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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

Behind the Bastards

Sun Dec 22 2024

Summary

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) – Detailed Summary

Release Date: December 22, 2024
Hosts: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Introduction

In the episode titled "Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)," the podcast delves into the intriguing phenomenon of why Mormon women dominate the social media influencing landscape. Hosted by Jamie Loftus and featuring insights from ex-Mormon influencer Alyssa Grenfell, the episode explores the historical, cultural, and economic factors contributing to this trend.

Part One: Understanding Mormonism

Historical Origins and Doctrine ([02:14] – [19:25])

Jamie Loftus begins by providing a comprehensive overview of the Mormon Church (LDS - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), tracing its origins back to Joseph Smith in 1830 during the Second Great Religious Awakening in the United States. Key points include:

Founding Events:
- “Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to try things.” ([02:14])
- Smith's revelations, including the visit from the Angel Moroni and the subsequent creation of the Book of Mormon, which narrates the migration of a group of Jewish people to the Americas.
Core Beliefs:
- Emphasis on Jesus Christ's resurrection and His visit to the Americas as the Pale Prophet.
- Doctrine stipulating God as a flesh-and-blood being with a flesh-and-blood wife, underscoring the importance of nuclear families.
- Practices like polygamy introduced by Smith, which remained controversial and eventually phased out officially in 1890.
Historical Conflicts:
- Persecution faced by early Mormons, including violent expulsions from states like Missouri and Illinois.
- Establishment of Nauvoo, Illinois, as a center for the LDS community before Smith's death in 1844.
Cultural Impact:
- “Mormonism shares a little bit of DNA with spiritualism...” ([04:33])
- The significant role of Mormon women in maintaining and propagating church teachings through disciplined practices and strict gender roles.

Modern-Day LDS Community ([19:25] – [31:58])

Jamie details the evolution of Mormonism and its contemporary standing:

Population and Influence:
- Approximately 40% of Utah's population identifies as Mormon, with institutions like Brigham Young University playing pivotal roles.
- Influence extends to popular culture through personalities like Mitt Romney, David Archuleta, and the Osmond family.
Economic Power:
- The LDS Church's net worth is estimated at $265 billion, surpassing giants like Disney.
- “Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing where church members are required to give 10% of their income back to the LDS.” ([19:25])
Social Dynamics:
- Historical and ongoing challenges with indigenous populations, including policies resembling residential schools aimed at cultural assimilation.
- Contemporary issues include a high rate of ex-Mormons and a shift in retention rates from 95% in the late 1980s to about one-third retention today.

Part Two: Mormon Women in Social Media Influencing

Rise of Mormon Mommy Bloggers and Tradwife Movement ([32:01] – [87:53])

Jamie Loftus explores how Mormon women have successfully transitioned into the realm of social media influencing, particularly focusing on the "tradwife" (traditional wife) archetype.

Early Influencers:
- “Mormon mommy bloggers were a part of the coined blogger nacle community...” ([38:59])
- Pioneers like Amber Phillip Clark and Naomi Davis set the stage with clean, curated visions of motherhood and family life.
- The creation of the "Niblets" award system to recognize influential Mormon bloggers.
Transformation to Instagram and TikTok:
- Shift from text-based blogs to visually-driven platforms emphasizing aesthetics and perfection.
- Influence of shows like "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" in normalizing and glamorizing Mormon cultural norms.
Economic Factors and Algorithmic Influence:
- Alyssa Grenfell introduces a pivotal theory linking the Mormon Church's substantial advertising budget to the high visibility of Mormon influencers.
- “Mormon is $25.30 per click, compared to Catholic at $3.58.” ([69:18])
- The LDS Church's strategic investment in high-cost keywords ensures prominent ad placement, inadvertently boosting Mormon-related content.
Case Study: Ballerina Farm ([70:49] – [97:53])
- Profile of Hannah Nealman, aka Ballerina Farm, a prominent Mormon influencer with 10 million Instagram followers.
- Discussion of her life balancing farm management, eight children, and maintaining a polished online persona.
- Examination of the challenges and criticisms faced, including accusations of perpetuating unrealistic standards and the high level of personal sacrifice implied.
- “She made this all look so easy... That’s a solid ad for Mormonism.” ([75:27])
Ex-Mormon Perspectives and Critiques:
- Jamie and Alyssa highlight how ex-Mormons perceive these influencers as representations of the church's rigid and often oppressive structures.
- Emphasis on the lack of acknowledgment from the LDS Church despite their significant financial contributions to influencer success.
- Alyssa Grenfell states:
  “It's not about demonizing something that's genuinely human, but critiquing the approach that these accounts are sharing.” ([105:46])

Money, Algorithms, and Church Influence ([67:16] – [100:52])

Alyssa Grenfell provides a deeper analysis of the economic underpinnings that elevate Mormon influencers:

Ad Spend and Keyword Dominance:
- High cost-per-click (CPC) values for Mormon-related search terms compared to other religions.
- The LDS Church's extensive ad campaigns on platforms like Google Ads boost visibility for Mormon content organically.
Church’s Strategic Online Presence:
- “They have whole departments hired for this kind of thing.” ([103:35])
- Efforts to ensure LDS content ranks highly in search results, countering anti-Mormon literature.
- Examples include SEO optimization around terms like "Bible" and "Jesus Christ" to present the LDS perspective prominently.
Influencer Economics:
- Mormon influencers benefit disproportionately from ad revenue due to the high CPC of their content niche.
- This financial advantage allows them to scale their influence rapidly compared to non-Mormon counterparts.
Cultural Messaging and Brand Management:
- Influencers subtly integrate Mormon values without overtly branding themselves as LDS representatives to appeal to a broader audience.
- “They are making the Mormon Church look very good and very beautiful and traditional and feminine.” ([96:14])

