I know part of the problem with Facebook is showing off and honestly, I've been known to mention in my status when my kids do something I'm proud of. But I've noticed that my Mormon friends gush much more about their "amazing spouses" and how lucky, blessed, perfect their lives are. Instead of saying "Good job Bobby on making the honor roll" like most of my non-LDS friends, they say "I'm so blessed with a wonderful, amazing, special son who works so hard for his high grades." I honestly think you could print out and put into a stack a bunch of FB statuses (bragging ones even) and I could sort them into Mormon and non-Mormon. So my questions are...

1. Is this just part of the programming and their need to look perfect?
2. Do they think they are doing missionary work?
3. Are they just insecure and trying to copy their other perfect Mormon friends? I mean, they are all so similarly phrased.
4. Is it the old adage, the more someone brags about something, the worse it really is? The woman who goes on and on about her wonderful husband often has the more difficult relationship, for example.
5. Am I just lucky that my non-LDS friends have enough class to keep the bragging to a minimum and in the rest of the FB universe, the non-Mos are as bad as the Mormons?

it's one big nauseating righteousness competition.
Pay it no mine. Most of it is either lies or embellishment.

It's sad how their religious culture evaluates spirituality with human capital. It can make them live very shallow, desperate, unfulfilling, ostentatious lives.

The more I saw this in my RM roommates and coworkers, the more I felt bad for them. So much more to life than just a religion.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 11:06AM by liminal state.

My first thoughts were the same as Mia and Doxy.

I don't know...I see Mormons do it, but I actually see plenty of non-LDS do it. And don't get me started about how I know several young mothers that post about their kid(s) so much that it drives me bananas.

Arrogance, narcissism and hubris.

The moremon trinity.

The mormon church is evil and worships Satan.

There's an expression in Texas, "all hat, no horse."

Because if you tell a lie enough, you start to believe it is true.

There families are not perfect. Though to be fair, most Mormon kids are really good kids, but there are a lot of good Mormon kids who catch hell, because they are not perfect, blindly obedient, Mormon kids.

I know many teenage Mormons who are very honest, intelligent, respectful of others, and who are among the best kids in their school. Most parents would kill to have a teen as level headed as these Mormon kids. Then those same kids go home, and they catch absolute hell, because they don't fully believe, or they tried coffee, or they don't want to go to the priesthood meeting at church after spending three hours at church earlier in the day, and you never hear their parents stop talking about how horrible their kid, who is an honor student, is because he won't go to seminary.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 07:09AM by forbiddencokedrinker.

They wouldn't be annoying if they acted like normal people.

It's all about the image.

It's just like when they get soooo upset any time their church is painted in a not-so-flattering light.

It's not that the information isn't true, it's that they have a need to appear to be perfect. And yes, they're always in competition with one another, for some reason.

And, how many times can I say, "It's?" LOL

Anyway, yeah, it's all about the image.

So long story short (sort of). I left the East Coast where I had been born and raised (a Catholic) to attend BYU because I had become enamored with Mormonism. Even though I remained a nevermo I met and married an RM and moved to a small Utah town to raise a family. Despite my coming from a wonderful family and the fact that I spent two years at BYU and knew full well that Mormons were no more perfect than(and in many ways of behavior "inferior" to) nevermos, for some reason (which even now sometimes shames me a bit) I continued to believe they were "perfect" for quite some time.

One of my future BILs (perfect TBM) used to stare at me all the time. This same BIL had the gaul to berate my (future) husband in front of me when we went to him to tell him we were engaged. (It was embarassing-he said all the things you can imagine a TBM brother would say to his RM TBM sibling-things that should NOT have been said in my presence). Anyway after we were married and as the years went on I used to think this BIL stared at me because he hated me because I wasn't Mormon and I had "ruined" his TBM brother.

Years and years later, after DH left Mormonism and had his name removed AND we had moved back to the East Coast, it turns out this BIL had been molesting his own daughters. Some time after he and SIL were divorced I had a conversation with her where she asked if I ever noticed BIL staring at me (!?) because his "staring" at women had something to do with his perverted sexual practices. I was sort of stunned by the whole thing.
So after this whole ordeal...after I realized I let myself be stared at by a pervert TBM and who made me feel guilty because I wasn't Mormon.....lesson learned. There are other examples similar to this as well, not the least of which is that at least half of these perky smiley UT TBMs are on Prozac.

And I no longer EVER assume their phony facades are any indication of what is going on underneath.

