YouTuber: "I Lived Like a Mormon for 30 Days Now I’m Joining the Church"

[smac97]

• I’m Giving Up My Normal Life to Live Like a Mormon for 30 Days
• Day 2 & 3 Living Like a Mormon This Is HARDER Than I Thought
• Living Like a Mormon Day 4: Goodbye Coffee
• Day 5 Living Mormon: No More Empty Promises
• Living Like a Mormon Is Way Harder Than I Thought (Day 6–7)
• Day 8 of Living Like a Mormon: The Word of Wisdom Is Confusing
• Can I Hold On To The Iron Rod? | living like a Mormon Challenge Day 9!
• Living Like a Mormon Challenge — Day 14: The Church Voice
• My Testimony: Day 15 Giving Up My Normal Life To Live Like A Mormon!
• Day 16 Living Like a Mormon: I Met the Missionaries
• Day 18 Living Like a Mormon: The Truth About the “Racism” Accusations
• Day 19 of Living Like a Mormon: If Imperfect People Destroyed Your Faith... Watch This
• Day 20 Living Like A Mormon “I Read the Doctrine & Covenants for the First Time"
• Day 22: The LDS Second Anointing Is More Biblical Than I Expected
• 25 Days Studying Mormonism Changed Me!
• 28 Days Living Like a Mormon Changed My View of Hell :huge announcement at day 30:
• 29 Days Living Like A Mormon Challenge Brought Me Closer to Jesus

and 2 hours ago:

• I Lived Like a Mormon for 30 Days Now I’m Joining the Church

Wow.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

Wait…they just started out to live like a “Mormon” without any intention of joining the Church?

okay…watched the first video, he was going to go to church a couple of times during the month and reading the Book of Mormon as well as the Bible daily and praying, but said nothing about seeing the missionaries.

Did he ever explain why he chose LDS to emulate?  I got the impression he was just choosing us for our upright and disciplined image as he seemed to want to try more discipline in his life.

Edited May 28 by Calm

[The Nehor]

Watched a couple of his older videos before this challenge started. He was already batting for the Church and his talking points are ridiculously pat. I am dubious that this is a result of the 30 day thing. This looks to me like a performance. Looks like it is working LDS are eating it up.

Maybe a book comes next? Angling for invites to speaking gigs in LDS dominated venues?

The conversion itself may or may not be sincere but this has all the markings of starting up a way to sell this story. There is nothing inherently wrong with that but if your first impulse on joining a new faith is to find a way to monetize it that is kind of weird.

Gonna check out rest of channel.

”We are all Charlie Kirk” video? Okay, now I just dislike the guy. Gross.

Oh, and some garden variety transphobia and homophobia filled with ignorance and inaccurate demonized stereotypes. Gotta wave that flag in advance to assure everyone you are part of the tribe. Ugh.

And now the Bible supposedly takes a strong stance on abortion which it does not. He is not operating from first principles and taking the texts on their merits. He already has the dogma LDS (and some other Christian Churches) just accept about them which isn’t in the text.

Edited May 28 by The Nehor

[Calm]

9 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Watched a couple of his older videos before this challenge started. He was already batting for the Church and his talking points are ridiculously pat. I am dubious that this is a result of the 30 day thing. This looks to me like a performance. Looks like it is working LDS are eating it up.

It is not surprising he was already familiar with the Church as there is enough info out there and if I was choosing to do a challenge on living like members of any religious community, I would research it deeply first so I didn’t look like an idiot.  And being a YouTuber, if one is used to looking at one’s life for ideas to make videos whether or not one is motivated by money or just enjoy doing it, it’s hardly surprising that if one is considering a major life change to set it up in a way to interest others…thus the challenge.  So either past research led to the interest and therefore likely baptism and that led to the challenge or past research led to the idea of the challenge and therefore led to more research and thus either primed him for baptism or he had already decided.

The missionary discussions…would be interesting to know if he took them before.  Were the discussions themselves recorded?  It is good PR for the Church, another opportunity to educate others about what happens so I assume the elders would be happy to go along with it, just hope it wasn’t a fake for them, everyone pretending it was his first time IF he had done them before, especially if he had already decided to be baptized and was not just thinking it might be a possibility or wasn’t planning at all, but had a change of heart after actually doing the challenge (not assuming he did as there is a good chance he decided to do a challenge once he decided he would have the missionaries over or he decided to have the missionaries over because he needed content to make the 30 days more interesting).

