Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Paranoid? Yes. But what if they ARE after you?

Someone wanted to know if the Recovery From Mormonism board is monitored. The short answer is yes, of course it is.

But what is the long answer? The long answer is, yes it is monitored, but not only by the Mormons and their external PR consultants.

The RFM board is very, very busy. Something like an average of 350,000 + hits every year. That’s why posts are not kept for very long (ten days, I believe) before being dumped as they just do not have the server capacity to keep them for any longer than that.

But who else monitors the RFM board? A poster on the board has reminded me that there are certain “hot button topics” which, if they are mentioned in a post, all hell usually breaks loose.

There’s an experiment that I suggest you don’t try for risk of compromising Eric’s rather precious bandwidth and server capacity.

Write an article in praise of one of the following topics: Acupressure, Acupuncture, Alexander technique, Aromatherapy Art therapy, Auricular Acupuncture, Australian Flower Essences therapy, Ayurvedic medicine, Bach Flower Remedy, Chelation Therapy, Chiropractic, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Colour therapy, Craniosacral Therapy, Herbal medicine, Homoeopathy, Indian Head Massage, Iridology, Kinesiology, Medical Herbalism, Naturopathy, Osteopathy, Reflexology, Reiki, Rolfing, Yoga and pretty soon there will be a firestorm of critics raining fire brimstone and fire down upon your head!

Why is that? There are some theories that people who give up believing in God and leave Mormonism also give up believing in everything. Oh, wait! No. That’s a BAD thing. You have to believe in science.

But that doesn’t explain why so many people would attack you for expressing praise for any alternative health model. Especially when you realise that all is not quite what it seems. For you will be attacked by people who have never posted on the board before and the majority of whom might not even have heard of Joseph Smith. A tiny minority will add something vaguely “exmo-like” to keep up the pretence that they are former Mormons.

How or why do they know when these “hot button topics” come up? Many PR companies now have highly sophisticated computer software that will analyse the World Wide Web to see where and how –for example- the name of a client shows up somewhere, anywhere, in the world.

And I think that is what is happening with the “hot button topics.” (This is based on experience as there’s a firm not far from my office that specialises in this line of work.)

Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you...

2 comments:

Sister Mary Lisa said...

Interesting theory here. I wonder why some people feel so strongly about stuff like this...

Anonymous said...

The U.S. and the U.K. have always been leaders in privatized (in other words, corporate) propaganda. The Mormon church and the medical industry are not that different in that respect; they see a threat, and they seek to neutralize it by any means fair or foul.

This is sickening, but not that surprising.

Great post!