The mommies are ready for the return of the Messiah

December 18, 2020 11:06 AM

Mormon mommybloggers are a window into the deranged heart of America. For Jewish Currents, Alexandra Tanner writes about her fascination with following Mormon moms on Instagram as they hawk water filters with one hand and antivax lizard people celebrity baby eater 5G conspiracies with the other.

The Bissell steam mop is only $79.99 on Amazon and I have to try it. The West Coast wildfires were started by left-wing arsonists. Yoga is Satanic. Tarot is Satanic. When a celebrity wears a Band-Aid on their left hand they’re telling you they eat children. When a celebrity wears a flower crown they’re telling you they eat children. When a celebrity wears dark eye makeup they’re telling you they eat children. If I swipe up the Bissell steam mop will be automatically added to my Amazon cart. The Deep State did 9/11. The Rothschilds did 9/11. Jeffrey Epstein did 9/11. On October 17th Trump will announce JFK Jr. as his new running mate. The Bissell steam mop is going to change my life.

posted by babelfish (52 comments total)

this is really close to my current faceplace experience, as an ex-mormon with mormon family and friends as numerous as the stars. While not all of them have gone in this direction, there are certainly a fair number of them that have bought into some of the worst sorts of conspiracy theory mental laziness. It hurts to see, because I don't have the energy to try to talk to them about it, and I know they are just reacting from a place of stress just like everyone else. And of course, I think their confirmation bias is too entrenched, and so talking to them wouldn't change anything.

On the bright side, after a pandemic election year, and liberal use of social media functions for permanently hiding anything from the sources of the craziest naziQantivaxxer reposts that I come across, my experience is much nicer than it used to be. I don't see those posts where they are sharing the latest bullshit, I see posts about their cute kids and puppies.
posted by th3ph17 at 11:40 AM on December 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

I don't know why that article was so hard for me to parse - something about the nonlinear style of writing and the heavy passive voice, but I think this phenomenon deserves to be studied.
I read a survey that showed that the anti-vax moms tend to have a BA, but anti-vax sentiments drop with higher or lower levels of education.
There is probably a connection between having a broadly liberal but rather unfocused grasp of science that threads the needle on "smart enough to know - but not smart enough to know better."

Or as my granny would say (often of her beloved grandson) - "Smarter than a pet racoon and dumber than two pet raccoons."
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:43 AM on December 18, 2020 [80 favorites]

The mommies are unconcerned about catching Covid. YOUR BODY IS NOT BROKEN, they post. GOD GAVE YOU AN IMMUNE SYSTEM FOR A REASON. The mommies have found the perfect chunky scarves for fall. The mommies believe that ten minutes a day of walking outside barefoot will safeguard you against any virus, that the fluoride in our water is a chemical weapon that makes us more susceptible to disease. The mommies’ husbands’ vasectomy reversals were successful; the mommies are expecting miracle babies. The mommies advertise a $425 water filter. The mommies are hiking in Utah, hiking in Hawaii. They know that the Earth has grown weary.

OMG babelfish, this is an amazing post. Thank you so much for sharing it. I have fundamentalist relatives, not Mormons, who are just as crazy. That is why I spend so little time on Facebook, I do not need their craziness up close. But the similar craziness of these mommies, which is at more of a remove, fascinates me.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:47 AM on December 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

I don't know why that article was so hard for me to parse - something about the nonlinear style of writing and the heavy passive voice, but I think this phenomenon deserves to be studied.

I didn't find it hard to parse. I've been doomscrolling and staring into the abyss quite a bit frequently and reading through the article I kept thinking about how that's how my brains been thinking recently. What a spectacular essay.

When my boyfriend asks me what, exactly, the mommies are teaching me about America, I don’t have a ready answer. But I found something, and I stared at it hard and often. The lesson has to be somewhere I haven’t yet looked. If I put my phone down, I’m afraid I am going to miss it.

