This was posted today over on reddit. "Things are bad". My stint as a Lloyd Evans Patron. Jabba the Gut isn't getting much love, although a couple of trolls tried to attack the OP. I expect it to stay up, but will copy and paste the text just in case. The OP also links to her blog about the subject, but I haven't read it yet. FYI, the former patron is a single mum.
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A few things I have learned in the months since I have left the JW religion (01/2023):
Question everything ! Don’t always accept what is placed in front of you as either established fact or let it bias you towards believing it because you either heard it first or find it compelling and subconsciously refuse to look into the matter more in depth.
Research things yourself ! Now that you’ve seen and read the information posed to you, do your job and vet this information thoroughly !
Using your critical thinking skills, analyze this information and compare it to information from other sources. Find and locate the conflicting information and focus on this in order to get to the truth of the matter !
Take personal ownership ! You are an adult and a free person, free from the bonds of doctrine or ideology ! Find what answer is the correct one and stick up for what you have found.
Formulate personal principles ! We all know what we believed and how we acted in the religion, but it is time to find out not necessarily what you believe in now, but the principles you hold.
Over the past two months or so, I have come up with this list and posted it on my fridge. It helped me overcome and solve the immediate problem I was facing. The problem I speak of began on April 6th 2023. I didn’t search for this problem any more than it found me ! My phone had a notification of the Lloyd Evans video entitled “Things Are Bad”. Based solely on the information presented by Lloyd, I had made an immediate decision to join as a financial backer, or “Patron”.
One – I believed him in thinking it was critical to keep him funded in order that his work may continue. In the video he claimed it would have been a tragedy if he wasn’t funded enough to continue making videos that could save lives.
Two – I believed that he was subject to a vicious defamation campaign as he presented it. However, I hardly knew anything about it beyond that people had said false and or mean things about him. I didn't really know what these things were.
Three – I believed that he was critical in helping JWs and former JWs cope with their exit. He explained this in the context of the more videos he creates the more lives he will touch and their lives would be saved from indoctrination.
Conclusions:
It was not critical to keep him funded as it remains unclear due to a lack of transparency on his part as to how much in need he was. Lloyd has taken a few vacations since then and has posted about it, one lasting for two weeks. He also regularly misses scheduled Patrons-only calls and claimed he was “burned out” after coming back off vacation. I have come to the conclusion that he needed the money to fund extracurricular activities he was participating in and the quality and frequency of his videos actually suffered due to this excessive time off.
The defamation campaign is really two different things mashed together. There are people who dislike him and wish to either oppose him or his work and are quite vocal about it. At the same time, most of the topics frequently visited regarding him are indeed confirmed by him in his Jan 31 2022 livestream, subsequent social media posts and the Andrew Gold interview. At best Lloyd is a liar who can’t keep his story straight. Since his lies reflect directly on his reputation as a credible source of information, I can no longer rely on him being truthful.
Lloyd Evans has a large audience, but his views are comparable to and even eclipsed by many others. He is no longer the main source of x JW content. His reputation has been smeared by his own actions as admitted to and demonstrated by Lloyd Evans himself. To suggest that more lives can be saved by keeping him funded to his desired levels is manipulative. He has not followed through on his promises to improve the channel.
I have terminated my Patreon membership to Lloyd Evans.
Please read my blog for the full account:
https://the-lowdown-with-madison.webador.com/madison-s-blog/1467460_things-are-bad
Madison.