What is MyMormonFriend.com, and who is “teh m0rm0n“?
Well, I’ll tell you. Early last year a friend of mine and I had the idea to develop a website and web campaign that would help promote one thing and one thing only: positive web videos about Mormons. Not videos about Mormonism, nor videos from the official Mormon church, but simply videos of great people doing great things, all of whom happen to be, well, Mormon. That’s what mymormonfriend.com is, a blog or video aggregator, essentially, highlighting these positive videos, wherever they may be found on-line.
It’s not a site like YouTube where anyone can upload a video. In fact, the videos are not even hosted on the site, generally. Actually, they are videos typically already hosted on-line elsewhere, such as sites like YouTube or MySpace, that are either embedded or linked to on the mymormonfriend.com site. Why do it like this? To accomplish two things: save money on bandwidth, obviously, but also to increase the view tallies of these videos on these other social networks and video sites. Doing so would hopefully drive up the rankings of these videos and help them to be found when people search on-line for videos about Mormons. And, who can complain? More traffic for those hosts, more ad revenue and ancillary positive impact. Hooray, everyone wins!
Why drive up these videos’ rankings? Well, it’s simple. The last few years have seen a lot of increased discussion of Mormons and mormonism in the public eye. When you jump on-line, you find plenty of stuff about the subject, but so much of it is really inflammatory and wrong. I’m a Mormon, and frankly I don’t want people thinking that I have 7 wives, wear magical underwear, vote for Mitt Romney, pray to a philandering 19th century charlatan, and, worst of all, hate women, blacks, gays, puppies, kittens, babies, fast food, baseball, your mother and so forth. It’s really getting out of hand.
Thankfully, the church on its own accord has done a great deal to push it’s actual message to people throughout social media and the web. Even better, lots of regular Joe and Jill Mormons have begun to use social media and video sites to share videos that depict the LDS people and beliefs in a more positive light already. Searching YouTube this year as opposed to last year brings up a lot more balance than the past, when the lies, half-truths, and misconceptions ruled the intertubes. Mormons are now sharing, collaborating, and taking collective action to define themselves and engage in the conversation, rather than let opponents do it all for them. I’m a huge fan of discussion on both sides, pro or con, so having this improved LDS web culture is really cool.
So, after you take a look at mymormonfriend.com, you might ask yourself a few questions.
- Why is it designed the way it is? Why do you want people to send you links or video files? Why can’t I just upload videos there myself? Well, the answer to that is above. I don’t want mymormonfriend.com to be the hub. It’s merely a gateway.
- Why is it all 1337ed out and web-jingo-y? What do you mean by “get a mormon?” The site is intended to speak directly to the most experienced of web connaisseurs, the webaholics who help fashion web culture and meaning, who often have been purveyors of mormon bashing on-line. They do it for the lolz. But one thing we dorky Mormons and they can agree on: Mormons may be totally crazy and stupid, but they are REALLY NICE. Moving into a new neighborhood? Contact the local Mormons and they’re bound to take care of the truck unloading for you, bring cookies and punch, and not ask for a penny in return. That’s the Mormon way. So, if Mormons are so helpful, certainly there is a possibility that they might be willing to share their talents and gifts for whatever coolness they aspire to with the whole world, and perhaps people on-line could benefit from it. Thus, Mormons are encouraged to use the mymormonfriend.com site almost like a friendshipping service: post something cool that you do, post a link to your website or email or something, and then invite people to contact you to get in on that coolness you do. So, we developed this catchphrase: Need help? Get a Mormon! Why, cause it’s true, like it or not. Even if they plan to steal your women and children after performing free acts of service for you. But, srsly, everyone seems to have a nice Mormon friend they can turn to. Hopefully, anyway. Hence, this site is all about your mormon friends. Maybe you aren’t LDS and want to share some of your Mormon friend’s coolness there. Bring it, I say!
- Who the heck is “teh mormon”? TEH m0rm0n is the altar-ego I established to run mymormonfriend.com. At first, it was thought by me that web culture embraced anonymity. Well, I’ve learned that the opposite is true. Total transparency helps foster trust. So, from now on, I am merging my two web personas, “teh m0rm0n” and Matthew Stringer. We’re now one in the same. teh m0rm0n has been around since summer of 2007. So, that’s the big secret I’ve been keeping. I hope you will google “teh m0rm0n” or search for teh m0rm0n on facebook. Yes, those o’s are zeroes. Just trying to be leet. It might be full of fail, but it was at least worth a shot.
So, you can register at mymormonfriend.com to get the occasional email from the teh mormon (aka me), improved commenting services, and the ability to easily submit a URL to a cool video somewhere. Or, you can forgo registering and just watch the vids, comment on them, or share mymormonfriend.com items on social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit. It even has an RSS feed you can subscribe to. Also, teh mormon has a profile on Hi5, Orkut, Facebook (as mentioned), MySpace (linked above), and is probably also floating around elsewhere online. If you use those sites, add him (err, me… uh, you get it)!
Again, the entire purpose of mymormonfriend.com is to try to show people out there that Mormons are regular people from all walks of life. The site is not about the religion itself or paid for by the church or anything like that. This is just my attempt to take some action to improve the way I and my other fellow Latter-day Saints are seen in this new media age. You just can’t argue with wanting to be understood. So, how do you achieve that? For mymormonfriend.com, it’s about showing off some cool things that some cool, talented Mormons are all about. No discussions of faith, no preaching, no defending. Just helping people make the connection that Mormons, while at times odd, are just like the rest of the world… only, maybe a little more willing to help you move.
If you want to know more about the church and religion itself, check out mormon.org or lds.org.
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Tags: religion, social media, video, youtube