I connect to this so hard. It's so frightening to look at all this happening and trying to peel through the hundreds of layers of how this started and how it morphed and learning all new terminology every week and having to keep up with the narratives because the abyss keeps expanding. I was reading that essay and that instagram picture came up of 'we need more blue eyed babies' and I was like, oh it's been a while since I've heard that and maybe ten years ago I would have rolled my eyes and said that's corny or whatever and now all I can see is white nationalism.
posted by Neronomius at 11:51 AM on December 18, 2020 [50 favorites]

Interesting.
Scary.
And reads so much like “This is Heather@Dooce just taking the piss? Right?”
posted by armoir from antproof case at 11:51 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I try to remind myself that people like this have always existed; it's just easier to see right into their brains now. It's good to be aware of them (and how can we not, in a country where Trump is president?)... but endlessly obsessing about such people is not good, from a self-care perspective.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:53 AM on December 18, 2020 [13 favorites]

I wonder if the fact that one interpretation of Mormon theology is that God is an alien makes them any more or less susceptible.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:09 PM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

Mommies are living like troglodytes.
posted by sagc at 12:29 PM on December 18, 2020

The problem with the internet is that now it's so much easier for the crazy people to find each other.
posted by freakazoid at 12:36 PM on December 18, 2020 [29 favorites]

I became a mom this year, and then a full time mom, and have also spent a good part of the year listening to the podcast Feminist Mormon Housewives (Altho I personally am a nonbeliever and was not raised with any faith at all) and scrolling Instagram. This article really resonates with me. Thank you for sharing.
posted by samthemander at 12:43 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I remember someone remarking publicly, after Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped, about how (un)surprising it was that a Mormon girl would believe everything the kidnappers told her.

Religion in general (generally) asks us not to question too hard. Shared false beliefs forge a strong bond, but interfere with critical thinking. Don’t get me started on Santa Claus.

Well-written (& scary) essay. Thanks.
posted by anshuman at 12:45 PM on December 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

bought into some of the worst sorts of conspiracy theory mental laziness.

And it really is laziness:

The Deep State did 9/11. The Rothschilds did 9/11. Jeffrey Epstein did 9/11.

Just say Jews. These people mean Jews control the world, I wish they'd just come out and say it. It's literally the same thing for centuries. It reminds me of that famous Lee Atwater quote about the N-word and how modern racists have learned to abstract away the word while still meaning it.
posted by star gentle uterus at 1:13 PM on December 18, 2020 [67 favorites]

I know someone who although she and her husband are not Mormons otherwise matches a lot of what's in that article note for note.

One thing I find amazing about such people is that they are usually 100% all in on using the best of modern science and medicine to achieve their reproductive goals, but then will turn around and accuse the same pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and doctors who made their (usually, though not alway, large) families possible of all kinds of nefarious motivations and acts.

I've tried some mild pushback and questioning and was shocked by the venom of the response, to the point that I have kind of given up engaging with folks like that.
posted by lord_wolf at 1:26 PM on December 18, 2020 [29 favorites]

YES on that point about reproductive technologies, lord_wolf. I have ten miracle babies that have never been touched with a needle since they emerged from their vials! I own the family health book so I never have to take any of them to the doctor, I just give them elderberry syrup and rub essential oils from my mutlilevel marketing home business on their temples.

I grew up hippie-adjacent and the confluence of small-c conservatism and home birth enthusiasm in my own family sometimes still shocks me. But we are jewish, so the religious observance doesn't really line up with conspiracy theories the same way.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 1:33 PM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

As a new parent of a three month old, I'm just here to say the Bissell steam mop is pretty great. Also, these people are scary.
posted by HumanComplex at 1:39 PM on December 18, 2020 [13 favorites]

Between the mommies, the Trumpists, QAnon, Proud Boys, etc. it really seems like the US is just a whole bunch of intersecting cults.
posted by tommasz at 1:40 PM on December 18, 2020 [24 favorites]

I mean the US has been full of religious weirdos from colonial days? The Pilgrims were persecuted and driven out because they were obnoxious Calvinist Puritans. We are also the birthplace of Rapture theology and premillenial dispensationism. It's baked in.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:44 PM on December 18, 2020 [19 favorites]

I mean the US has been full of religious weirdos from colonial days?

And then there was the Great Revival, which gave us... Mormons!
posted by kaibutsu at 1:48 PM on December 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

One of my mommies puts up her Christmas tree the day before Halloween

These people are monsters
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:28 PM on December 18, 2020 [31 favorites]

It's been interesting to see the libertarian Mormons defy Church leadership through this pandemic. Much like voting for Trump, there's only so far they will go to follow their leaders who have to play nice in the real world and instead reveal their true selves.

