This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Media reporting on the 10 day social media fast:
Media Corporations Are Desperate To Keep Us On Social Media
It Was Easy – I found it surprisingly easy to participate in the church’s 10 day social media fast. Everyone talks about how integral our smartphones have become in our lives. For GPS navigation, cameras, and messaging this is certainly true; but for social media I did not find this to be the case. There were two times I broke the fast to answer some questions people had about the church, and I tacked that time on to the end of the 10 days, so I finished my fast a couple days after everyone else. But the entire time I felt no desire to check my Twitter.
I guess this isn’t the case for everybody. Many people thrive on the attention, even if the attention is anonymous, and this deire is what social media have used to market their products. Is it good to thrive on anonymous attention (or at least on the attention of hundreds of people on Facebook who you haven’t seen since high school)?
Desperate Corporations – Most people recognize that this social media craze is not healthy. Yet browsing through the news, I was dismayed to see the media attacking “Mormons” for the social media fast. They said the church was using this social media fast to prevent women from voting–probably the most ridiculous spin I have ever seen the media use against the church, and that’s really saying something.
First, why would the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints want to prevent women in the church from voting? They vote just as conservatively as the men do, and these media corporations are acting like they are some kind of Leftist voting block that is being suppressed. A poll shows social media does not tilt which candidate people are encouraged to vote for (or at least it didn’t before 2012). If the church wanted to affect elections in the church’s favor, wouldn’t they want women to be encouraged by fellow church members on Facebook to vote? Secondly, were people unable to vote before social media came along? Media corporations are acting like we need Facebook to understand the issues and know how to vote, which I find frankly condescending. Why are they acting like women are incapable of voting without social media? Doesn’t this indicate the media corporations expect people to become dependant on their social media products for mundane activities such as voting? I guess I wasn’t shocked that the media corporations oppose the social media fast. That’s to be expected. After all, they want to keep their customers. But what shocked me was just how possessive the corporations are. It was only 10 days! Just ten days, and the corporations were freaking out that we aren’t dependant on them for something like voting.
Memetics – The media corporations expect social media users to succumb to peer pressure and mindlessly accept whatever popular message spreads across the mob. This is a theory called Memetics, and it is how information spreads on the internet, such as political opinions. The same opinion is retweeted and reposted millions of times and the masses come away with the same ideology. Recently, media corporations launched a massive censorship campaign to ensure the “wrong” opinions don’t spread. So, that’s how social media works. But this is not how the gospel works. This is not how a spiritual testimony works. I believe this is why church members find it such a challenge to spread the gospel online. It simply isn’t structured in a way conducive to sharing testimony. It is structured to pressure millions of users to propagate the same daily message and not think critically. The media’s freakout about “suppressing votes” indicates this difference in structure.
Memetics relies on the nature of people to seek compromise and adapt beliefs to that of the community. When you chat with a friend, you naturally adapt opinions to find some sort of compromise and walk away better informed about what you should believe. People do this even when it comes to heated debates. So when you open your Facebook app and see hundreds of your close friends, family, and respected celebrities sharing the same message and expressing the same sympathies, it is pretty much impossible for you not to adapt your beliefs to conform to what they say. This is why the media corporations are so outraged about church members briefly taking a break in a political season: they know the church is a tiny minority and are therefore susceptible to the memetic messages being pushed on them by the massive popular culture leaders. It is partly about propagating the message and partly about keeping people dependant on their media platform to be informed and part of a global community.
Not Just For Women
Recently I had a discussion I with a female feminist who was outraged that the church puts so much effort into solving porn addictions, because she believed it was a men’s issue and did not help women. I was perplexed by this. Do only men have addictions? As long as we are using sexist stereotypes, I said, I suppose the church could help with Instagram addictions.
I do not believe such things are male-only or female-only issues. But the media likes to pin a problem entirely on one group or another. So when you announce something like a social media fast to a women’s-only conference, you should expect the corporations to scream misogyny, I suppose. Of course they are going to take this liberating, positive, empowering social media fast and spin it as negative, and then as sexist. It was announced in the women’s conference, but did that mean it is a problem exclusive to women? I got the impression from the Holy Ghost that I needed to participate in the fast even though I am a man.
What I learned was that regardless of who it was directed to, the problem of social media involves everyone. When I walk down the sidewalk and see everybody hunched over glued to the phones, I don’t see just one demographic doing this. Lust for attention, social approval, and memetics are not things that are unique to any one group.
