith in the name of another or vice versa.

No one is repressing christians. Just because some of them were able to get away with things in the past doesn't mean that it was right.

It was wrong back then, and it's still wrong.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2021 12:37PM by anybody.

anybody Wrote:
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> No one is repressing christians.

Like many of your claims this is is blatantly untrue. Whatever you think of the religion, Christians have been murdered in their thousands in Nigeria in recent times. States like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran are all hostile to Christianity and police it heavily. Many countries also repress converts. The claim Christians are not repressed is simply untrue.

She was describing the situation in the United States. Your examples are from other countries.

Whoosh.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> She was describing the situation in the United
> States. Your examples are from other countries.

The USA is one of the world's main recepients of refugees, including Christian ones.

Even within the USA there have been instances of Christians being repressed. Anti-Catholic feeling has been widespread in the past few decades and led to discrimination in some workplaces. Some of that has been related to its connection with some immigrant groups but not always. In more recent years, there have also been vandalism of places of worship, including Mormon ones. There have also been church shootings. Jehovah's Witnesses have also had problems, and have had to fight for their constitutional rights in public schools and other venues.

So yes, there has been repression of Christians even within the USA. It is documented fact, whether or not we like or agree with the religion.

Mr. Bojangles Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So yes, there has been repression of Christians
> even within the USA. It is documented fact,
> whether or not we like or agree with the religion.

Sources, please.

He provided sources--well, at least an allusion to some. . . source. . . somewhere.

Anyway, the fact that American Catholics get their feelings hurt and people spray-paint vulgar messages on LDS chapels surely proves that the United States is as anti-Christian as the worst parts of Nigeria and the Islamic world.

Surely.

There was a general social respect for Christianity in the US in the past. Even if you were not a believer you went along to get along.

What’s changed is the non-believers are more open and vocal. They don’t want God or religion period. They want 100% secularism and view the old Christian ways as backwards. So the Bible gets tossed and people get creative. Now there is more than two genders and everyone is running with their own idea what the perfect society is.

On the religious side the conservative traditionalist whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian are all viewing the new secular movement as disgusting and dangerous. To a certain extent it’s unified these religious groups.

But who’s taking the lead for opposition is the evangelical Christians and they have had some success converting some former non-religious people to their fold. But there’s also a divide. Evangelicals still don’t like Muslims or Mormons but they love Israel and Zionists. Mow them Palestinians over! Bomb Bomb Iran!

Anyways it’s a perfect situation to exploit and I think America’s enemies are doing just that. A divided country is a weak country and maybe some of this division is the results of some skillful psyops, agi-prop and propaganda.

But of course if you want to unify the country you simply scare the shit out of everyone using an outside enemy. That would be the mother of psyops. We need a universally hated boogeyman desperately.

We are growing one shocked, angry, denying, bargaining, accepting Exmo at a time.

In the early part of the 2000s, there were many more fora to discuss things, that were run more-or-less independently. In my opinion, over time, people have grown used to doing most of their socialization over a handful of sites and have become less interested in exploring other venues.

I don't know how well for example the exmormon subreddit does, nor do I know if there are large exmormon groups on Facebook, but I do believe that the megasites have sapped the curiosity out of a lot of people to leave their walled gardens unless they're forced to.

Back in the day, I used to be a fairly big user of Usenet; I had a large LDS-related website; I did a lot of things online each day. Nowadays, the internet feels like a wasteland. I only go online for businesses, banks, medical appointments, and the like, and to use reference materials, but I almost never go to interact with people on a personal level. This site is one of the very few where I still do the latter. Frankly, it's a sad development, imho.

Tyson

Tragedy of the commons.

Tyson mentions that people’s curiosity has been sapped and as a result they do not want to venture out of their “walled gardens” unless they’re forced to.

I don’t think Tyson intends to insult people, but the implication that people won’t do something unless forced, which many people will interpret as stating in other words “My mind is wide open and yours isn’t, therefore I am superior.”

These kinds of statements are what causes many less intense people to abandon the verbal swordplay in chat room conversation.

Not intended to slight Tyson in any way, but the statement is a first rate example of why internet conversation has waned.

