Reflection on Social Media Case 9: Ponderize

              Many members of the LDS faith listen or watch General Conference twice a year to gain personalized insight from God. With this in mind, outsiders can understand how they might react negatively when they hear that a conference talk could have been intended for a purpose other than to inspire listeners. This case study missed me a little bit. I don’t remember when this happened, so I had a hard time relating to the way that the commenters felt about this situation. From an objective perspective, I can understand how both sides reacted.

              Every April and October right after conference airs, social media is bombarded with quotes and clips from the different sessions. I remember going on Facebook after a session of General conference and seeing an ad for a t-shirt that had a quote from the most recent session. I make this point to illustrate that it is not uncommon for members of the LDS church to use quotes from General Conference to make a profit. LDS merchandise can be found in many stores and websites. However, the difference is that all of the t-shirts and home decor are normally sold after General Conference airs. Even though Elder Durrant stated in his apology that he was not the creator of this website but he took responsibility for not shutting it down sooner.

              The biggest issue I found with this case is that Elder Durrant appear to have abused his authority to promote a website created by a member of his family. This gave the overall appearance of this talk as ingenuine or superficial. This reminded me of when I see celebrity endorsements on TV or online. The intended perception is that these trusted celebrities use this product and so should you! But my immediate thought is always “This celebrity is just doing this for the money, they don’t actually care about this product”. This was how I think a lot of people felt about Elder Durrant’s message, that he didn’t care about what he was saying. Overall, I think that this situation could have been avoided by publishing the website after the conference talk.