Interviews and Insights

Conversation with Alyssa Grenfell ([71:05] – [106:38])

Jamie Loftus engages in an in-depth dialogue with Alyssa Grenfell, an ex-Mormon influencer, uncovering personal experiences and broader societal observations:

Personal Journey:
- Alyssa recounts her upbringing in a devout Mormon household, experiencing gender role conditioning from a young age.
- Her eventual departure from the church due to conflicting values, particularly regarding LGBTQ+ issues and personal faith crises.
Influencer Success and church Benefits:
- Exploration of how Mormon influencers, like Ballerina Farm, achieve high engagement and substantial revenues.
- “They are making the same amount regardless of their content niche.” ([95:09])
Theoretical Framework:
- Alyssa posits that the LDS Church's significant financial investment in online advertising indirectly supports and amplifies Mormon influencer success.
- “The Mormon Church is the richest church on the planet. It's similar to the net worth of Disney.” ([94:05])
Impact on Public Perception:
- Influencers provide a polished and aspirational view of Mormon life, potentially attracting curious non-Mormons.
- Controversies, such as the exposé on Ballerina Farm, reveal the underlying pressures and sacrifices of maintaining such an online persona.
Systemic Influence vs. Individual Responsibility:
- Discussion on critiquing the systemic structures of Mormonism rather than individual influencers.
- “Let's not go after a specific woman. Let's go after maybe the system...” ([105:46])

Conclusions and Takeaways

The episode concludes by synthesizing the insights gathered from historical context, economic analysis, and personal narratives:

Economic Leverage:
- The LDS Church's hefty investment in online advertising and high CPC keywords creates a favorable environment for Mormon influencers to thrive financially.
Cultural Transmission:
- Traditional Mormon values around family, gender roles, and homemaking are seamlessly integrated into polished social media content, making it highly appealing and aspirational.
Algorithmic Favoritism:
- Social media algorithms inadvertently boost Mormon-related content due to strategic ad spends, enhancing visibility and follower growth for Mormon influencers.
Systemic Critique:
- The success of Mormon influencers is less about individual prowess and more about the systemic support and cultural conditioning provided by the LDS Church.
Future Implications:
- As the internet continues to evolve, the symbiotic relationship between religious institutions and social media influencers will likely shape public perceptions and cultural trends.

Notable Quotes:

Alyssa Grenfell on Tradwife Content:
“Tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of the nuclear family...” ([33:33])
Jamie Loftus on Mormon Church's Internet Strategy:
“They have whole departments hired for this kind of thing.” ([103:35])
Alyssa Grenfell on Systemic Critique:
“It's better and more helpful, I think, more informative to say this is the system that made this phenomenon exist to begin with.” ([105:46])

Conclusion

"Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)" offers a nuanced exploration of the intersection between Mormonism and social media influencing, highlighting how historical doctrines, economic strategies, and cultural values converge to create a unique influencer phenomenon. Through thorough research and candid discussions, the episode sheds light on the pervasive yet subtle influence of the LDS Church in shaping online narratives and the lives of Mormon women influencers.

Note: All timestamps correspond to the podcast transcript provided and are used to reference specific segments within the episode.

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Transcript

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Alyssa Grenfell (7:55)

Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we talk to the Internet's characters of the day and see how their 15 minutes of fame affected them and what it says about the Internet and us. But this week we're taking a bit of a side quest to answer a question I've been asked quite a bit lately and I didn't know how to answer foreign why are there so many Mormon women at the top of the social media influencing pile after a recent episode? I saw this question in the comments everywhere. I saw it on the 16th minute Reddit board, which by the way, someone made if you're interested or have thoughts after episodes. And while it did resonate with me that the subject of the episode had been raised Mormon, I didn't want to touch that within the episode for a couple reasons. First, because they never talk about Mormonism in their content and have generally avoided questions about it. And second, I didn't have a fucking clue what the answer to this question was, even though I understand why it was being asked. So this week we're going to attempt to answer that question in a two part Deep Dive series, the second of which will release on Thursday. Because to understand the root of why Mormonism and present day Mormon Mommy influencers are so successful, you've got to understand where the overlaps in their interests are and how the values of both of these communities line up. So this week we're going to get all up to speed on that. And on Thursday, Alyssa Grenfell will unpack how Mormon moms have stayed on top of Internet influencing for the last 20 years. All right, let's jump in and take a brief God I really hope actually brief look into the history of the Mormon Church in America and I'll link to some additional resources in the description of the episode. Okay, let's learn about Mormons. Mormonism is a 19th century religion formally founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. He was born squarely in the middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the U.S. a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism and the Baptist Church and would birth a lot more. And Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to try things. The Mormon faith, often called the LDS or Latter Day Saints, came up shortly after the Shakers movement. The LDS came to prominence around the same time as a number of black church movements like the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA with spiritualism and you can listen to my limited series Ghost Church for more about the history of that. The mid 19th century was a big time of religious change and upheaval in the US and after Mormonism took off, new religions continued to pop up. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists weren't far behind Mormonism. But very few specific movements from this time still have the cultural hold on America that Mormonism does. So Joseph Smith releases the Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in 1830. But the religion's origin story connects to two incidents from the previous 10 years. One was from 1820 when Joseph was 14 and asked both Jesus and God which religion to follow and was told by them, follow none of them. It is your job to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus. The other incident was in 1823 when a 17 year old Smith is said to have been visited by the Angel Moroni to repeat this calling. And was also told that there was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with the quote unquote American continent that he needed to translate with a series tools when he was a little older. After the Angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he retrieved and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon, which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a bit of a Wizard of Ozzie quality to the way that this translation is dictated. There's magic stones, he's going behind curtains. And sometimes he wouldn't even use the gold plates. He would instead put a special stone in a hat, then bury his face in said hat. But if you're a prophet, he explained, the stone lights up within the hat and then you just dictate from there. This whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern Scientology, where members in Florida are engraving the words of L. Ron Hubbard onto titanium plates as we speak. It also harkens back to Helena Blavatsky's notion of the Akashic records of the late 19th century, which were said to be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that. A lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic. Great movie. And if you're not familiar with the origins of the Book of Mormon, to be fair, most religious origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has a similarly mystical origin story. As for its contents, the Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's destroyed in 600 BC. They built a boat, sail it to the Americas, and soon become embroiled in a conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later be softened to say that they were among the ancestors of some indigenous people. So a group of Jewish people migrate to the Americas and become indigenous Americans. Okay, Jesus is a huge part of Mormonism. And the Book of Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in 33 AD, he goes to visit the Americas, where he is hailed as the Pale Prophet, because, yes, Mormon Jesus is white. Some of their other beliefs, as expressed through Joseph Smith, are that God is a flesh and blood being who has a flesh and blood wife. His wife who lives far Away near a distant star. And God tells Joseph Smith that we earthlings were brought into being to create these nuclear families, to be closer to God, so that one day we can live with God out of town on the star where he lives. And to create these families. You hear a lot of the classic signifiers of fundamentalist religions. There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline and suffering. There are rigid gender roles, there's canonical homophobia, there's absurd racism that was later scaled back in order to accommodate growth and membership. Until a few decades ago, the Book of Mormon described members as a white and lightsome people. To this day, there is still a tacit don't ask, don't tell policy within the church about queerness. And that's an improvement from the mid 2010s when the children of queer parents were still not allowed to be baptized in the lds. Anyways, in his time, Joseph Smith was, per his account, declared a prophet by Jesus and genuinely did face a great deal of persecution in the early days where he was gathering followers in New York. He was arrested and ejected from the state and took his believers to Ohio to prepare for the second coming of Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise, where Smith envisioned communities that would be governed by celestial laws as determined by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows further away from traditional Christianity. And before you know it, the Mormons are ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered before this. The group then moves to Missouri, which is great because the Lord just so happens to have told Joseph Smith that that's actually where Zion is, but also where the Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start buying up land in Missouri. And to remind you of the era of history we're in, this happened in 1831, just a year after the Indian Removal act was passed and brought about 20 years of brutal genocide of the indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons are driven out again, this time with increasing violence. And over the next few years, they head with Smith all over the Midwest, where they're treated with similar hostility. Most places they go. At one point, the Governor of Missouri passed an extermination act. Eventually, they move to Illinois, where they're permitted to set up a city of their own called Nauvoo, basically Zion 2.0. And it's here where Smith lightly militarizes the group and increasingly sends out missionaries to continue to grow the faith. And at the same time, Smith is told by an angel to introduce one of the LDS's most controversial polygamy. And polygamy wasn't something that was allowed to everyone in the faith at first, just the powerful in the church. And during Smith's lifetime the practice was kept fairly quiet. He married as many as 40 women, some of whom were underage women were expected to remain in the home, have many children and to this day there is an early and intense emphasis on being a wife and mother before all else. The end of the line came for Joseph Smith in Illinois in 1844, where non Mormon locals imprisoned and then killed he and his brother. He's been hailed as an eternal prophet in the Mormon Church ever since and is still an extremely prominent figure in the culture to this day. And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective, there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on YouTube that are really well acted.

Alyssa Grenfell (27:13)

Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other trad wife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon Church has been unusually good at adapting to the Internet and always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll get there. If you've managed to make it to fall 2024 without having the word trad wife shoved in your face, congratulations and sorry, because I am going to tell you what it is. Tradwife content is a social media trend from about the last half decade where women create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes to more closely aligned with traditional gender roles, with an emphasis on the beauty of a return to old time values. So TikTok's about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest. Not all trad wives are Mormons. Notalltradwives. Not even close. And I'm not going to tackle the topic of tradwife content wholesale in this episode. What you need to know is the term tradwife shouldn't be conflated with stay at home moms because while tradwife creators are moms and at home with the children, making tradwife content is, for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting. Because being a stay at home parent is a job. Although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor as valid, tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess. There's a sense of self surveillance to this content, an appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back to mid 20th century America. So if this makes sense, adwives don't look like stay at home moms. They look like the advertisements of stay at home moms. And so much of what makes their content appealing is that an incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive and morally correct. Because if you're making lifestyle content of any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle you're working in sales I hate to break it to you, how many hot dogs have I sold by accident? Incalculable. Yow wee. Just not the tradwife space is predominantly white, but possibly more diverse than you might expect. There is an active black tradwife community who, according to a Refinery 29 piece by Nyla Burton in late 2022, believe that, quote, traditional marriage is the key to black women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity and the stress of trying to survive in a world hostile to our survival and existence. Tradwife content is popular across a lot of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a feeling of performance and this aesthetic of either mid century housewives or cottagecore. In my opinion, there's very little intimacy to these posts, in spite of the fact that we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing their children who are, make no mistake, a part of the business model. While I totally get why the content is so appealing, it does feel like a performance and a very effective one. I mean, I'm like a militant feminist and I would be lying if I said I hadn't seen a few trad wife posts that made me feel like I was living my life the wrong way. But neutral statement, these posts are a performance. Think of it like this. The Donna Reed show very effectively sold the idea of Donna Reid as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived in this effortless way and in reality was a television show that was produced by its star and that the real Donna Reed was a multi hyphenate creative and a TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife rather than actually living that life herself.