If you want to wring some statement of implied superiority out of that, you're free to do so, but it's not intended as text nor subtext.

Most importantly, there's no difference between me and other people in not venturing far from the familiar surroundings. I'm a creature of habit too, and it would shock me to learn that the majority of humanity were different.


My observation is that when the internet was newer, fresher, there was more reason to go exploring and chasing links. The connectivity of the internet was more horizontal.

But the search engines, and Google in particular reined that in and brought order to it with an expectation that, if you needed to know, find, or buy something, one source would bring it to you.

When I was a webmaster, our site had all sorts of other sites that we linked to. Over time, the latter shut down because they didn't get the traffic that they had previously - it was siphoned to Facebook and the like, who replicated a lot of their content and services.

To be clear, the services provided by the large search providers, the large hosts, the large social media sites, and the large marketers like Walmart in the brick-and-mortar realm and Amazon online, do have advantages of scale that the smaller providers lack, but becoming accustomed to the habit of using any of these still implies an acquiescence to a walled garden, no different from when Prodigy or AOL ruled as service providers.

And once one becomes accustomed to staying in these familiar lanes, the walls are there, if unobvious.


Truly, the notion of people liking limited choice over greater choice is a known factor in design of supermarkets where limiting the number of brands keeps traffic flowing. (The converse design choice is used on some restaurant menus to steer people into buying the most prominently-displayed and profitable meal choices, while giving an illusion of carrying everything under the sun.) And people exhibit brand loyalty for any number of reasons, none of which are inferiority.

If you prefer, I could have used the more neutral phrasing of "compelled to", but the result is the same. People largely stretch when circumstances either force or allow them to. People react to both the nudge of advertising and word-of-mouth - whether these are positive or negative - to make decisions that encourage them to change or extend their habits. But none of that is a judgement nor a derisive observation.

Tyson

It sure has :(

Used 2 bee you cud cum here for legit MORMON EXPERIENCES, stories, questions, superstitions and the sort. Maybe get some answers, suggestions, recommendations...

▪︎◇▪︎■□■□■□■○°NOT°ANY°MORE°▪︎◇▪︎□▪︎◇▪︎□▪︎◇▪︎□▪︎

Hell, a good 80% or more have NOTHING to do with mormons or the mormon 'church', or LDSism

A lot of posts about nonsense or people feeding their Non-Mormon egos (mine is on a diet right now), random questions, opinions, jokes, 'polytricks' and other C-19-20-21-22-BS, ETC.

I have to bend down so low to see what's in some of these posts that I practically do a somersault.

That is °IF° you can tell from the title - before clicking on it - what the silly thing is about anyway.

I ain't a Mormon, and but for family who is damned to the Mormon "church" cult way of life (or death, as I call it. I call it as I see it [and I never got a calling in "the church" that I liked. I call them (a lot of names probably), they don't call me]) do I want to remember or even think or hear about the MC (morMon 'church'), or associate with anyone practicing the occult or association of Mormonizm.

THERE YA' HAVE IT! Ain't that what this dammed forem is for anyway?
A decent place to inquire, learn, complain about mormondumb? Have fun. Be yourself.

I don't spend much time here - because I don't have much time - because it has changed, I've changed, and I've many other interests.

In fact, Mormon dumb is my least favorite pastimes
(Not the way I'd care to pass the time)

The LAST thing I'd think about if there was nothing to think about.

What's this post about anyway? Oh yeah, mormonDOM

I've been here since around 2002, although I didn't really post anything until 2003 or 2004. I remember it took a long time before people believed my story... or really my husband's story, since he's the exmo. I also remember, back in the day, it seemed like a lot of people were angrier and meaner. I distinctly remember being attacked by certain posters, most of whom no longer hang out here, for being my husband's second wife and "stepmother" to his very alienated daughters. A lot of people assumed I was the problem, simply because I married a man who had children.

As of 2021, I still have only met my husband's daughters once. However, one of them has reconnected with my husband. They talk often on Skype, and although she's still LDS, she and her dad have been able to bond over the narcissistic nightmare that is my husband's ex wife. Ex, by the way, has evidently abandoned Mormonism, now that it's no longer useful as a parental alienation tool. My husband's older daughter is 30 and still lives with her, as she's doing the housework and raising Ex's youngest child, who has severe autism.

