Reflection on Social Media Case 9: Ponderize

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This case was very interesting to me, not only because I am LDS, but also that the concept of “ponderizing” became so controversial so quickly. The concept of “ponderize” was introduced by a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, urging members to find a scripture that they love and ponder it as well as memorize it. The general authorities son made a page in which t-shirts were sold and there was also other pieces of merchandise that were sold, promoting this spiritual concept. This ended up causing a lot of people to start speculating about where the money was going. This started the trending hashtag #moderndayprofits which turned into a frenzy of questions about the intent of the general authority and his message.
He later apologized for the sites and they were all deleted, but this case made me wonder how this might have affected active members and what their thoughts might have been. I also wondered if there was any way that this situation could have been resolved or avoided in the first place. To me it goes back to the son of this general authority creating the outlet for people to purchase these certain products. I think that it was a smart move in addressing where the money was going to be placed, and that it was not going into their pockets but was being used to help support the church and their missionary funds. I also thought that it was smart for them to delete all of the sites that were linked to this situation so they could eliminate further issues. However, I also believe that people are going to believe what they want about the situation and that there wasn’t much that the church could really do to remove the negative responses. They did their best to shut down any negativity and re-frame it to be positive, which I thought was the best thing that they could do.

Comments

  1. Taylor WhiteMarch 27, 2018 at 5:45 PM

    Great post, Keslie! I think you make a really interesting point on how this would affect the minds of active members of the church. I think church officials handled it well by deleting any trace that the website existed. But your right, church members will believe what they want to believe. No matter what the church did in that scenario, many people might construe it to be what they want it be.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JButlerMarch 28, 2018 at 11:09 AM

    Nice job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Erin SwearingenMarch 28, 2018 at 4:34 PM

    Great job with this once again! You hit all of the important elements of this case and I agree with you when you say that people only hear what they want to hear, they don't actually listen to the facts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownMarch 28, 2018 at 4:41 PM

    Great job Keslie, you made a great point that things like this really affect the mind of active members. As members we look up to people who hold important roles in our church and when they do things that question their character it can question our beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownMarch 29, 2018 at 6:16 PM

    Great post! I agree in that I believe the best thing for them to do was to delete all sites associated with the products.

    ReplyDelete

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