They are Posers

They are keeping up appearances to their family, friends, church and people who might become interested in their church because misery loves company and every other member helps them feel like they are right in being a Mormon and enduring to the end.

I could write a book about Fb and the disgusting culture it's creating. Everyone is a personal marketing genius, every status is created to make one look the best possible. Everyone adjusts and tweaks their life to make it appear quite different than the reality. The bragging alone makes me sick! And OP it's very different to post good things about your children! That is ok! We all post when our kids make honor roll or hit a home run! But that's not what a lot of people are doing. They're creating a facade and a fake life precisely to make others feel bad.

I can't stand my Mormon in laws fb posts. Lately they are posting more and more Lds things. GBH quotes, messages of love, pictures of various temples.

My step-mil is as fake as they come. She makes it extremely obvious that her blood children are better and more important than her step sons. A big part is that her blood kids are TBM. But here's the funny part. The daughter used heroin as a teen, dropped out of college, ran off to Utah, did a mission, within 3 months was married to the first idiot that liked her. She praises Heavenly Father on fb and talks about how blessed she is, then she'll post vulgar football messages and talk rather crudely about the opposing team...

The son was kicked off his mission! We still don't know why. It's a huge secret. Yet he found a TBM girl that had sex at 15, got pregnant and had the child. Her parents raised the baby till he came along. Then my step mil had the audacity to tell me that they were NOT living together until after the wedding, because they are pure or righteous or some crap! I'm like hello! He was kicked off his mission, she's obviously had sex and is no virgin! What are you playing at? Ugh!

I have very few friends on fb. I got on fb to talk to ex-wives of gays. It also helps to see what my daughter posts when she is in Alaska working. What I've found in the past month or so is being able to connect with my cousins and an aunt (one of the few left)--which has been nice.

A neighbor from my childhood found me right off the bat. I mean--we pretty much lived together, my sisters and her. BUT she is one of those braggers. She was rather 'wild' until the bishop talked her into going on a mission to feel she had paid the debt for her misdeeds. She spent her mission watching soap operas at members houses or sneaking in movie theaters. She got married in the temple, had 6 kids. She brags endlessly on fb. She is the perfect TBM supposedly.

One day she up and disappeared off fb. My sister ran into her at a store and asked her why. Well, her husband found her e-mails, etc., to her "boyfriend" and turned her into the bishop. She is on probation right now and one of the requirements was to get off fb--although we would never have known if my sister hadn't run into her. I know she felt "safe" telling my sister. None of her friends or family know.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 09:47AM by cl2.

Oh and here's another. My step BIL and SIL act all lovey dovey on fb, always posting pics of themselves and how much they love each other, posting their Valentine's dinner, roses, flowers for no reason...

Then I found out she caught him watching lots of porn and talking to multiple women online and kicked him out of the house...fb was quiet a few days. Then as if nothing had happened, their lovey dovey posts were back.

It made me realize what liars they are and how extremely fake they are.

No you don't need to post your business on fb, but you also don't need to lie. Talk about your job, your kids, the weather...you don't need to post about how amazing your relationship is, if it's not.

This is what I was wondering about. A friend of mine who moved several hours away, suddenly started posting things to try to appear like she is the most spoiled, most happily married person in the world with a devoted husband and perfect children. Pretty standard Mormon bragging but since it started rather suddenly and I because know she's had real problems in her marriage because she used to confide in me when we lived closer, combined with an obvious weight gain in her photos make me worry about her. (When my marriage was at it's worst, I gained a noticeable amount of weight too and tend to see that as a red flag.) We've drifted apart somewhat so I probably shouldn't worry and mind my own business, but the whole situation made me wonder about all the over-the-top Mormon bragging I read about and wanted to get you guys insight into the phenomenon.

Facebook is a gigantic cess pool of narcissism, regardless of religious affiliation.

My wife's non-mo cousin (no mormons whatsoever on that side of the family) just had a baby and everybody is excited, naturally. The posts are all about how "amazing" the cousin is, like she is the first woman to ever give birth to a child.

Facebook = Bragbook

Another example: There's a TBM family I've known for many years. The husband has some brain damage, mood swings, and psychiatric issues. The wife has suffered from depression and anger problems and was recently hospitalized for them. They've not shared a bedroom in over a decade.

She posts all the time about how she studies scripture every morning, how super-amazing and wonderful every day of her life is and how blessed she is, and -- this one almost made me barf -- how she and her hubby fall asleep every night holding hands!