“Social media is marketed as something that promotes diversity yet all I see is the same messages”
I Canceled Netflix – I found that when I didn’t spend time on social media, other media became less interesting. Modern movies became less interesting. Modern pop songs too. This was unexpected, but I suppose it makes sense. The memetic messages cross over to other mediums, so the same ideas and same artistic frame is to be found all over. I found once I had isolated and removed one of these mediums from my life, the other mediums became more open to critical observation. So, when I turned on Netflix I saw things I didn’t see before. I noticed it was all the same plots, same music, same kinds of actors, same everything. There’s only so many shows about people in a space station returning to a post-apocalyptic earth that I can watch! It’s always the same kind of intro music with the names of actors and directors flashing with close-up shots of rotating statues in the background. Then the same actors in their young twenties come on screen and encounter the same formulaic dilemma and have to go on the same kind of journey. It’s interesting that all these media platforms are marketed as something that promotes diversity when all I see are the same messages and same ideology.
Now, it is not so strange when I see teenagers leave the church for seemingly-insignificant reasons, like political or social opinions. When they are constantly surrounded by such dominant and all-encompassing universal imagery, ideology, and messages, the tiniest deviation will upset them. Maybe the church’s new hymnbook should just be songs with thumping drums and repetitive movie soundtrack music? Maybe the church’s Sunday School manuals should be stories about 23 year old astronauts in space stations returning to a post-apocalyptic earth and overcoming their misogynistic and racist natures? Maybe if we fit our media to the unrelenting social media meme we can gain more members? Well, of course that wouldn’t work. That could never happen, because the music, the movies, the TV shows, the social media–all of it swirls around the great single ideology, an ideology of social justice which is opposed to the church’s gospel. If we compromised our church to fit their popular culture frame, we eould simply get sucked into the black hole and become part of it, much like the early Christian Church which got sucked into the government of Rome and became apostate. Rather, we must be careful that the gravity of the massive media complex does not draw us in.
It reminds me of Tocqueville’s observation in 1895 that while American democracy may bring equality, but we need to be careful that equality of opportunity does not become equality of everything else, where we all end up the same: “In democratic communities, where men are all insignificant and very much alike, each man instantly sees all his fellows when he surveys himself… Thus the principle of equality; in proportion as it has established itself in the world, has dried up most of the old springs of poetry.” “What is still more strange is that all these men, who kept themselves so apart from each other, had become so much alike that it would have been impossible to distinguish them if their places had been changed… Each of them stuck to his own particular condition simply because every one else was particularized by his own condition but they were all ready to be confounded in one mass, provided that no one had any separate position nor rose superior to the common level.” (Alexis de Tocqueville , (2nd quote) )
Why 10 Days? – A few months ago, the church suggested a week-long fast for the youth from social media, which was also very successful. I found it interesting that for this recent women’s conference it was 10 days. Why 10 days? Was it just an extra few days to make it mean more? Perhaps, but the symbolism of the number 10 suggested to me that there might be a lot more to it.
There are 10 commandments. Jesus said to John “I AM” 10 recorded times. There were 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and Noah was ordained to the priesthood when he was 10 years old. Mormon was likewise 10 when he was called to the work. It seems like 10 indicates a time of spiritual preparation. But then there were also the 10 plagues of Egypt. Maybe these 10 days also represent modern social plagues spreading across mankind. In any case, I get the feeling that this number of days 10 was specifically inspired for a very certain purpose, and this indicates this fast was not just grandfatherly advice but delivered for an important reason.
| See also: | How We Can Oppose The Label ‘Mormon’ |
I found it particularly interesting that the 10 day fast was suggested concurrently with the strong talk President Nelson gave about the church name policy. When we are plugged into social media, it becomes hard to see what is so important about a simple name like ‘Mormon.’ But once we are unplugged, suddenly we see just what a pejorative ‘Mormon’ has become, and how little focus there is on Jesus Christ. Search for ‘Mormon’ on any social media and tell me how many of the recent results are insults against the church versus how many are about Jesus. It has really gotten bad, and the media corporations, again, are upset at this directive by President Nelson because it takes control away from them. No longer can they define us by manipulating the meaning of the word ‘Mormon.’
But the media has doubled down and insisted on calling us Mormons, which only serves to expose the bigotry that has been simmering among journalists and Hollywood producers all along. Take a look at this recent headline from a big religious blog. Not only does it disrespectfully call us Mormon, it says we are not “human.” It blatantly dehumanizes us:
This kind of bigoted, dehumanizing rhetoric fills the airwaves and attacks us from all sides, a constant stream of hatred. All the media does this! That is how bad it has gotten. Some might call the social media fast a retreat from this persecution, but I think it really is designed to help us see the high level it has gotten, like waves of a stormy sea approaching the windows of a house on the shore. It brings an empowering awareness–of ourselves, of our community, and the world at large.
Perhaps most important is what unplugging from social media brings us at a most basic level: if we aren’t looking down at our phones we can look up at the sky, and see the divine wonder of heavenly creation and study our path to divinity.
