Lolcow James Lloyd Evans / Lloyd Evans / John Cedars / The Reluctant Apostate / JWWatch / @cedarsjwsurvey - Self-appointed figurehead of ex-JWs, anti-sex abuse campaigner who spends his donations on hookers because he lacks "total mastery of his penis"

[What the shit]

A lot of power-leveling in here, that's for sure.

 

[Pee Cola]

I don’t want to PL too much, but I grew up a JW and come from a a family that was in the religion for many generations.

Whilst on the subject of PL and ex-Jovos, my best mate from school grew up in a Jovo family and he reckons that the culture within the church is for parents to try and talk their kids out of pursuing higher education. Basically the church needs useful idiots, and too much of that high-falutin' book learnin' will piss Jehovah off. He ended up leaving home at 16, but he didn't get officially disfellowshipped until he started going to uni.

The other thing I was told is that Jovos have a real obsession with how they present themselves to the outside world. That's why Jovo families are all dressed up to the nines when they're out witnessing, even though most of the dudes dress like Russell Greer (because an ill-fitting suit and polyester tie is 'dressed up to the nines' according to this lot).

Apparently one way to repel a pack of Jovos is to have a perfectly manicured front yard. That dovetails back into the obsession about presenting an image to the outside world, and the house with the neatest lawn in the street is unlikely to be occupied by souls that need saving.

As for my own observations, a lot of them seem to like MLMs.

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

A lot of power-leveling in here, that's for sure.

Being involved with JWs primes you for lolcows and clown world (I can ramble for some time about this), haha.

 

[ZipDisk]

I'm surprised the JW's have never become a murder cult.

 

[What the shit]

I'm surprised the JW's have never become a murder cult.

Give it a few more decades when there is less JW in the world due to the increasing amount of non-religious people there are.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Slight PL, but I had a few JWs come into my store one time while some Amish people were also shopping.

One of the JWs actually tried to make conversation with one of them, and I'll never forget the look on his face when after he asked her what some of the stuff she was buying was for, she bluntly told him "A birthday cake."

 

[Fialovy]

As for my own observations, a lot of them seem to like MLMs.

That's because MLMs are cults in of themselves The Quiverfull fundies are often the same way, especially since it is sold as a way for women to make money without working outside the home which is traditionally frowned upon and often forbidden. the one quiverfull matriarch Jill Rodriguez is involved in Plexus for that reason and a lot of MLMs were founded by Mormons in Utah which, if you look at the founder Joseph Smith (and also Charles Tase Russell of the JWs to some extent) who was a conman at heart, it makes sense to some extent.

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

Give it a few more decades when there is less JW in the world due to the increasing amount of non-religious people there are.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. JWs love to fudge their membership numbers, but they are seeing huge growth in 3rd-World countries and are stagnant in the West (people leave, but there is some entrance from other liberal Christian sects that are withering away). The increasing non-religiousness of the world I feel like is coming from the mainstream sects (younger kids become non-religious while others switch to another sect with more “backbone”). There may be a net non-religiousness increase in the world, but we’re going to see a rise in more extremist religions at the same time (kind of like the increasing polarization of politics, except religion has a decades head-start: JWs prime you for clown world *honk honk*).

Besides, given the no-blood transfusion rule, JWs may already technically be a murder cult…

 

[Formica Sample]

"I have talked to many women either here or in real life you certainly act a lot older than you are. That is even more attractive to me than anything you can tell me right now."

Pedo.

No one says any variation of, "You're so mature for your age," in that context without the intention of showing the minor just what kinds of "mature things" adults get up to.

 

[TurdFondler]

Holy shit dude talks about his boner to underage girls. That chat log is so over the top it seems fake.

 

[Mike Stoklasas Spock Ears]

It makes me wonder if there are any ex-Mormons who are this insane, they have to be out there. I am very interested in Christian and pseudo-Christian type cults so this was definitely a treat

Look no further than John Dehlin: groper male feminist, swinger, scammer, and grifter extraordinaire. He has become somewhat of a cult leader in his own right. Definitely deserving of a thread.

 

[Drowsy Mana]

Amazing stuff op! I'm an EX JW but not an advocate and I used to watch this channel a lot. Always hated his long talking points ( it feels like elder talks) but stayed for the convention videos and the organization generally acting fucking wild. This is amazing. I never feel like there's enough public attention on JW's for their dangerous and ridiculous claims and practices. Thank you again for this! <3

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

are there british hebrew israelites as well?

Go look up Anglo-Israelism. Yes, their is a group of british people that thinks they are the lost tribes and sheit.

 

[Colonel Gaddafi]

Just a general observation, but it seems to me that many ex JWs/Mormons/Scientologists end up making the act of being an ‘apostate’ a key defining feature of their personality. Another example of this is militant atheist, ex JW Youtuber, Telltale, who makes videos regarding ‘cults’. This is all fine and dandy, but he oftentimes has very little knowledge about other groups besides JW, and commonly ascribes malice to things that are otherwise normal for religious people (his videos on Catholics and the Amish are particularly clusterfucky). It’s almost as if the hubris that would exist in a JW is just repackaged and rebranded. I dunno, I think if I were to escape a cult that ‘ruined my life’ the last thing I’d want to do is constantly screech about it on the Internet.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I'm disappointed no one's made this reference yet.