Alyssa Grenfell (33:59)

While these accounts have millions upon millions of followers who view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty of modern moms who are completely fucking baffled by it. Because I've engaged with so much of this content that my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying that TradWife content is often a lot about subtext, right? Projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the 50s were a great time for women. Maybe we need to bring it back. But there's a sense of encouraging to submit to the status quo, a status quo that existed before a lot of necessary civil rights were fought for for. But online now. Tradwives, man. But let's bring it back to the Mormon side of this content specifically, because as we're trying to get to the bottom of, Mormons have found a lot of success in this space. Mom Talkers are far from the only prominent Mormon content creators dominating social media today. The most popular, and so by extension the most embroiled in controversy, is the second major Mormon influencer story of the summer Ballerina Farm. More when we come back. Welcome back to 16th minute. The more I learned about Tradwives, the more the more it became obvious that they developed in response to the capitalism is for girls to actually slay rhetoric of the mid 2010s. But like, is it that different when you're a trad wife entrepreneur, it kind of seems like you're doing the same thing, but the thing that you're selling is that you're not actually doing the thing that I'm watching you doing. And when we left off, we were talking about the most famous Mormon influencer on the scene today, Ballerina Farm. Where do we begin? All my male listeners are getting like a nosebleed. Ballerina Farm is the username for a Mormon woman named Hannah Nealman, whose follower count on Instagram currently sits at 10 million. She was raised in the LDS and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into and graduated from Juilliard. And she cited over and over that she was the first undergrad in modern history to be pregnant while still at Juilliard. Because while there she got married to fellow Mormon Daniel Neilman In 2011, the year before she graduated. So both the Neilmans grew up in big, devout Utah Mormon families. Hannah was one of nine, Daniel was one of 10. They got engaged after only three weeks, and while Hannah was still in college, she also started competing in beauty pageants. She started with Miss New York and then re entered the space after getting married and having kids because Hannah does not stay a ballerina. After graduation, Hannah and Daniel moved to England for a semester at Cambridge, then Utah so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham Young University, and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as the director of his father's security company for a few years. Because, it must be said, financially, these are incredibly privileged people. Daniel's father founded Jet Blue Dude, They've Got Money and he's so Mormon that he worked on Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign in 2012. But Daniel's dream is to move back to Utah and live on a farm, and they finally do so in 2017, buying the eponymous ballerina farm in 2018. By the time they moved on to the 328 acre farm, they had four kids. And when they moved onto the farm, Hannah Nealman's online brand as a Mormon wife was well established but significantly less successful. Hannah started her social media journey as a mom influencer on a blog called We Took the train in early 2013, shortly after the birth of her first child, Henry, and her college graduation. And it's interesting that she intersects with a completely different era of successful Mormon online influencers, because in the 2000s into the early 2010s, Mormon mommy blogs were a thing. The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline was popular for as long as blogs were popular, and mommy bloggers in general have always enjoyed massive success and usually adapt to new social media platforms pretty easily. I'd recommend Sarah Peterson's book Mom Fluenced for more on this topic, because mommy blogging was popular from the very dawn of social media, but it was very different than the tradwife content that we see today. There was a lot more emphasis on writing over visuals, and the writing tended to be more confessional. Writer Katherine Geiser Morton has been covering this space for a long time. I'm quoting here from a New York Times column called Did Moms Exist before social media from 2020? Where she mentions how Mormon women entering the mommy blog space changed it to.

Alyssa Grenfell (45:52)