Last week I learned that she is considering filing for divorce because she can't take his angry, violent mood swings and psych problems any more.

This reminds me of those stupid BRAGGING Christmas printed letters that my TBM husbands stupid relatives waste their stamps mailing to us each and every year. Ugh. I can't read those things anymore.

I had an old BYU roommate who would go on for four pages, back and front, detailing every moment of her life. No kidding - it would read "The first weekend in January we spent skiing with the Jones - such fun and nice to be in the mountains again. The next weekend was "Bob's" conference in Miami so it was nice to get into the sunshine. After spending some time at home, we got to visit Mom and Dad on their boat, the last week of January ..." It was just awful but thankfully, when she had kids, she turned the job over to her much less chatty, kinda smart-@ss husband who writes one, short, sarcastic funny page.

My mom's is annoying because she tries to keep it to 1/3rd of a page and so doesn't make complete sentences. She'll say "CA girl, still lives in ____, works at _____, serves in Scouting (implying Mormon involvement/leaving out that it's Girl Scouts and we are inactive.) It's short but irritating to read. She also insisted last year on putting that my kids were in YM/YW and when I called her on it, she said "Well, they are on the ROLLS, aren't they? That means they are in YM/YW." The fact they never attend was irrelevant to her, since she wants to appear like the perfect Mormon family. In fact, she justified it by saying "How would it look if I talked about how your sister's kids are so involved in church and didn't mention your kids were at anything?" It would look HONEST Mom.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 11:31AM by CA girl.

As a result of this post, I went to the mormon.org facebook page... All these people going on about how they love being LDS and how they are so glad that "Heavenly Father" realized that they were strong and determined enough to be taken to earth... Creepy

I hate those Christmas letters! I couldn't believe it when a family (TBM) sent us one. It was disgusting. A total bragfest.

At the end of the bragging about each one of their amazingly brilliant and exceptionally talented 5 children, she actually said something about a little prank the kids pulled, then said, "I keep telling you all our kids aren't perfect".

I'll add my vote for "trying to convince themselves" which several others mentioned above.

They believe that focusing on the positive will enhance on increase the good while decreasing the bad. This is sort of an okay strategy up to a point. When delusion sets in, one has gone too far.

One result of this unrelenting harping on the perfection of one's family is a loss of individuality. The unintended consequence is that all of the families most bent on achieving the ideal of mormon perfection become the families most indistinguishable from each other. It's yet another means to erase individuality.

Trends toward mediocrity are also established when even small achievements are given the full PR treatment that should be reserved for great accomplishments. The message becomes: mediocrity is fine -- don't bother with excellence -- just the fact that you did something is good enough, you don't have to also do something well.

This is one of the reasons I feel a bit more emotionally healthy now that I've deactivated my facebook for a few months. It's exhausting and depressing to see so much humblebragging in one place, regardless of religious affiliation.

I was on FB for three days. I hated it. I don't want to see anyone else's either.

My husband is on FB. He's not allowed to post anything about my life. I have disconnected from the majority of my family of origin, and do not want to share my life with them in anyway. They occasionally comment on DH FB. So I know that they read everything he has on there.

My daughter also went off of fb. My mother was more or less stalking her. She doesn't know my mother, and doesn't want to know her. Daughter is afraid that my mother will find out about her wedding and show up uninvited.

I have read the facebooks of a few other people. Most are TBM. It's all such a bunch of BS. It's like those horrible Christmas letters on steroids.

Every member a missionary. Show off how wonderful it is to be a mormon family so that others will want to be families in mormondumb.

I don't think most members are narcissistic as much as obeying marching orders to be an example of mormonism to the world. FB is their latest soapbox. Families are the biggest ad TSCC has to the world, apparently by their stance on prop8 and other issues.

It has been my observation that those who continually gush and state how wonderful their marriage are, the more trouble their marriage is in. It's as though they are trying to convince themselves.

When you meet someone who is truly balanced and HAPPY their marriage is, they don't need to announce how happy and balanced their marriage is. It is self evident. JMHO

A Moroccan friend of mine made me realized that.
He also said that about the couples that kept calling each other by 'sweet nicknames' all the time.
For example, if a couple would constantly called each other 'amorcito' anywhere they were (we worked with Latinos), my friend would turn to me and say, "look at them and listen to them. In a few months to a year they'll be separating or divorcing." And he was always right.