A terrifying place to explore are #DezNat (Deseret Nationalists) places around the internet (eg Twitter). They're a religious fundamentalist / white-power group that is growing in the Mormon church, aligned with the boog groups. They actively target anyone who is vocally critical of the Mormon church (or ex-mo) with doxxing or harassment online. Some of their rhetoric is seriously deranged and up there with other groups who are ready for the apocalypse.
posted by msbutah at 2:34 PM on December 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

Just say Jews. These people mean Jews control the world, I wish they'd just come out and say it.

Yah, one of the things the passive-voice stream-of-consciousness style of writing did for me was drive home how anti-semitic this all is; seeing all these supposedly disconnected or at best vaguely tangentially related ideas put forth one after the other after the other, and you can see how what they actually have in common is anti-semitism.
posted by soundguy99 at 2:37 PM on December 18, 2020 [17 favorites]

And then there was the Great Revival, which gave us... Mormons!

The history of Mormonism in America is a lot wilder than many people realize. The early Mormon colony in Utah (Deseret) before Utah was a state was an illegal settlement that was regularly exchanging gunfire with the US army.
posted by Ragged Richard at 2:42 PM on December 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

The Utah War featured the killing of 120 settlers passing through (and denials it ever happened). They had to bury the temple foundation while it was being built and make it look like a farm when the Army came through town, so they didn't look like the separatist group they are.
posted by msbutah at 2:49 PM on December 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

I couldn't read all the way through, too depressing to imagine going through life as the child of one of these people. Ugh!
posted by WalkerWestridge at 3:15 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Multi-Level Marketing, better known as Mormons Losing Money. It's kind of sad the way they are all grifting each other, friends and family alike, with all of the money ending up in some corporate headquarters at the top of the pyramid.
posted by JackFlash at 3:39 PM on December 18, 2020 [18 favorites]

Multi-Level Marketing, better known as Mormons Losing Money.

Speaking of which:
In Order To Appeal To Suburban Christian Women, Vaccine To Be Distributed Through A Pyramid Scheme
posted by doctornemo at 3:55 PM on December 18, 2020 [31 favorites]

One of my mommies puts up her Christmas tree the day before Halloween

I misread that as "the day before Christmas" and thought, "There's liturgical Mormons?"
posted by straight at 4:17 PM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

That was well written. I appreciate how the mommies are losing it just like the writer is losing it, just like I have spent the past two days reading the entire Internet.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:31 PM on December 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

Every week my screen time is up another 4%.

Amateur.
posted by trillian at 5:21 PM on December 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

As a new parent of a three month old, I'm just here to say the Bissell steam mop is pretty great. Also, these people are scary.
posted by HumanComplex at 1:39 PM

But the revenue from the mop is supporting and sustaining the crazy. You re not getting paid.
posted by eustatic at 8:03 PM on December 18, 2020

Mormon church has been a leader in promoting taking COVID-19 precautions seriously

A leader, really? I'd consider requiring mask use during indoor religious gatherings to be a bare minimum to be consisered a "leader," and they haven't done even this. When mask use was mandated by the state of Utah, the Mormons (and other religious groups) had an exemption. The Mormon leadership could have required masks to be worn as a condition of attending services, just like every other gathering in Utah, but they chose not to.
posted by Umami Dearest at 8:14 PM on December 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

My Dad was a criminal investigator for the Air Force, he had a bunch of lines he used to discuss his dealings with people, in past tense. One was, "My mind's made up, please don't try to confuse me with the facts."
posted by Oyéah at 8:58 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

The problem with the internet is that now it's so much easier for the crazy people to find each other.

And that makes them crazier. The lone conspiracy nut in the village had to tone it down to get along with everyone else - the feedback they got from their peers was a constant challenge to their worldview.

Now, just hop on Twitter or Facebook and you can be swimming in your conspiracy worldview constantly, the only negative feedback you'll receive from your new community is if you aren't committed to the crazy hard enough.

There were always people like this to an extent, yes. But not this extent, because the internet creates these communities, and these communities can then exert social pressure on their members, and people who are socially adjacent, as a group. It leaves them with a much narrower path out of the conspiracy thinking, and creates a much larger, slippier slope into it.
posted by Dysk at 10:43 PM on December 18, 2020 [20 favorites]

I'm not exactly sure what was going on here beyond the high-level overview of Mormon/mommy/conspiracy, but a solid third of it could easily be a pre-edit David Foster Wallace outtake.
posted by rhizome at 10:59 PM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

When I lived in rural southwest Utah for a year my wife and I stumbled into the mountain meadow massacre site. There's metal tubes you can look through to see where the slaughter occurred.