It's still praising the lifestyle, but even acknowledging her own insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had about her religion is not something you would see today. In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling with I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood. Am I doing the right thing? She also talks about going to McDonald's and loving it, something that wildly differs from her current stance as a tradwife slash farm to table influencer. In these early days, she's working part time teaching dance while raising her eldest son, trying to sort of find a balance between traditional values and what her passions are. This is not at all what ballerina farm content sounds sounds like. Here's a post from this year. Today we're making some Turkish eggs, so I started off by straining some of Daniel's homemade yogurt in a cheesecloth and hung that so it could get a bit thicker. Then I washed my butter. I also like to run it under some cold water to get it really nice and washed. So Hannah starts is a completely different kind of Mormon influencer. When I started looking for an answer to this question why there are so many Mormon women that are successful online, I was seeing the same ANSW over well, it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot. The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful and Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that now consists of eight children. And they quickly expand this success to start a series of businesses. They start a beef farm, they start a lifestyle brand, and Hannah goes from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok And Instagram creator racking up millions of views on her videos of making meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm to table and family first lifestyle and doing it all in full makeup and these cottage core flowy dresses. There's also quiet advertisements and ballerina farm content for most of her videos. You can find affiliate codes on her website for basically anything you saw her use in the course of the video. In 2021, Hannah had 200,000 Instagram followers. Now she has 10 million. So the days where Hannah was teaching dance part time are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just running a business and making meals. And as these responsibilities pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing all of this. Like, surely someone is helping with the kids and the business, right? Because the kids are homeschooled and the meals took hours. And Hannah appeared to be making content and co running multiple businesses while also upholding conservative values. That's a lot of jobs, but we're not really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the contents appeal is that Hannah made this all look so easy. And as she was doing all of this, she continued to compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of Miss Mrs. America in 2021 and 2023. What you're all flipping out about is her looking smoking hot in participating in Miss World right after she gave birth. I mean, like, I think that placenta probably hadn't even come out when she was putting on her ball gown. I mean, she is that. That was quick. That was a quick turnaround. So she's in your head about that. But why was she not in your head before? I think you guys just haven't been following her closely enough. She's projecting the super mom image, right? It's unclear to viewers how it's attained. And you get the feeling that it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot of other people working just outside the frame, or both. Because the alternative is, well, what the is wrong with me? But this virtuousness, this emphasis on disciplining the body, the emphasis on that ball gowns aside, my marriage and family are the most important thing. That's a solid ad for Mormonism. And even so, the ballerina farm family doesn't often reference the Mormon church online. It's implied they get ready for church on camera. There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender roles in nuclear families. But for someone who comes across their content by chance, there's nothing that screams these are Mormons. Unless you know what to look for in terms of home decor. And this feels by design. You don't build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in the U.S. according to Pew research, behind dominant Protestant and Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist, agnostic, and quote Nothing in Particular. If you're six places behind Nothing in Particular and want to keep growing your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their often controversial religion engine. So in most places I've seen Ballerina Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church and for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like queer and trans rights and open abortion access. I understand why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering. And for people who work on farms that are not bankrolled by JetBlue, the account scans as even more of a performance and then this past summer Ballerina Farm has been a popular point of discussion for years, with evangelizing followers and snark blogs with readership in the six figures. But she comes to widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was a very disturbing dynamic. Main Takeaways from the article Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane. It turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned, and he specifically requested to be sat on said plane beside Hannah, making it the most expensive, predatory meet cute I've ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a year in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but was overruled by Daniel. She was engaged a month later and was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation. There are of course, people working on Ballerina Farm and for their company they were just never acknowledged as existing in the content. However, Hannah is not allowed to have nannies to help her at home, and the article implies that this is Daniel's choice, and he describes Hannah as becoming so exhausted by caring for the eight children that she will sometimes collapse for a week at a time. Which plays into the Mormon and just generally fundamentalist beliefs that women's suffering is virtuous. But to a modern audience, hearing this dynamic within such a wealthy family felt fucked up. Hannah and Daniel did not believe in voluntary abortion, something their content suggested but never stated, and that Hannah's identity prior to their marriage and especially her relationship with dance, had been slowly choked out by Ballerina Farm and the Mormon lifestyle. And this story had reach not only because it was upsetting, but because it seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot of the people who had been asking how Ballerina Farm quote unquote did it all. The article suggests that the answer is by sacrificing parts of herself and being exhausted to the point of not being able to function. Something I thought was interesting while examining the reaction to this story was that non Mormons tended to find Daniel Neilman as the villain of this story because it's him who is constantly correcting, negging and suppressing Hannah throughout the profile as written. But ex Mormon influencers are careful to add a little bit of nuance to this. Their suggestion is more Does Daniel come off as an entitled asshole? Yes, but both Daniel and Hannah are playing their role here. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but ex Mormon YouTubers like Jordan and McKay note that Daniel was playing the part of the devout Mormon husband to the hilt here. And what I'll say in Ballerina Farm's defense, while I find the details of this story really dark, I do believe Hannah Nealman when she says that she believes this is the correct way to live and the rest of us can make of it what we will. Hannah has of course condemned this piece in a recent post. A couple of weeks ago we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business. We thought the interview went really well, very similar to the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory. We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article, which shocked us and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and my marriage. And her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I think this article might have helped her in the long run. But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question. Why Is this a 10 million follower account? Hannah Nealman has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset, and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did. So is she an asset to the Mormon Church? The answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money. It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without talking to people who have been Mormons themselves, who intimate understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the Internet that is built around ex Mormon content, primarily on YouTube and TikTok. As I'm writing this, there are plenty of creators who have left the church explaining their personal experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas and oppression experienced within the LDs, often accounts of their childhood and their mission and why they ultimately left. Like pro Mormon content, excellent ex Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode. Some resources I've used are the long running Mormon stories podcast, which has been going since 2005, and a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's what I'll leave you with. If Mormonism is nowhere near the country's most popular religion but is disproportionately represented on our social media, then what is there left to look to than money and the algorithm? Alyssa Grenfell explains in part two. See you then. 16th minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13 and pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flea and Casper and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Byeee Goodbye.

