Posts by dubstepped

5

Did the Apostafest happen?

by Biahi in

did flipper host the apostafest, or was it cancelled due to covid 19?.

dubstepped

It was cancelled. The one in Indy is still on for August.

80

Quit Quietly now more than ever

by gone for good in

the amazing exoneration of info sekta in swiss court has finally reinforced the proper way to exit an abusive cult.. never write a letter of disassociation.

- no need to invoke shepherding or judicial action from elders.

make a written, dated statement of your free-will choice to have abandoned the jw religion - secure this document with a friend -a trusted friend (not the jw kind).

Call me when this works for people on the regular and they don't end up shunned. The rest is just noise. Watchtower doesn't care about your rights which is why I referred to them as a loophole earlier. It is to Watchtower. The results will be the same even if they have to pivot and just use some other way to label you like saying you disassociated by your actions. Same outcome. People are shunned by them that have never even officially left. I don't see what this does other than provide false hope to people.

31

Just wanting confirmation on an unofficial JW experience

by joe134cd in

just wondering if anyone can confirm or deny this unofficial jw experience that my father received by email.

i’ve told him that it against wt rules to forward unofficial accounts.

but of course he just puts that down to apostate driven lies.

dubstepped

Narcissists. They think their delusion is the center of everything going on in the world. Everyone either loves or hates them, meanwhile few actually care about them on any level. But they're the heroes of their own fantasy lives, and that's enough for them.

80

Quit Quietly now more than ever

by gone for good in

the amazing exoneration of info sekta in swiss court has finally reinforced the proper way to exit an abusive cult.. never write a letter of disassociation.

- no need to invoke shepherding or judicial action from elders.

make a written, dated statement of your free-will choice to have abandoned the jw religion - secure this document with a friend -a trusted friend (not the jw kind).

dubstepped

People are always looking for some legal loophole to get out without repercussions. This strikes me as just another in the series. JWs don't often care. Sure, you can find an outlier where a legal threat will scare some elder but most don't care, and I've yet to see any evidence of legal recourse being won if they go on to disfellowship you. You joined a club called Jehovah's Witnesses and they'll do what they want in most cases. They don't care about legal technicalities.

Disassociate if you want, fade if you want, try this legal technicality if you want, get disfellowshipped if you want. It's your life.

Leaving is one of the more personal things a person can do. Your decision should be too. It's one of your first opportunities to start living life on your terms, whatever that looks like. Getting out is the most important thing. Go be free and happy.

My wife and I disassociated almost 5 years ago. One of the best decisions we've ever made.

32

Old Literature

by RolRod in

jw
friends

what did you do with your jw literature when you left?

kept it, sold it or dumped it?

dubstepped

Sorry DOC, tried burning some of it and it didn't burn well, lol. I think it has demons. I trashed it so nobody else would stumble on it.

25

Food Boxes given out by Society

by JustChillin in

anyone else get a food box delivered by local congregation to your door - allegedly by the society?

weird.

i looked online and found a couple of youtube channels saying the society is taking food from food banks and giving it only to their congregations.

dubstepped

@road to nowhere: Did they actually say that it was from Farm to Family specifically?

I've known about this for some time because someone I coach received a couple boxes very early on. Seems like it was more on the west coast in reaching out to people to learn more. California especially, but maybe also New York state.

I actually reached out to the USDA directly and they let me know that the JWs weren't getting it from them directly, but may be from one of their distributors. I dug deeper and got the list of their distributors but nothing tipped off the JWs there. I'd have to call each distributor and ask and they have no reason to tell me so I kind of saw it as a dead end.

But yes, that seems to be the likely place they're getting it from. I know for a fact that it's not necessarily going to needy people. The person I work with has been faded for decades and doesn't need food for the needy but they kept pushing it on her, probably trying to get her to come back. They used it to start asking for her email address and stuff.

In most cases I've heard JWs have said that Watchtower had a deal with local farmers to help out, no reference to Farm to Families. I've heard rumors that some received a letter basically telling them to keep it on the down low if they wanted to keep getting it. I've not received a copy of such letter though.

30

How Could We Have Been So Heartless?

by BluesBrother in

i am addressing here those who, like me, spent decades in the organisation that we called “the truth”.

perhaps like me you were brought up in it from an early age.

looking back now i wonder that i could have been so heartless as to believe that the mass slaughter of billions of people was “good news”.

dubstepped

The dehumanizing and othering of worldly people made it easy to stand at their doors and talk about how we'd like to live in their house after Armageddon. Once you dehumanize and detach from others it's easy to no longer be able to take the perspective of another. The JW community is full of people that lack empathy. We were deadened to our own feelings, often self flagellating, and the same was projected outward.

The organization is narcissistic. Most either adopt those traits or end up codependent and serving the organization to find an identity. Either way we were consumed with ourselves as JWs or concerned with getting approval from other JWs and the big J himself.

So we didn't often have much chance to have a heart. We were made callous to feelings other than things like fear, for the most part. We were isolated from others and our true selves.

21

JW Response to COVID

by optimisticskeptic in

i haven't been on here in quite some time so i apologize if i missed a similar thread already (i did look for one :) ) anyways, just to be clear i think the jw response to covid in general has been really positive and proactive and they've done really well trying to educate people on covid, doing zoom meetings, etc to prevent spread within the congregations.

the part that i find interesting is how compliant and non-apocalyptic the branch has been during all of this.

even as someone who's a bit of a skeptic i found myself wondering if this might be the beginning of the end between covid, economic upheaval, and blm.

dubstepped

Lol, I'll just leave this here.............

https://youtu.be/Mrges_TxOzQ

20

This Cult sucks, I loath it. I don't understand Why my wife will not leave

by goingthruthemotions in

i loath this cult!!!!!!!!!!

why won't she leave?.

she knows about the australian royal commision, the united nations, failed prediction dates etc...., i have crisis of consciene and she know, it is visiable that she could see the book everyday.

dubstepped

Because she's in it for emotional reasons, not intellectual ones. Often fear is what keeps people stuck. It's not like your wife is some unique case. It happens all the time. People lived through 1975 and stayed.

I know it sucks but you have to love her where she is for your own sake. You can't control other people and you'll lose your sanity trying to. Sorry man.

2

A Shunned Success Story - From GED to MIT

by dubstepped in

i haven't shared any of my podcasts here in a long time but since i started a new type of episode i thought some might like it.

welcome to the first episode of the shunned success stories series.

in this episode we meet kelsey and get to learn from her path as she went from a homeschooled member of jehovah’s witnesses to recently being accepted to attend mit.

dubstepped

Thanks for the kind words! I've done a lot of interviewing through my normal Shunned episodes, but this was my first of this new type of episode.

I'm really excited for Kelsey. Like you said, there are some people out there that might appreciate her mind that could create some amazing opportunities for her in the future. Kelsey is a woman, and a woman of color, and a woman being shunned, and who knows she could be reaching for literal stars in some way. I had this recorded a couple weeks ago when it was only a pandemic that was front and center and now so many other things are boiling over as well. I had planned to release it this week and I hope it gives others something positive to think about too.