Jamie Loftus

So if you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend you do, because this is a frustratingly complicated question. Last time, we talked about the origins of the Mormon church, its stance on race, gender, and sexuality. Cliff notes, not great. And its history of intersecting with conservative-leaning social media trends among women. So think mommy blogs of the 2000s.

Mormon women were at the top of that boom and were more open about their religion than many influencers are today. Think about another ongoing trend that's a whole subject unto itself, one I'd like to dedicate more time to in the future. Mormon women's intersection with major multi-level marketing schemes.

Schemes that rely on salespeople spending a lot of their own money with usually diminishing returns if you don't get in on the ground floor. Utah has the highest concentration of MLMs in the country, and the door-to-door element isn't that unlike the missionary spirit that the devout embark on on behalf of the Church of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS, when they're young adults. Sales as a mission.

Actually, if you're into obscure documentaries as much as I am, one of the most famous contemporary failed MLM schemes was actually founded by a Mormon couple, that being LuLaRoe, the ugly leggings company that was busted in a massive legal scandal in the 2010s. You tell the people you love they're in a pyramid scheme and they go, no, I'm not.

And when it comes to recruiting for MLMs, Mormon women tend to be excellent marks. Because of the rigid gender roles of the religion that encourage many women to stay at home, things like LuLaRoe might be the only opportunity for them to make a living on their own, not to mention the close-knit Mormon communities offering a ton of customers.

It's not quite that simple, but you see where I'm going with this. And of course, there is significant crossover with Mormon women in the current, if somewhat dwindling, tradwife content that's become extremely popular on Instagram and TikTok. We talk about this quite a bit in the first part of the series, specifically about users from MomTalk.

the stars of the new show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Ballerina Farm, a 10 million follower influencer who presents stay-at-homestead lifestyle while, say it with me, selling that idea to her followers as a part of what is very much a job unto itself.

The more I think about it, tradwives are actually not straying from the similarly flawed girl boss archetypes the way that they think they are. But that's for another day, because now we're going to forge into part two, shall we? Even with the context I've given you, I was still confused. Because yes, white hetero-conservatism sells online, we know that. But why this religion specifically?

What about Mormon content is bringing them to the top of your feed? Ex-Mormon influencer Alyssa Grenfell has been asking this question too. She was raised an extremely devout Utah Mormon, went on a mission, got married at an LDS temple, the whole nine yards.

Eventually, like one in three young Mormons today, she left the church in her 20s with her husband after they both found themselves questioning the values they'd grown up with. For Alyssa's husband, the radicalizing issue was the church's stance on gay marriage. And for Alyssa, it was a series of crises of faith.

Over and over, what Alyssa felt God wanted for her was directly contradicted by priests and her father. She was called to do a mission 2,000 miles away from where she expected. She was told by her father that God needed her to be a teacher when she had no interest in teaching and didn't feel she had the natural skill set to do it.

So eventually, the two leave the Mormon church, they start drinking coffee and cocktails, and Alyssa was motivated to join YouTube after self-publishing her first book. And while she's been on YouTube for less than a year, she already has nearly a quarter million subscribers. And my favorite video of hers presents a pretty compelling theory.

Alyssa suggests that, sure, Mormon tradwife content does play into the algorithm as far as aesthetics, but it's very possible that the Church of Latter-day Saints itself is bankrolling these Mormon mommy influencers without the influencers being able to say for sure that it's them. Here's a clip from that video.

Alyssa only started investigating this search term question when she was getting repeated feedback that her viewers were getting ads for the Mormon church on her videos, which is weird because Alyssa's content is doing the opposite of encouraging people to join the church.

And what's more, when she looked into the amount that she was making on YouTube and the amount of algorithmic preference she was getting less than a year into her time versus other creators, she was getting a lot more engagement and making a lot more money. Why? She explains more in the video.

So this theory isn't and can't be proven without the LDS being straightforward about their finances, which will never happen. So I'll let Alyssa take it from here. Without any further ado, here is my interview with the fantastic Alyssa Grenfell.

I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up like I didn't know anything about Mormon culture outside of what was in pop culture when I was growing up. Growing up in the Mormon church, I know that you've made a significant amount of content about this. How are women specifically treated and sort of how are you conditioned to view yourself?

As I was sort of learning more about you as you were coming of age, all of these gut feelings, thinking that I'm being guided by God towards this person, towards this mission location, towards this job, receiving different answers that weren't in your gut. What is it like to process that doubt?

How do you move forward with so much of what your life has been structured around being removed?

You're coming of age alongside the internet and you're growing up with these very rigid beliefs. What was your relationship with the internet as you were coming of age into your early adulthood?