Posts by OneEyedJoe

4

JW.org funny statistics

by thedepressedsoul in

i went to alexa.com to see some stats on jw.org.

for some reason it still mentions it as watchtower.com but i'm sure that'll be updated at time.. .

two funny statistics i noticed.. .

OneEyedJoe

From the horse's mouth:

Audience Demographics
The audience demographics data comes from voluntary demographics information submitted by people in our global traffic panel. The data is for the past 12 months, updated monthly. Learn more

The demographics data consists of:

Gender, education, browsing location - available to everyone.

Age, income, ethnicity and children - only available to subscribers of the Alexa Pro Insight or Advanced plans.

Audience Geography
The audience geography data describes where visitors to this site over the past month are located, and how the site is ranked in popular countries. If a country is not listed, it is because Alexa does not have enough data for this site to rank/measure the site's popularity among that country's online population. These metrics are updated monthly.

26

I Don't Think The Witnesses Really Care If You Can Explain Doctrine As Long As You Accept Them!

by minimus in

jw
friends

gone are the days of getting into discussions about their beliefs.

doing major research to prove a position or watchtower doctrine is a thing of the past.

all they want from you is to surrender and accept everything they say as undeniable truth.. do you agree?.

OneEyedJoe

Yup, it's gotten to the point where it's just presented as fact and your choice is to believe it or have all your friends and family turn their backs on you.

What a loving organization!

33

I think this is closure for me.

by quellycatface in

well, i have finally got rid of my baptism cards.

the congratulations cards....the wt ones, the ones with sheep on etc.... all gone.

they dated back to 23/09/2000.. has anyone else "purged" their witness past this way?.

OneEyedJoe

All I've been able to do so far was tear up my blood card. That was the day of my joining this site, and a few days after reading essentially all the content of JWfacts.

I don't have that many books or whatever and never got a single cult-related card from someone, so there's not that much for me to clean out

30

JW.org down?

by jw07 in

i'm seeing tons of comments from sad jws on my facebook feed saying that the beloved golden calf jw.org is offline.. what are you seeing when you try it?

*crosses fingers* i wish it could never ever return.. are they getting too much traffic to support?.

work of hackers?

Maybe they accidentally DDoS'd themselves? At the congregation I went to last night, they did a live demo of the site on a tablet. One of the things they went over was how to download videos so that you could play them for people offline. If that was done all accross the US, and everyone went to the site to download the video, it wouldn't be surprising if that brought the site down.

54

Controversial Opinion: Why the web site campaign is actually brilliant

by Apognophos in

there's a lot of talk right now about how stupid it is to have jws hand out leaflets with urls on them.

"why go to someone's door to tell them they can visit a web site that lets them ask for someone to come to their door?

" well, i'm sorry, but i have to weigh in with a contrary opinion here on how clever the society is.

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!"

6

Rationale for international conventions

by Socrateswannabe in

jw
friends

it's been kicked around already that the conventions were logistically disasterous and spiritually vapid.

my question, and i hope you will add your comments to mine, is: why?

why did the wtbs go through the trouble of putting these things on?

OneEyedJoe

I think origonally they were created as a revenue source. The international delegates pay a premium to the WTS to have their travel arranged for them, and the WTS negotiates lower rates for rooms and travel and makes out like bandits. That's why the international conventions weren't usually in the US, because the US is where they have the largest supply of potential delegates with money. This year, they threw the party in the US to distract from the decline and the 100 years of nothin'.

52

how to survive a three day assembly?

by purrpurr in

hi i have to go to one of these soon.

i find it difficult enough to sit through a meeting knowing what i now know.

how to survive a whole three days???!!!

OneEyedJoe

Yeah, if you can make it by without having to actually sit with anyone, just show up for lunch.

26

October 2014 Kingdom Ministry (KM - 10/2014 PDF)

by WatchTower87 in

our kingdom ministry october 2014 .

instruction: press the 'skip ad' button top right, you should then see the download screen more easily.

no virus ;-).

OneEyedJoe

Step 2 was 2012 if I remember correctly - 2011 being the peak of memorial attendance that has not yet been beaten.

3

How good are we at spotting propaganda and logic fallacies outside the religion of the JWs?

by cognisonance in

jw
friends

in the book take back your life, recovering from cults and abusive relationships, i think it mentioned that many often jump from one cult (or abusive relationship) to another, not being able to see the tell-tale signs with foresight, only hindsight.

therefore, i encourage everyone to take at least a cursory look at this report.

what are your thoughts?.

OneEyedJoe

well one thing seems certain. Whoever designed that flyer either has ADD or was designing for those who do. I gave up trying to read it through after the first page, it was just too much effort to follow the flow of text that jumped randomly around the page.

As a rule, though, I'm pretty skeptical of anyone who wants me to sign up for something flaunting a free tshirt.

54

Controversial Opinion: Why the web site campaign is actually brilliant

by Apognophos in

there's a lot of talk right now about how stupid it is to have jws hand out leaflets with urls on them.

"why go to someone's door to tell them they can visit a web site that lets them ask for someone to come to their door?

" well, i'm sorry, but i have to weigh in with a contrary opinion here on how clever the society is.

OneEyedJoe

jgnat - You're absolutely correct, they're not very smart about targeting potential converts, and I don't think they'll ever start doing any such targeting in a way that the average JW would be aware of. What they might eventually do (if new converts are actually what they want) is start buying google ads (or having the R/F buy them and let them count them as placements or something) that target obvious keywords like bible, jesus, god, etc. But the real target will be some other things, like targeting people dealing with drug addiction (or addiction in the family), or people getting out of break-ups, or those who've just lost someone in death, etc. Targeting people who are searching for help in an emotionally traumatic time would give them a chance to get a foothold when someone's critical thinking skills have been suspended and they're susceptible to love bombing.

If they do this, I think they'll experience significant growth, at least in the near-term.

They just have to be very careful how they implement it, because the average JW strongly believes that every person (regardless of mental state, etc) deserves to get a witness, so they can't make it too obvioius that they're targeting the vulnerable only. Though, now that I'm thinking about it, it's pretty common for them to relate experiences from the platform about a householder who's well known to be rude that finally comes around after the death of a loved one. Those experiences really took on a new meaning for me once I found out how cults usually recruit, and who is most vulnerable.