Friday, September 9, 2011

Trolling for god


I may or may not be guilty of trolling around some Mormon facebook pages, pretending to have been invited to their event and getting involved in some scuffles over mass invites and censorship.


Evidence FOR...


More evidence FOR...


Evidence AGAINST...

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Ok, ok, so that looks pretty guilty then. 
It was my first time trolling and I kinda liked it. 
Troll. Troll. Troll. Trolllllllllll. 

I heard about these pages through some ex-Mo fb groups and thought I'd check them out. There were some stellar comments by Mormon BOM readers in response to our trolling but I didn't take screen shots and they are now lost in the depths of those Walls. 

Here is a comment by a Mormon BOM reader:
The BOM reading page tended to hover around 40% success rate in inviting people that then accepted the invitation; with about 55% not responding and 11% rejecting it).  

The 'Flooding' page had a 15% success rate (I have my suspicions about the style of flooding that was carried out by the two 'Elders' pictured left); with 74% not responding and about 7% rejecting it. 

I didn't start taking screen shots till most of the fun was over (I'll be more onto it next time). There was a lot of censoring going on yet there was nothing worth censoring. A decent number of people (not me, I was a faker) were legitimately voicing their 'no' response on the Wall in a respectful way, particularly when they had been invited more than once, by member friends. These posts were all removed. Eventually the creator listened to the numerous complaints about 'mass invitations' and allowed the comments to remain in order (I hope) to give the attendees pause to think about who they invite. 

The censorship of commenters who were respectfully declining was not entirely surprising to me but it did get me thinking of the compatibility of Mormonism and Facebook. Facebook can get ugly and even when it is clean it is still a VERY open place. If someone is annoyed about being invited multiple times (by their own Mormon friends) to a religious event that they do not respect, then they may want to say something about it. I think that people ought to be able to say how they feel about such invites and those doing the inviting ought to be able to listen. Many attendees said that the 'non-attenders' ought to just ignore the invite and get on with their lives. I think that this attitude from evangelists is rude. If you are going to insinuate that you have 'the truth' and you want to 'save people' then you ought to at least give those people a voice in response. 






3 comments:

  1. I've trolled these sites myself - lots of fun!! It amazes me that when confronted, a lot of TBMs tend to turn into children with name-calling and all. I've also trolled on the Missionary Chat on Mormon.org. That's lots of fun, too!!

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  2. hehe, thanks for admitting it ;)
    Some of the TBM comments get really bad nd it's even more funny when another TBM steps in and admonishes them.
    I guess Mormons are human after all.

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  3. Oh, the blather that Mormons drone on about... it truly is amazing!! What is even more amazing, though, is the fact that many of them don't even know the real history of the church or its real doctrines. And when you point it out, they become belligerent and ask why you (as an ExMo) can't just leave them or Mormonism alone. Poor TBMs!!

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