All the above makes me slightly uncomfortable probably just because I find it very strange to want to document one’s life so publicly, but obviously there are others who feel differently and as far as I know there is nothing inherently wrong with that (will be interesting to see what long term effects it will have on people as I can see lots of potential problems, it certainly adds complications and stress to one’s life but plenty of wonderful things do that too).  Then there is my concern of the potential of the financial benefits being a major driver of behaviour rather than doing something purely because one is interested in it or see it as beneficial in non financial ways, but plenty of people make major decisions based on interest in money, such as what to take in college and what career to pursue (and unfortunately often end up not enjoying that part of their life), so that’s likely not that different than before, social media is just another, very accessible option…though I wonder how many actually make enough to balance their investment of time and effort.  Hopefully most who are doing it primarily for money or stardom don’t invest money into the setup until they are making enough to cover those costs.

It would be disappointing though if I found out he was going so far as expecting to become a popular speaker in the Church because then I worry that baptism is motivated by more than just being captivated by the Spirit and maybe loving the community.  There are a lot of valid reasons to join a faith and looking for a place to belong is high up there, imo, but looking to get attention and changing behaviour based on that, I see it as setting oneself up for dissatisfaction later on, especially with our faith as it is high demand.

[The Nehor]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

It is not surprising he was already familiar with the Church as there is enough info out there and if I was choosing to do a challenge on living like members of any religious community, I would research it deeply first so I didn’t look like an idiot.  And being a YouTuber, if one is used to looking at one’s life for ideas to make videos whether or not one is motivated by money or just enjoy doing it, it’s hardly surprising that if one is considering a major life change to set it up in a way to interest others…thus the challenge.  So either past research led to the interest and therefore likely baptism and that led to the challenge or past research led to the idea of the challenge and therefore led to more research and thus either primed him for baptism or he had already decided.

The missionary discussions…would be interesting to know if he took them before.  Were the discussions themselves recorded?  It is good PR for the Church, another opportunity to educate others about what happens so I assume the elders would be happy to go along with it, just hope it wasn’t a fake for them, everyone pretending it was his first time IF he had done them before, especially if he had already decided to be baptized and was not just thinking it might be a possibility or wasn’t planning at all, but had a change of heart after actually doing the challenge (not assuming he did as there is a good chance he decided to do a challenge once he decided he would have the missionaries over or he decided to have the missionaries over because he needed content to make the 30 days more interesting).

All the above makes me slightly uncomfortable probably just because I find it very strange to want to document one’s life so publicly, but obviously there are others who feel differently and as far as I know there is nothing inherently wrong with that (will be interesting to see what long term effects it will have on people as I can see lots of potential problems, it certainly adds complications and stress to one’s life but plenty of wonderful things do that too).  Then there is my concern of the potential of the financial benefits being a major driver of behaviour rather than doing something purely because one is interested in it or see it as beneficial in non financial ways, but plenty of people make major decisions based on interest in money, such as what to take in college and what career to pursue (and unfortunately often end up not enjoying that part of their life), so that’s likely not that different than before, social media is just another, very accessible option…though I wonder how many actually make enough to balance their investment of time and effort.  Hopefully most who are doing it primarily for money or stardom don’t invest money into the setup until they are making enough to cover those costs.

It would be disappointing though if I found out he was going so far as expecting to become a popular speaker in the Church because then I worry that baptism is motivated by more than just being captivated by the Spirit and maybe loving the community.  There are a lot of valid reasons to join a faith and looking for a place to belong is high up there, imo, but looking to get attention and changing behaviour based on that, I see it as setting oneself up for dissatisfaction later on, especially with our faith as it is high demand.

He wasn’t just talking about looking into LDS theology before the experiment. He was championing it over non-LDS Christianity with videos about stuff like the LDS view of the Godhead being superior to the Trinity. That is not examining the faith, it is arguing for it and his arguments are the kind you get out of the LDS playbook. I get an “insider trying to look like an outsider” vibe.

I would wait to see if this conversion sticks before championing this as a great victory. And that it doesn’t turn into an attempt at monetizing the conversion.

I doubt that if monetization is the goal that this guy will succeed in any case. This isn’t the kind of story that is likely to gain traction for more than a short time period with such a relatively small social media channel and it is hard to keep up interest unless he gets a new schtick or angle going soon to keep people interested and to draw more people in he will get a short shot in the limelight and then probably fade. Youtubers who hope to make it big are a dime a dozen and only a few succeed. Succeeding when your primary appeal is to a small target audience like LDS people makes it harder.

Edited May 29 by The Nehor

[telnetd]

"Do not attempt in any way to discuss or answer questions about the second anointing".

