Reflection on Social Media Case 9: Ponderize

With the background that Devin Durrant has, I think that there is no doubt in my mind that this was planned. Elder Durrant, being a retired professional basketball player and a financial advisor, its obvious this guy knows his way around money. Even if it wasn’t planned, then that is some really bad timing. I think that this is something that they knew was a huge platform and they knew how many people would be watching and listening that they saw it as a golden opportunity and made sure to take advantage of it. I do not think these two had bad intentions in what they did, I think they had good intentions and people just took what they did the wrong way. It’s not like they were pocketing all the money; it was going to a good cause but they way they made it seem like all they wanted was to make money isn’t a good look for them. The LDS church already has an insane amount of money involved, I think it was unnecessary for them to make these websites and start selling merchandise in the first place. It was a good idea that Devin and Ryan had, but I do not think they thought the whole thing through beforehand before receiving all of the backlash that they did. The hashtag #moderndayprofits is funny to me because the LDS church certainly knows its way around money, and profit huge amounts. The LDS church is the richest church in the world worth over 40 billion dollars and collects nearly 9 billion dollars every year in tithing money. The last thing that this church needs is even more money. The LDS church should have shut down these websites once they found out about them because the last thing they need is more money, but hey, the more money the better I guess.

http://kutv.com/news/local/lds-church-leader-apologizes-for-ponderize-merchandise-website

https://splinternews.com/a-concept-called-ponderizing-just-launched-the-mormon-c-1793851673