Alyssa Grenfell (62:00)

Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's characters of the day to see how their moment affected them and what it says about the Internet and us. My name is Jamie Loftus and this is part two of a series trying to answer a question that I honestly thought would be easier to answer. Why is the Internet so dominated by Mormon mommy influencers? So if you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend you do because this is a frustratingly complicated question. Last time we talked about the origins of the Mormon Church, its stance on race, gender and sexuality, Cliff Notes not great and its history of intersecting with conservative leaning social media trends among women. So think Mommy blogger of the 2000s, Mormon women were at the top of that boom and were more open about their religion than many influencers are today. Think about another ongoing trend that's a whole subject unto itself, one I'd like to dedicate more time to in the future. Mormon women's intersection with major multi level marketing schemes. Schemes that rely on salespeople spending a lot of their own money with usually diminishing returns if you don't get in on the ground floor. Utah has the highest concentration of MLMs in the country, and the door to door element isn't that unlike the missionary spirit that the devout embark on on behalf of the Church of Latter Day Saints or the LDS when they're young adults. Sales as a mission Actually, if you're into obscure documentaries as much as I am, one of the most famous contemporary failed MLM schemes was actually founded by a Mormon couple. That being Lularoe, the ugly leggings company that was busted in a massive legal scandal in the 2010s. You tell the people you love they're in a pyramid scheme and they go no I'm not. You're just a hater. I own my own business, I'm very successful. My orders would smell disgusting. It was just insane. The amount of hoops I had to jump through to get them to ever admit that their product was faulty.

Alyssa Grenfell (64:13)

And when it comes to recruiting for MLMs, Mormon women tend to be excellent marks because of the rigid gender roles of the religion that encourage many women to stay at home. Things like Lularoe might be the only opportunity for them to make a living on their own. Not to mention the close knit Mormon communities offering a ton of customers. It's not quite that simple, but you see where I'm going with this. And of course there is significant crossover with Mormon women and the current, if somewhat dwindling Tradwife content that's become extremely popular on Instagram and TikTok. We talk about this quite a bit in the first part of the series, specifically about users from Mom Talk, the stars of the new show the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Ballerina Farm, a 10 million follower in influencer who presents Stay at Homestead Lifestyle while say it with me selling that idea to her followers as a part of what is very much a job unto itself. The more I think about it, tradwives are actually not straying from the similarly flawed girl boss archetypes the way that they think they are. But that's for another day, because now we're gonna forge into part Two. Shall we? Even with the context I've given you, I was still confused. Because yes, white hetero conservatism sells online. We know that. But why this religion specifically? What about Mormon content is bringing them to the top of your feed? Ex Mormon influencer Alyssa Grenfell has been asking this question too. She was raised an extremely devout Utah Mormon, went on a mission, got married at an LDS temple, the whole nine yards. Eventually, like one in three young Mormons today, she left the church in her 20s with her husband after they both found themselves questioning the values they'd grown up with. For Alyssa's husband, the radicalizing issue was the church's stance on gay marriage. And for Alyssa, it was a series of crises of faith. Over and over, what Alyssa felt God wanted for her was directly contradicted by priests and her father. She was called to do a mission 2,000 miles away from where she expected. She was told by her father that God needed her to be a teacher when she had no interest in teaching and didn't feel she had the natural skill set to do it. So eventually, the two leave the Mormon church, they start drinking coffee and cocktails, and Alyssa was motivated to join YouTube after self publishing her first book. And while she's been on YouTube for less than a year, she already has nearly a quarter million subscribers. And my favorite video of hers presents a pretty compelling theory. Alyssa suggests that sure, Mormon tradwife content does play into the algorithm as far as aesthetics, but it's very possible that the Church of Latter Day Saints itself is bankrolling these Mormon mommy influencers without the influencers being able to say for sure that it's them. Here's a clip from that video.

Jamie Loftus (71:56)

Some of my earliest memories really are just discussing my wedding dress, discussing my husband, writing letters to my future husband, talking about purity, learning homemaking skills, ironing, you know, I'm eight years old, ironing a shirt, talking about, you know, taking care of my future family. And it's, I think, past just the idea that, you know, everyone probably should learn how to take care of a home or cook a meal. But it's, it was very much posed as, this is your divine role from God. And even, you know, there's something called a patriarchal blessing, which is kind of, I would like call it Mormon fortune telling a little bit, where a very important man within the church lays his hands on your head and basically is supposed to be speaking as if he's speaking from God and kind of telling you what's going to happen in your future. Much of my patriarchal blessing was about how I was going to be a mother in Zion and how I was going to like, it was all just about my, my future children, basically, and my role as a wife and mother. And to think that a man is saying basically the most important things about your future. And it's all encompassed around motherhood and wifehood. And then to read, you know, now I read my husband's patriarchal blessing. And a lot of male men's patriarchal blessings is not about their children, their Future children. And so if you compare the. What women are taught, if you compare that with what men are taught, it's also very different. So you could, you know, I think I might have been able to, like, stomach it if the boys were also learning how to take a girl on a date or how to also watch children or change a diaper. But the boys were often doing, like, playing basketball or doing, you know, water rafting or doing Boy Scouts learning to tie knots. You know, just more traditional boyhood kind of things. I think there was the, the. The actual kind of training around motherhood and family, but then there was the religious element of gender roles as divinely appointed upon you.