In many ways, I think this board has improved... but I have also noticed that a lot of topics are no longer as much about Mormonism. I suspect the pandemic has caused a lot of people to give up the church, as much as the Internet has caused people to learn the truth about the church's shady history.

I still like hanging out here and come around every day, just to see what's up. There are some very smart and funny people here, and I have found a lot of books, music, and blog topics here. I don't post much anymore, though, because I truthfully have less to post about. I am less interested in Mormonism than I used to be. It's no longer a threat to me.

Congrats!

What the heck happened to Mormonism?

Where the hell did everybody go?

Welp, I doubt they joined Scientology or the Jehovahs Wittnesses or anything like the Mary Baker Eddy Christian Science group. I mean they certainly could of have done that but, I don't really think so..

What did the Mt. Tambora explosion (1915/16) give us all but one or two years of quite cold weather? Except for Scientology (1950s) the clear roots to these cults go right back to one single global cooling (end of world) event.

This new global new

Message boards like this have been replaced with social media and YouTube channels like Mormon Stories.

Isn't that what we're all saying?

Like Mormonism - which preceded RFM (relief/ respite from Mormonism) and created a need therefore - people may also be falling away. Bigger and Better things!

That's what I've been saying all along.

Who wants to be inside/ online?
When there are millions of other things to do.

Happy Days everybody (I'll visit once in a while)-

Unless we start having a little more fun around here.

Maybe it's me? I guess we'll see. Still, I'm free!

Great post. I actually came here in 2019 and posted the same thing, compared to my experience leaving in 2008.

Leaving the church has finally become trendy. It's not socially ostracizing anymore. Ex-Mormon is the new Jack-Mormon, basically.

Be proud. The trails we blazed 10-20 years ago made this so. We did the hard work so others don't have to.

Still... I miss the super sharp, brilliant ex-Mormon that left for intellectual reasons and a broken heart instead of just because they were bored of Church.

vahn421 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great post. I actually came here in 2019 and
> posted the same thing, compared to my experience
> leaving in 2008.
>
> Be proud. The trails we blazed 10-20 years ago
> made this so. We did the hard work so others don't
> have to.
>
> Still... I miss the super sharp, brilliant
> ex-Mormon that left for intellectual reasons and a
> broken heart instead of just because they were
> bored of Church.

Completely agree. We left at the same time, then I left the country in 2011 and stopped coming by here for the most part. But like you said, there was always something new, shocking, and groundbreaking going on then.

I guess maybe it is easier to leave and not be a total outcast to everyone that you knew previously now. And almost everything that you were learning here at that time, you were getting it for the first time. The information was still pretty much hidden back then except for a few places that you had to dig deep to find.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2023 05:21AM by DNA.

YouTube has several ex Mormon videos. TikTok has such funny short clips about Mormonism contradicting each other. Mormon Stories has some stories of young returned missionaries in their early twenties who have left Mormonism. When I left Mormonism and I found out about Helen Mar Kimball being only 14 years old it hit me like a brick of rocks. The true prophet cheated on his wife Emma! The whistleblower a couple of years ago also was mind blowing to me 100 billion dollar rainy day fund? But the members are cleaning their chapels for free? The translation of the book of Mormon was also very disturbing to me no golden plates were used but a rock in the hat.

Maybe it's actually YOU that has changed.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe it's actually YOU that has changed.

I really do think that this place has changed. But I certainly have too.

Back then, this place was somewhat of a lifeline. Knowing there are other people going through the same shock as me, or have already gotten over it, was a very helpful thing for me.

Now it is so far in the past, stopping here every few months or so is a diversion, rather than a lifeline. So I have changed greatly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2023 10:46PM by DNA.

On NPR, they were doing a review of Sally Denton's "American Massacre" and caller commented about blood atonement. On the same program or soon after, I first heard the truth about Joseph Smith's polygamy and read portions of Compton's "In Sacred Loneliness." My shelf broke straight away and, within two months, my former beliefs had completely disintegrated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2023 04:02PM by cuzx.