Back in town when we mentioned it we were told how it was all a huge conspiracy to sully the church.

It was such an insular and detached from reality world they inhabited. Ethnically homogenous, separated by distance and geography. The implicit racism in the quiverfull logic. It's not surprising that social media is just one more way to spread the word.
posted by Ferreous at 6:06 AM on December 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

The Mountain Meadows Massacre, for those who've never heard of it before.
posted by SPrintF at 6:11 AM on December 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

The Mountain Meadows Massacre, for those who've never heard of it before.

I had never heard of it before, so thanks. Well, I think I had heard the name, but certainly I knew no details. And curious details they are: exactly one person (John D. Lee) convicted of the massacre of over a hundred people and even his potted wiki bio raises questions:

Member of the Council of Fifty[1]
1844 – March 23, 1877
End reason
Released due to age[1]

That is possibly a reason for someone to stand down from a position. It’s intriguing that his age-related retirement happened the same day he was executed by a firing squad. What are the chances?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:16 AM on December 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

I connect to this so hard. It's so frightening to look at all this happening and trying to peel through the hundreds of layers of how this started and how it morphed and learning all new terminology every week and having to keep up with the narratives because the abyss keeps expanding.

While the internet has maybe changed the presentation and definitely expanded the reach, none of this feels new or uniquely crazy - US history is obviously seething with commercialized zealotry, low rent occultism and mass hysteria of every conceivable type. Pre-web Mormonism is a good example.

My 2020 rule of thumb has been, "If I wouldn't have read a wingnut flyer or picked up a photocopied pamphlet in the weirdo bookstore about this in the past, I'm not reading it now."
posted by ryanshepard at 8:29 AM on December 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

The Mountain Meadows Massacre,

a larger party of militiamen disguised as Native Americans in an attack

It's amazing how often Militia actions in 1700s-1800s America involve the militiamen disguising themselves as Native Americans.
posted by Mitheral at 8:49 AM on December 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Wow. Sometimes I tell myself this weirdness was always part of America, just as racism always was, as antisemitism always was, and it's historically and blissfully ignorant to say in a shocked voice "this is not who we are" because it has always been who we are. But what seems new is the ferocious networking of assorted weirdness and the selling of it (and the profits for off-the-wall prophets). It's who we have always been, but unleashed by the elders of Trumpistan and powered by the largest corporations by market capitalism in the world who don't give a damn how they get their money. Permissions have been reset, snake oil is the new data.

It's about time we broke up and regulated the platforms that spread it, but I'm not sure how we're going to fix the people whose lives and livelihoods are so caught up in it.

Great essay. The ending is perfect.
posted by zenzenobia at 10:44 AM on December 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

So what I find interesting is that this person spent so many months following these people and gained no insight other than, "they're abominable weird". it's clear the author never met them, I mean, I get that's the point, it's spectating on their internet goings on. But there's zero insight here. It's just, "saw some others, check it them out, they're others". But I've met these women, and they are really nice in person. I mean REALLY nice and warm and welcoming to just about anyone that's willing to be a polite dinner guest. You know, talk about things that we all like, like my kids, your kids, everyone's kids, black, jew, mormon, all cute.

I dnno. it's not like i'm on the side of the subjects of this article, but the author is agressively othering the subjects. author assumes you also want to mock them, cause you're better. and that's that's....a problem?
posted by ixipkcams at 11:03 PM on December 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Aside from the antisemitism (but actually, kinda not, really*) and the MLM schemes, I know a lot of Lubavitcher women who are just like this. Tweak a few descriptions here and there, for example, switch “blonde hair” for “expensive sheitels,” but the anti-mask, anti-vaccine, full Q nonsense is the same.

*I don’t like proselytizing of any kind, but I especially hate Chabad’s insistence on their way being the only right way to be Jewish and how they proselytize to other Jews. It’s its own kind of antisemitism, IMO. Also, I am still creeped out from the time, a few years back, a group of men from the local Chabad showed up, said “We’re here to party!” and tried to enter my home while I was home alone on Purim. No, I am not letting a group of strange men into my house. No, I do not want to go to your Purim spiel later. (And in these times, I am retroactively horrified at the thought of a stranger kissing my mezuzah, though I was merely irked at the time.)
posted by Ruki at 12:41 AM on December 20, 2020 [8 favorites]

But I've met these women, and they are really nice in person. I mean REALLY nice and warm and welcoming to just about anyone that's willing to be a polite dinner guest. You know, talk about things that we all like, like my kids, your kids, everyone's kids, black, jew, mormon, all cute.