Jamie Loftus (76:13)

And you know, I still served a full Mormon mission. I still went to Denver, Colorado. I still was in the church for years after that. But I think that is kind of the easiest to encapsulate example of these moments that kind of hit me over and over again where I would have these really strong feelings, major revelations that I was using to kind of walk through life, only to realize that they were either wrong or that if I had made my own decisions about my own life without consulting God, I probably would have chosen better than, quote, God was choosing for me. So as I kind of came to that realization over years and years, my first year teaching, my dad had given me a blessing that I was meant to be a teacher and that of course I'm going to trust this blessing above all else. I didn't pursue any other career paths. And then my first year as a teacher, I realized I absolutely hated it and was not cut out for it. And it was giving me a lot of mental health issues. About halfway through the school year, broke to my husband, hey, I. I think I might not believe in this anymore. After a lot of conversations, we both decided that we wanted to leave together. After reading a lot of church history for him, after lots of conversations, like I said, so it was really helpful. One of my favorite pictures of our whole marriage is us holding our coffee cups for the first time. For most people, such a simple, straightforward thing is like drinking your morning cup of coffee. This is our first ever cup of coffee. I think I was about 24 at that point. Didn't grow horns, didn't fall beneath the floor, floor. Everything proceeded as normal. It was very underwhelming. Most sins after you leave the church, most sins. As an ex Mormon, you're like, this is pretty underwhelming. I also, one of my favorite memories is the first time I went to after. After work drinks with my co workers. They're kind of, everybody's getting to know each other and they're like, why did you come to New York? And I start talking about Utah and Mormonism and leaving the church and garments, the religious underwear, the temple endowment, the prayer circle, the ceremony, the oath and the handshakes. And I just remember it was probably a group of 15 people. But as I'm just talking, more and more people stop their conversations and just lean in to be like, wait Are you talking about leaving the cult right now? And just like I could, it was kind of affirming to me to have. And I, you know, I always have those experiences talking to people. They don't know much about Mormons because you, you, you can tell from the look on their face that you're not the crazy one for thinking you were relate, like raised in a very crazy religion. Whereas, you know, if, if you, if you're kind of talking to people in Utah, maybe they'll kind of act like, oh, this is all very normal. You know, of course Mormons wear garments, but to someone who's never interfaced with the religion, it is probably 10 to 20 times stranger and odder than people who are familiar with it. So that, that kind of surprise on people's faces has been healing for me in some ways because it helps me feel like I'm not the sinner, I'm not the crazy one. It was what I was raised in. And that normalcy is not what I experienced as a kid. Learning to iron shirts as an 8 year old and writing letters to my husband about how I was saving myself for him.

Jamie Loftus (81:20)

That's a good question. And I mean, I feel like my whole childhood was kind of trad wife content in a way. So like, I feel like to some extent I think that it's also a question of platform because I feel like Instagram is meant for curating and TikTok is kind of meant to question curation and to criticize curation. So I think that a lot of trad wife content kind of came up in the Instagram age, which is beautiful children, beautiful dresses, lovely sourdough. And it's very curated. It's often photos instead of videos. So it's harder to pick apart a curated photo instead of of a video where there's like a voice in the background or you know, you can pause the screenshot and say what is, what's the picture on their wall? So I think that the kind of transition away from Instagram into TikTok is also what kind of opened my mind more to trad the trad wife movement in specificity, I guess, because prior to that I just see, you know, beautiful. Kind of like a lot of people say that the Mormon tradwife movement came from Mormon mommy bloggers, which were super prevalent in the early 2000s, which a lot of recipe making and DIY stuff. And so it's kind of like this movement kind of rematerialized onto Instagram after they already had their original audience. On the blogging side of things, I think where it kind of hit hit its head is when we turn more to a TikTok type of, of investigation of things where people are no longer perfection or they're not looking to follow people, that their posts just feel like a Pinterest board. I think Mormonism is very Pinteresty. Mormons love Pinterest too, in my experience. So I think that that is what has kind of kicked back against trad wife's is that for a long time I Think people just unquestioningly consumed the beautiful content. And when there's a voiceover to a photo and the photo is not just it's a pretty photo of kids and some bread now it's, it's I made this, this for my husband or I made this for my family. And then you know, and there's more of a narrative like the, the new video form of the tradwife content is narrative. And so it is developing much more of an ideology in my opinion behind the curated video, the pictures that we once had. And I think too Mormons are taught to be so missionary minded that if someone is Mormon, they've probably talked about it at some point. I mean the, the, the Mormon church, literally you should be talking about being Mormon online. You're told that explicitly. And so that also is an element of, I think Mormon influencers are louder about their religion than a lot of influencers because they are acting on that kind of command from the prophet to speak loudly and speak often about their religion.

Jamie Loftus (84:58)

Yeah, in my opinion the, the prevalence of people who are influencers mentioning Mormonism is greatest in their early stages when they're first getting an audience, when they're first kind of finding their voice. I think once people reach like a critical mass of no longer just having Mormon followers, they have a lot of just general interest in their platforms. It's almost like a graph where the bigger they get, the less they mention Mormonism because I think they realize that it's unpopular to a general audience, but it's very popular with an audience that you're growing early on. So I think that, you know, for example, I know Ballerina Farm used to have a blog specifically about Mormonism, but if you Google is so and so Mormon, you can always find an answer because they talked about it a lot early on and there's always like an early Interview. Same with, with Brooklyn Bailey. They're not really trad wife stuff anymore, but they, they just have a big YouTube channel and they talked quite a bit about Mormonism early on and now it essentially never appears. I think one of them has left, I'm not sure initially to grow their audience. They're talking a lot, a lot about Mormonism because Mormons will follow you because they know you're Mormon. And then after they get big, they see it as maybe a bit more of a risk or maybe that because they have more money and they're like a little bit less beholden to their community, maybe they're less likely to talk about it because they kind of can take on their own form of what they want to be talking about on the Internet. So many Christians, I think if they see Mormon content and don't know it's Mormon content or just like, you know, even trad wife content obviously appeals to kind of a more far right ideology. And I think all of those people, if they come across, you know, trad wife content in general, they'll upvote it or like it or interact with it. The hard thing for Mormons is that a lot of people just especially like evangelical Christians do not really like Mormons. And especially they don't like that they're trying to kind of co op and they would say the Christian movement or whatever and say they're Christians. And there's a lot of tension between why are they Christians, aren't they Christians? So I think that that's another difficulty that they kind of have to interface with is that their content, by its nature of being kind of traditionally minded, appeals to this audience of a more like conservative Republican audience. But if they're too overt about their specific religion, I think, you know, if, if you're viewing it, which I do a little bit more as kind of like a brand that they're selling versus like their quote, true real life or whatever, then they are recognizing that there's a risk to the brand in bringing that to the forefront now that the brand is large enough that it's kind of reaching a mass audience. But I don't know, like, I. I don't know if I'm just jaded or something, like if I'm viewing them too much as like business minded versus if they just, you know, if they're just kind of waking up each morning, rolling out of bed, posting their pictures and not really wondering about audience retention or who sees what, when and how can I reach the, the broadest number of people so it's hard to get into the mind of these people, really.

