If the discussions here and at sites like this one are sometimes less than satisfactory, it\u2019s partly because of unstated conventions and informal norms that got started nearly two decades ago and that we\u2019re often barely conscious of today. Two especially need to be rethought.<\/p>\n
Cheap validation<\/strong>. There\u2019s an unstated but widespread convention that comments should be accepted at face value, with the result that people have gotten used to being able to say anything with the expectation that they will be believed. Things like \u201cevery bishop I\u2019ve ever known was a blockhead\u201d or \u201cevery elder on my mission was only in it for the chance to be a leader\u201d or \u201cI could feel the people in the chapel rejecting me.\u201d Some reports of toddler wisdom lack only a defiant shout of \u201cRuthkanda forever!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n (The one exception seems to be statements of mainstream belief, where it\u2019s considered acceptable to reply to anything related to Church history or doctrine with something along the lines of \u201cit\u2019s so obvious that Mormonism is false\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re just an apologist fitting the evidence to a predetermined conclusion.\u201d For some reason, \u201cJoseph Smith just made it up\u201d is considered a useful response to devotional insights from 2 Nephi.)<\/p>\n But we need to take a moment and talk about\u2026you. A certain percentage of people we meet in real life are mentally ill, poor observers of their own lives, detached from reality, driven by an undisclosed agenda, given to fantasy or catastrophizing, or just eager to sow trouble. When it comes to online discourse, we know that some people will make outrageous claims to gain approval, or are pretending to be something they aren\u2019t, or they regard online discussions as an outlet for their creative impulses. Some of you fall into these categories. I don\u2019t know who or how many, but it\u2019s fruitless to pretend otherwise. There\u2019s a handful of you I\u2019ve met in real life and another few dozen that I\u2019m fully convinced are real, while the rest have some degree of probability attached to your names. That\u2019s just the unfortunate online reality.<\/p>\n Another online community I follow has its own issues and toxicities, but at least it has the salutary custom of participants saying: your story doesn\u2019t add up; you\u2019re obviously omitting some crucial details; you\u2019re going about things entirely the wrong way; your suggestion would make things worse. We could use more of that. It would be healthier to push back and to interrogate claims, rather than to treat stories heard on the Internet as an especially compelling category of evidence.<\/p>\n And if you\u2019re thinking, \u201cWell, how would you<\/em> like it if commenters here started calling your posts nonsense?\u201d I invite you to look at the last couple decades of comments on my posts. People have critiqued every post I\u2019ve made, from confessions of faith<\/a> to insights from my research<\/a> to an obituary for a family friend<\/a>. So I\u2019m not terribly impressed by the idea that everyone\u2019s story deserves validation. Some of the stories are just not that plausible, and we\u2019d all benefit if we got in the habit of pushing back and asking for context and documentation.<\/p>\n \u00ad\u00adAnd even people who are posting in good faith are reporting a self-narrative that\u2019s limited and skewed. You saw what you saw, but does it actually mean what you think? Sometimes when I mention something that has aggravated me to my wife she\u2019ll agree or express sympathy, but most often she\u2019ll tell me how I\u2019m missing crucial information or interpreting things incorrectly. When I go back and read my missionary journal decades after the fact, sometimes I really do think: that other guy was such a jerk. But most often I find myself thinking: I can\u2019t believe I was such a jerk.<\/p>\n Shallow membership<\/strong>. This has been a formally stated rule at times: it\u2019s beyond the pale to question the faith or faithfulness of another blogger or commenter. And so we\u2019ve gotten used to treating anything anyone says as compatible with church teachings or the gospel of Christ, up to and including rejecting the concept of sin or seeing Joseph Smith as a false prophet.<\/p>\n (The one exception again seems to be mainstream beliefs like the truth of the Book of Mormon or the literal Resurrection or the Church\u2019s other truth claims, where it\u2019s acceptable to dismiss believers as rubes or prisoners to empty formalism or weaker in actual faith than the critics whose first reaction to a session of General Conference is to look for its flaws.)<\/p>\n But after watching enough people go from holding edgy beliefs to jumping off the edge, it\u2019s no use to pretend that everything anyone says is compatible with faithful membership in the Church or faith in Jesus Christ. Ten years ago you were saying, \u201cHow dare you question my love for the Church and the gospel\u201d; today you say that you no longer identify as a Christian. Holding beliefs or saying things that are incompatible with basic Christian doctrine or Church teachings will eventually lead you away from the body of the saints. It\u2019s a well trodden path, and even if it\u2019s advice on vaccination that you\u2019re dismissing as mere politically-motivated strategy or culturally-influenced speculation rather than prophetic counsel, the ending is the same.<\/p>\n At the outset, the justification for Mormon blogging was that it would provide a space to discuss matters of common interest and work through potential concerns. It has not fulfilled that promise. It has instead frequently become a platform for mocking church leaders and teachings, a ready amen chorus for shallow complaint, and a halfway house between disaffection and exit. If that\u2019s ever going to change, we have to admit that not everything people write is real, and not everything people say is compatible with the restored gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the discussions here and at sites like this one are sometimes less than satisfactory, it\u2019s partly because of unstated conventions and informal norms that got started nearly two decades ago and that we\u2019re often barely conscious of today. Two especially need to be rethought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47212,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208\/revisions\/47212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}