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrines-of-the-gospel/chapter-19?lang=eng

[AnchoredinChrist]

Holy for real???? I know about this guy! At least I did a while back, it was probably a couple of years ago that I first found his channel because he, as a non-Mormon Christian, decided to film himself reading the Book of Mormon and his commentary on it (what he liked and didn't like about it) as an interfaith side project thing. He was maybe just curious enough to decide to read it while telling others his thoughts. As far as I know there really aren't other non-Mormon Youtubers reading through the Book of Mormon for interest's sake so I thought it was a unique project to put online. Him voicing the things he didn't like about it as he was reading it out loud though led to there being contentious Mormons in his comments sections arguing with him, to the point that he ended up stopping and I think even deleting his videos (so no, he wasn't doing it to be mean to Mormons or to the Church and he wasn't doing it for monetized views, because once people started getting mean he deleted everything.) Some time later I guess some other nicer Mormons convinced him to start his Book of Mormon reading project back up again, which he did. I remember watching his first reboot video in which he read the title page of the Book of Mormon and of it being the most correct book and him saying politely that he doesn't ascribe to that. I didn't end up watching his whole Book of Mormon reading series, but look at him now!

So yeah, he's been familiar with Mormonism for at least the past couple of years; he's read the Book of Mormon and has had back-and-forths with Mormons in his comment sections throughout that time, but back then he was definitely not interested in becoming a Mormon himself. I'm super surprised to see this now, I would definitely view this "personal challenge" of his as sincere. It could be that he'd already gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon but previous to these 30 days he was unsure about whether or not he wanted to align himself with the LDS church.

Thank you so much for sharing!

[AnchoredinChrist]

Okay so I just looked up his latest videos, and he decided to do another 30 Day challenge, which was titled, "30 Days Living Like a Mormon Missionary." But then sometime after, he made another video stating that after doing so many more deep dives into LDS doctrine, there are a few (literally three, so he was very specific and not just vague) doctrinal issues that he still had unbelief with in his mind and so he decided since he wasn't 100% fully aligned that he wasn't going to go through with his baptism after all. His latest video (released seven hours ago) was one stating that he believes the LDS church has some manmade doctrines in it, but he frames it as non-criticism as he states that he believes every church has manmade doctrines to a certain extent. I happen to also think that the LDS church has some manmade doctrines in it, both past and present, so that's something that I happen to understand. I still think that his past words were genuine and I don't think his previous decision to be baptized was financially motivated because pretending to want to get baptized would make a good Youtube video -- it's not like Mormons are super well liked on Youtube.

I wish him well, I hope he feels able to retain his testimony of the Book of Mormon going forward. By definition, a person doesn't need to be a member of the LDS church in order to be Mormon.

[Calm]

29 minutes ago, AnchoredinChrist said:

Holy for real???? I know about this guy! At least I did a while back, it was probably a couple of years ago that I first found his channel because he, as a non-Mormon Christian, decided to film himself reading the Book of Mormon and his commentary on it (what he liked and didn't like about it) as an interfaith side project thing. He was maybe just curious enough to decide to read it while telling others his thoughts. As far as I know there really aren't other non-Mormon Youtubers reading through the Book of Mormon for interest's sake so I thought it was a unique project to put online. Him voicing the things he didn't like about it as he was reading it out loud though led to there being contentious Mormons in his comments sections arguing with him, to the point that he ended up stopping and I think even deleting his videos (so no, he wasn't doing it to be mean to Mormons or to the Church and he wasn't doing it for monetized views, because once people started getting mean he deleted everything.) Some time later I guess some other nicer Mormons convinced him to start his Book of Mormon reading project back up again, which he did. I remember watching his first reboot video in which he read the title page of the Book of Mormon and of it being the most correct book and him saying politely that he doesn't ascribe to that. I didn't end up watching his whole Book of Mormon reading series, but look at him now!

So yeah, he's been familiar with Mormonism for at least the past couple of years; he's read the Book of Mormon and has had back-and-forths with Mormons in his comment sections throughout that time, but back then he was definitely not interested in becoming a Mormon himself. I'm super surprised to see this now, I would definitely view this "personal challenge" of his as sincere. It could be that he'd already gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon but previous to these 30 days he was unsure about whether or not he wanted to align himself with the LDS church.

Thank you so much for sharing!

Thanks for the back story, good to hear (also sad given LDS aggressively arguing with him).

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, AnchoredinChrist said:

I happen to also think that the LDS church has some manmade doctrines in it, both past and present, so that's something that I happen to understand

I agree as well.  I don’t see anything in our doctrine that prevents that.  There’s references to if prophets err, it will be made known…implying they will err, which sounds like “man-made” to me.  Could just be policies, but logical to me it also includes doctrine that is a result of misinterpreted revelation or possibly filling in the gaps the wrong way.

Edited Tuesday at 11:00 PM by Calm