Jamie Loftus (89:24)

Yeah. Every interview I've ever spoken to is like, why are there so many Mormon influences? And I think they often ask it almost like in this secret, like, can you tell me the answer? Like, like I have this secret that I'm keeping and if I could just explain it, like, then that would explain the phenomenon. And it's, I think it's, you know, I think something like women journal. And there was the mommy bloggers. And blogging is like journaling. And then once they're blogging, then they're on Instagram and it feels easy to understand. But I agree, like, it feels kind of thin because lots of people journal and it doesn't mean that you're going to be famous one day just because you were journaling a lot when you were a little kid. But sure, when I was posting my videos, I, you know, especially initially I'm still like learning YouTube. I think my first YouTube video was like 10 months ago or something. I'm still under one year of learning this whole platform and stuff. But I would have people say, so funny, I just got an ad for the Mormon Church while I was watching this video. And I, you know, thinking it's so funny that they are advertising on my content, which obviously, if you understand the back end, the. The Mormon Church purchases ad space through Google, Google AdSense, and then Google AdSense looks for content that is relevant to put the ad on top of. So it's not like the Mormon Church is saying we like Alyssa Grenfell, definitely not saying that, but the algorithm is basically looking for people saying Mormon, Mormon, Mormon or Utah or whatever, and then putting their. Their ad space, their ad spend behind that content. And I also kind of in tandem with that, was on the YouTube subreddit and looking up stuff about YouTube and realizing that my CPM and my RPM, which is kind of how much you make off of your videos, was way higher than basically almost anyone else was quoting that. Like my average kind of pay per view or pay per click or whatever was much higher than just kind of your average channel. I used to do some SEO for, for a previous employer. And I went and looked at the ad spend estimated behind different keywords, because people don't realize that the ad spend behind something like crafting is not the same as the ad spend behind something like open a new credit card, because it's basically the ad spend is. Is proportionate to how much the advertiser is willing to spend to get the eyes of the viewer. So I realized basically when I went and looked at the ad behind some of these terms that the ad spend was as high as very expensive advertising terms. So, like, to open a new credit card was $30 per click. And something like crafting or maybe like sourdough bread is like $2. It's very low. So when I looked at Mormon terms like Mormon missionary was $30 and Utah influencer was $19, Mormon was $25. And these are ad spends that are phenomenally high, especially when compared even with another religion. You know, Catholicism or Catholic is $2. Judaism or Jew is maybe $4.

Jamie Loftus (97:53)

The church had a ton of success from Donnie and Marie Osmond because they're Mormon. They're More, you know, they raised Mormon, still Mormon to this day. And they were, you know, phenomenal brand ambassadors for the church throughout their kind of heyday. Gladys Knight is also Mormon, and she did a concert at our. Our ward in Kentucky at our. Our big congregation. And she's another example of someone who kind of became a bit of a brand ambassador. She's doing concerts and I think pre Internet and before gay issues, the awareness around LGBTQ issues, those people did really well. And typically, it seems like they mostly stayed in the church. And so the church had a lot of success with these famous people being brand ambassadors for them. Whereas now they've had it, I think, in more recent years, backfire more often than they've had it work, like with David Archuleta. So David Archuleta was very well known within the church. He also gave concerts for the church. He. He served a Mormon mission. He. You can find a picture of him in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir where they did a slow zoom on him. And he was another poster child and another famous person. And he's the sweetest, you know, if you've ever heard him in interviews, he's so sweet. He's like, he just has the kind, kindest presence. And so I think he was kind of the perfect example of a great Mormon and a great ambassador. And then in like, a few years ago, he came out as gay. He also kind of simultaneously came out as leaving the church and now has written a song about, you know, I'd rather go to hell than not love the people who I love. And in many ways has kind of been a reverse of all of the kind of quote good he would have done for the image of the Mormon Church. Now he's just. Just basically a living, breathing example of the church's bigotry towards gay people because the church really tried to up their proximity to his image from a PR perspective, really hurt them now that they are no longer able to, you know, now they've been damaged by. By his coming out against them and saying, hey, this church is homophobic. So I think that that's another reason they don't want to maybe formally approach someone like a ballerina farm or any of these tradwife creators, because they. They know it will backfire against them. But they also know that these women are making the church look very good and very beautiful and traditional and feminine. And so I think this advertising revenue is kind of a way for them to support the blogosphere of the early 2000s through the, you know, Instagrammers and YouTubers of today by giving them ad revenue.