At least if that one is representative the incentive looks less like (atypically literal) conversion marketing; and more like a brand marketing thing; edging into looking like one of the more heavily branded allegedly ‘public service announcements’ you sometimes see from industry trade groups.
That seems a lot more like something you’d do if, not at all hypothetically, there was a certain amount of ongoing public uncertainty about whether you were more or less just another flavor of protestant or whether you were a freaky, deviant, cult; rather than something you’d do to get customers in the door. If so, I’d be very interested to know why they wrapped things up: was the campaign largely successful and put itself out of a job; or did the intense focus on religion being part of a political identity, rather than particularly focused on theological differences, make the whole question moot since LDS’ credentials at being in the same political zone as religious conservatives generally are pretty ironclad.
(Analogous to the way that being against abortion and homosexuals has effectively paved over theologically irreconcilable differences between the more enthusiastic catholic and protestant flavors: you just don’t see too many on the hardcore catholic side looking to resume the counter-reformation; and finding protestants more worried about romish darkness and babylon than about fetuses isn’t as easy as it once was.)
I’m imagining someone speeding away as Jesus sprints after their car like the T-1000 from Terminator 2, hooking onto the rear bumper of the vehicle with one of the nails driven through his palms.
Is it just me or is the “Comments” link not working for this article? I’ve had this happen several times in the past as well. I think it may have something to do with the linking structure possibly? I had to find my way to the BoingBoing BBS by clicking on working “Comments” link in another article and then search until I found this article just to post this comment.
And now I forgot what I was originally going to post. I do like Rebecca Waston though. Thanks for turning me on to her.
It’s just something that happens from time to time. Many ideas have been proposed and mostly debunked, although recently the “aliens” theory has been gaining ground.
As you found, you have to search the BBS to get to the comments. The quickest way is to click “MENU” at the top of the front page, then click “FORUMS”. If necessary, you can then do a search for keywords.
ETA: Or, as I derpily failed to mention, you can do as I do and bookmark the BBS separately from the BB front page.
I still like UK comic Jeremy Hardy’s joke, which was that God’s first mistake was to name his son with a profanity.
(Anyway, I know exactly who is behind those ads - it’s the same crowd of grifters who gutted the Republican party too, in order to build a reliable mailing lists of suckers. They’re just wearing different hats.)
I have to admit, I’m at the point where I’m done with the religion. Because as much as I want to believe and want to follow Jesus and be a Christian, my trip home to bury my mother in her conservative christian church has just taught me that I’m light years from where I was as a kid, and these people are light years from me in my beliefs about Jesus.
And then this thing, the “He Gets Us” campaign, clearly a right wing Billy Graham approved style slick ad campaign promoting fascism.
I’m to the point where I’m wondering where God and Jesus are at. If this isn’t how their brand is supposed to be used, why is it working? Why are they rewarding people who do this? What am I fighting for trying to remain a Christian when it’s becoming more and more apparent every day that this religion is completely broken and not worth salvaging? At what point do you say “there’s just nothing left here worth salvaging that different moral codes cover better?”
Because honestly, that’s where I’m at with all this. They’ve done it, in my eyes. They’ve taken and control gatekeeping for christianity. And they can keep it. And wonder why fewer and fewer people believe in their asshole Christ.
Welcome to the Broken Comments Link Problem. There’s a semi-official acronym for it that I can’t remember. I think there’s a topic in Meta devoted to it too.
Current summary- it’s existed forever, it comes and goes, and has been declared unfixable. That last part ruffles my software engineer feathers a bit, since we have a nearly 100% repro for it- namely all of Popkin’s posts. Not a single one of them has had a working comments link for months (years?). Whatever Popkin is doing when they post is the path to figuring out this problem, but that’s also easy for me to say from my armchair.
It’s likely a race condition between databases in the CMS or something. Obviously difficult to fix or it would have been by now.