That I think is a very intentional point of the piece - that these people as a rule seem really nice "in person." Sure, you could argue that mommybloggers & Instagram influencers & etc. aren't really people you know in person - you're basically seeing a curated character - but isn't the whole point and influence of mommybloggers the idea that this person is someone you would would be (or would like to be) friends with if it didn't so happen that you and she are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles? (A physical separation that maybe isn't all that relevant in an age when tons of people are already physically separated from friends and family and keep in touch by text and email and FB and social media & etc. - how different is it to be "friends" with a mommyblogger in Arizona you've never met vs. being FB "friends" with your junior year roommate that you haven't seen in 15 years?)

The entire . . . schtick, I guess . . . is that they're you and your friends, or at least a sort of aspirational you and your friends. They're nice, they're relatable - they groan about the lack of sleep, and picky eaters, and post about the funny thing their kid said when he was really mad but you can't laugh because you are having a Very Serious Discussion About Bedtime. They post cute pics of their kids playing in the park with PoC kids.

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . however nice they seem, there are more and more of them putting out content that supports or encourages really horrific ideas. (This piece from Anne Helen Petersen's substack has a lot of links in the second paragraph of writings on the growth of QAnon amongst the mommyblogger/wellness/Instagram set.)

And this supposed contrast between "really nice individual supports really not nice ideas and policies and politicians" is a thing many people have discovered they have to struggle with for (at least) the last four years - a person I like or love, who seems a thoroughly kind and empathetic person one on one, is unable or unwilling to expand that empathy to groups or classes of other people or to society at large. How do we reconcile this? How do we deal with that dissonance?

Or, IOW, I think it's a lot less that the writer is "othering" people, but is instead raising the point that we really need to come to grips with the idea that "really nice in person" is not a complete and useful metric for deciding when someone is a nice person. (And, bluntly, by "we" I (and I think the writer) mean "white women", who are often socialized to put great stock in "niceness.")
posted by soundguy99 at 6:42 AM on December 20, 2020 [26 favorites]

So true, soundguy99. I loved Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of the (real person) William Prince Ford in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave: the minister and preacher who was Solomon Northup's first owner after his kidnapping and enslavement, a regular pillar of the community who was too much of a coward to free Northup even once he knew he'd been born free and wrongfully enslaved even by the laws of the day. Wikipedia is telling me that Northup's own account of his former master was actually much more complimentary and demonstrative of Christian forgiveness than the film.

And of course Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o were absolutely incredible in it too—I now just automatically watch anything with either of them in it, and I'd appeal to anyone that you really have to watch the first season of Shuga if you get a chance, Nyong'o's first starring role I think, bizarrely an initially-Bush-43-administration-funded six-season-long PSA about AIDS, it's the only thing remotely soap-opera-like that I've ever liked but I was hooked, plus also you get to hear spoken Sheng and Swahili—and everyone else was amazing too.
posted by XMLicious at 8:04 AM on December 20, 2020

But there's zero insight here. It's just, "saw some others, check it them out, they're others". But I've met these women, and they are really nice in person. I mean REALLY nice and warm and welcoming to just about anyone that's willing to be a polite dinner guest.

That's the nature of these groups though. The niceness isn't performative, at least not in the sense that the veil drops once your back is turned. But insiders lack the distance that would allow them to write about the group with insight; and outsiders don't really appreciate the wacky beliefs and restrictive practices that make someone an insider. In fact what we have here is someone approaching the insight event horizon, the point at which our understanding of what it means to be nice breaks down. The people in these groups really are nice, and they really do have toxic beliefs, and you can't separate the two. The author's confusion is the insight.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:19 PM on December 20, 2020 [16 favorites]

Was employed by a BYU professors owned company for 6 months or so. Many Mormons on the project. Many disaffected female Mormons on the project as well. All the nicest people. Doesn't make their "beliefs" any less ridiculous. Or less dangerous. That they've now become QAnon loons is also not surprising. These mommies seem par for the course.

