It also prevents them from being asked questions face to face that cannot be answered because even they don't know what the truth is anymore. Like online dating, what they see is not what they will get once they actually meet the real deal. In truth, they could not stop anyone who wants to design a bunch of tracts directing them to this website instead.
Controversial Opinion: Why the web site campaign is actually brilliant
by Apognophos 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OneEyedJoe
Some notes from this week's KM review:
Wasn't at my normal hall, (wife had some plans thursday and somehow we ended up going to a different congregation) but I found it hillarious when an 80 yr old man got up there for the first part, but had to introduce a 20-something MS to do a live demo of how to use the web site and save videos on a tablet.
The other thing that was hillarious to me was that the demonstration at the end was entirely scripted right there in the KM. Why couldn't we just read it ourselves? Also, no one noticed the irony that the "worldy" guy in the demo was talking about how "everyone thinks they have the answers" and then the JW guy interjects something to the effect of "hey there's a unique website - it has the answers!" Are they really this dumb that they don't realize that, scripted into a demo that every congregation is going to watch is a pretty succinct description of why the site actually isn't unique?
In what world is someone who starts a conversation with "everyone thinks they have the answers but no one makes anything any better" going to be receptive to a JW professing to have all the answers? Oh yeah, it's the world of the make-believe demo.
They also related an experience (did anyone else get this same one, or was this a one-off for this congregation?) where they talked to a guy who already knew of the website, and had his kids watch the caleb and sofia videos. The guy on the stage was so proud to announce, "People know Caleb and Sofia by name!"
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Emery
insidetheKH
@Emery With all respect... those 'gazillion apostate websites' are no competition at all. Well known sites like JWfacts.com and a forum like jehovahs-witness.net hardly get any visitors at all.
You're correct as far as those sites go, however, don't be so quick to dismiss my argument. Just last month there was a perfectly timed /r/TIL (Today I Learned) Reddit topic about JWs that made it on to the front page of Reddit. The front-page of Reddit had over 135 million unique visitors last month . The TIL subreddit alone has 6.6 million subscribers. It was a huge anti-witness when the topic read "TIL Jehovah's Witnesses have falsely predicted the end of the world 20 times."
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Apognophos
I don't bump my own threads as a general rule, but I was as surprised as everyone else to learn about the new JW "TV channel" on the web site. It dovetails quite well with what I wrote in my OP, particularly this passage:
I think what you guys are overlooking -- and this is a MAJOR factor -- is the power of the visual medium. You guys have seen how popular YouTube is, right? Of course you have. People would rather watch a video that takes 7 minutes to explain how to install Photoshop than just read a single page of instructions in one minute. Why is YouTube so popular? Because you can be an illiterate idiot and still get around the site okay. Just click on thumbnails, you don't even need to read what the video is about. The comments on videos demonstrate just how low the mental bar is for someone to use the site.
I know this post sounds elitist, but I'm just saying out loud what we already know: the ones most likely to convert to the religion are uneducated and are not comfortable studying books. Many Bible studies have serious "learning disabilities" (that's the PC term for it) and need to have everything repeated to them from the paragraph out loud, three times, before they get it. That's because their oral comprehension is much better than their written comprehension. The jw.org web site takes away the demand of literary comprehension and replaces it with, "Listen to the nice man talk over the pretty pictures." (Of course there are articles too, for those who want them.)
So I actually think the Society knows exactly what they're doing. They know their target audience. It's not "the worldly wise". It's the "humble, child-like ones". They could hardly have made a better move than this to attract potential converts, especially outside of the more well-educated areas of the world that most of us live in.
Since I wrote this a couple months ago, the org. has truly taken this mindset to its logical conclusion. Video over text. Oral/visual medium over textual medium. "Looking at the pretty pictures" over "needing a high school education to understand these words". They might as well hang up a sign on Kingdom Halls saying "IQs over 100 not welcome".
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GreenhornChristian
I'm waiting for the prayer request feature.