Reflection on Social Media Case 9: Ponderize

               This case is very difficult to understand for me personally because there a lot of factors that go into it. This is about an LDS General Authority, Elder Durrant, who spoke in general conference on “ponderizing”, which is pondering the scriptures and memorizing a verse from the scriptures. I thought that the whole “ponderize” term is very clever, and apparently Elder Durrant’s son thought that it was clever too, so much that he created a website where you could buy merchandise that had “ponderize” on it, as well as a Facebook page on the subject.

After this website and Facebook page were created, there was a lot of backlash from people who were suspicious and saw the whole thing as a way for them to make money for personal gain. After this happened, his son made a post that said that all profits would go to a missionary fund. This only caused people to be more suspicious, questioning why that wasn’t said in the first place. The fact that the statement was only made after the backlash also makes me question if all profits really were intended to go to the missionary fund. You can read more about the whole scandal HERE as well as what was done by Elder Durrant to address the issue.

This whole social media case is just another example of how fast something can spread on social media and how fast there can be negative reactions if you aren’t careful. Things like this happen all the time on social media and this article from CNN presents many different incidents of it happening with celebrities. Overall, this can be a lesson for everyone to always think of what can happen in result of whatever you post on social media for everyone to see. The fact that everyone can see it, and not everyone will think of it as a positive thing, should always be in the back of your mind.