Fundamentalism is bad.
posted by Windopaene at 8:22 PM on December 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

#notallMormons but is this really a Mormon, or even religious, thing? I’ve seen it in various Christians but also in people who aren’t clearly of any particular faith.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:56 PM on December 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Probably not, though with the references upthread, may have made some assumptions. But, the Mormons I interacted with fit the bill of "super nice, friendly people", who had crazy beliefs. all my interactions with them were always good. Which creates some cognitive dissonance. Especially with hearing the complaints by the no-longer-in-the-fold former Mormon women, who were pissed off about the church's bullshit. Was an interesting group to interact with.
posted by Windopaene at 9:18 PM on December 20, 2020

It's not just these mommy bloggers appearing nice on their blogs to sell themselves. I think its definitely a "thing" that Mormons in general are extremely "nice" people: they would never insult someone, always helpful, always cheerful, always (at least the ones I know) trying to give of themselves. And it feels very genuine. Like it could be one of the tenets of their faith or something. South Park even made it a thing on the Mormon episode.


In my 35 years of life experience, the genuinely nicest people I know are Canadians and Mormons.
posted by LizBoBiz at 3:06 AM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Even though it wasn’t surprising it was still shocking to me that there is an image of a blue-eyed woman holding up her blue-eyed baby with a caption about how “we need more blue-eyed babies.” That was creepy as fuck. Creepy as fuck.

An acquaintance of mine, who is Jewish and a progressive activist, turns out to be anti-vaxxer ajacent. She got her kids vaccinated but we had an argument about the HPV vaccine. She argued that the risks were unknown of taking the vaccine and, after all, “cancer is treatable.” I tried very hard not to lose my shit while I explained how there’s a growing epidemic of oral cancer cases and anal cancer cases related to HPV that cannot be caught early because there is no widespread testing available.

Which is to say, this acquaintance is not like the mommies in this article but she’s also not completely different. It makes me wonder what irrational beliefs I may be holding without realizing it. I grew up in a fundamentalist church and my parents were bigoted. My dad, especially. Each of his children went on to have a child who has brown eyes. My kid has white privilege for complicated reasons; their cousins do not. I did not wait until I had a kid to push back on my dad’s racist bullshit, however.

As a native Californian, I’m excited about the demographic changes in the state. White people have fucked up so much; let’s give many other types of people the opportunity to fuck up for a change! Anyway, I can’t unsee that caption, and it just keeps rattling around in my brain. Maybe some part of me is feeling angry and defensive; hey mommies, do you think my kid wasn’t needed? Loved? Amazing?

Do you know what’s not nice? Being an Instagram anti-Semite, white supremacist, all-around bigot. I know it’s hard to believe that kind and loving people who are genuinely warm and nice in person are not nice people. It just depends on your definition of nice. Of course, it’s not just Mormons. It’s also those fundamentalist quiverful women (and their families) and a whole bunch of other folks.

We live in a toxic, white supremacist/anti-Semitic culture that is part of a sick, capitalist patriarchy that lets marginal people die. Moreover, it also kills them outright. Maybe one important question for me is where do I find the healthy subcultures? I never expected to find that among traditionally religious folks but that may be my own form of bigotry.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:54 AM on December 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

is this really a Mormon, or even religious, thing?

The idea that Mormon women are pretty dominant in numbers and influence in the "woman-blogging" world has been around for a while - for example, here's a 2017 piece from Allure that's mostly focused on "beauty influencers" but there's clearly a bunch of overlap/crossover. Googling "Mormon mommy blogger" gets a bunch more similar results. (The shortish answer seems to be that LDS women are encouraged to journal as part of their daily practice of faith, and the LDS tends to lean pretty heavily into traditional gender roles - so women tend to marry and have kids relatively early, are thoroughly versed in "feminine" activities like sewing and crafting and cooking and beauty work, and are SAHM's or underemployed because their husband's job is the one that counts. So starting about early/mid 2000's there's a sort of wave of young, smart, educated Mormon women with time and energy on their hands who were already comfortable with considering and writing about their daily lives.)

in people who aren’t clearly of any particular faith.

This can often be a sort of "the dog that didn't bark" kinda situation - lack of obvious faith markers can be a bit of stealth evangelizing. This concept has been around for a while - the idea that one "spreads the Gospel by deeds not words" was prevalent in my mainstream-Presbyterian church youth group back in the 80's.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:11 AM on December 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

To anyone who talks about how awesome their immune system is, or how God is protecting them from disease, I offer the HIV injection challenge to prove it.
posted by benzenedream at 1:40 AM on December 22, 2020