It's done by the same unknown group behind the "Mormon Jesus" video, in which that one had kernels of truth but everything was blown completely out of proportion and ridiculousness, so I suspect this one is like that, too, I'm just not versed in JW stuff to know.

My only experience with JWs are the time my brother, who was then a newly-returned missionary, stupidly invited a pleasant older couple in to talk religion because he likes doing that, in which Mom noted the wife never spoke a word the whole time. Then for the next couple of months, their missionaries would come to the house clearly asking for my brother, but he was never home whenever they'd show and we all would just pretend we weren't home. Thing was, they would stake out the house across the street for at least 30 minutes just staring at us, it was really weird and creepy. Eventually we got my brother to finally be home for when they'd show and tell them he wasn't interested and to leave him alone.

Apparently there's an actual "rivalry" or bad blood between Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, but I have no idea what that's about. Only knew about it because of one scene in Mobsters & Mormons, in which it might be more of a Utah thing than anything else.

Funny how discussion on the religion itself is more fascinating than talking about this weirdo who gives ex-Jehovah's Witnesses a bad rap. So on that note, is it true that the JWs eventually dropped the whole 144,000 stuff because too many people kept poking holes in it, or because they realized that the 144,000 servants of God (of the twelve tribes of Israel) were explicitly stated to have not been defiled with women and they clearly can't have unmarried members among their congregation?

 

[Viridian]

Go look up Anglo-Israelism. Yes, their is a group of british people that thinks they are the lost tribes and sheit.

Lolcow Melinda Scott (AKA the Mountain Jew who has repeatedly sued Null) is one of those types as well, though she put her own retarded spin on the idea. She thinks the "real Jews" all moved to Scotland after the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, and that since she has Scottish blood that makes her more Jewish than the actual Jews currently living in Israel.

Given how this guy apparently likes to squeal about calling his lawyer every time a "hater" says something he doesn't like, I'm guessing we'll see a new thread in the "Take That Off The Goddamn Internet!" subforum soon.

Spoiler: Tangent

As someone who has had very little personal experience with Jehovah's Witnesses myself, I found this video I watched some months back quite helpful in understanding WTF their cult was about. I'm sharing it in case anyone else is interested in more of the historical context surrounding this new cow.

 

[kaien]

Your info was probably given to the JW’s via school friend or neighbor. The JW’s still have random members send handwritten letters to the former-owner of my home x2 a year. The guy hasn’t owned the house for six years.
Apparently he had a JW that worked for his business years ago who put him, his address and phone number on their local list.

Yeah, it's very easy to get someone on their mailing/call list. They've long had web forms for just this purpose. Back when I did a lot of Ebay selling I'd take the addresses/numbers of deadbeat buyers from their invoices (if dudes won auctions and refused to pay up, Paypal still sent me their info anyway) and put them in the JW web form.

 

[Ethan Ralph is 5'1" 🖕💋]

I once had a pleasant and interesting conversation with a JW on the phone when they cold called our house. I talked to them for like 40 minutes about religion and the afterlife because I was bored and genuinely like talking about that stuff.

The next day this chick shows up at my parents house uninvited to talk to me (I also happened to be 16 at the time so a minor).

Never gave her the address and our number was unlisted.

It was freaky.

I was just reading this and remembered a similar thing happening to me maybe 7-8 years ago.
Back then I was a fairly extreme anti-theist, and I can imagine having turned them down when they were testing my door bell for the umpteenth time in a slightly aggressive way (even though I don't recall either or)
But all of a sudden I was getting texts on my phone too, even though my number was unlisted everywhere and the privacy laws here are such that it's REALLY not listed anywhere.
It wasn't rude texts as far as remember, just the usual propaganda, although it's obviously to cover their own ass to some degree since the real purpose is a veiled threat of having been able to dig up your phone number.
Anyway, she didn't even use a burner phone or anything, so I looked her up and got her address (she was living in the other end of the city).
I then made and printed out some autistic official-looking letter from a made-up Christian suicide cult, something about finding immediate salvation and showing true devotion by sacrificing oneself here on Earth to speed up the process and be reunited with God, complete with a shitty wax seal on the envelope made with a candle, which I then mailed out to her.
I don't know which one of the parties involved were more retarded, but the TLDR is that they definitely have sketchy means of getting info on people outside of what the average Joe is able to come up with.

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

As someone who has had very little personal experience with Jehovah's Witnesses myself, I found this video I watched some months back quite helpful in understanding WTF their cult was about. I'm sharing it in case anyone else is interested in more of the historical context surrounding this new cow.

I’d be careful with the YouTube channel “Knowing Better” — he’s kind of a budding lolcow himself and generally goes for Reddit-tier pop-knowledge “intellectual” videos (which sucks because the topic of the video could be interesting).

It is interesting the amount of lolcows and lolcow-adjacent material that’s stirring up around this otherwise small eccentric religion/cult.

 

[GunnlaugurSassoon]

Interesting post. Never even considered ex-[religion] cows despite how entertaining the opposite can be.

I did some skimming in a few of the megathreads and this comment caught my eye:

I was just thinking back to an old podcast series I used to listen to called jwpodcast.org. It started back in 2014 and hosted jointly by Lloyd and Louise Goode and a guy called James who lived in Greece I think. It was a mix of news and chat. There were some good episodes, I remember enjoying a long interview with Deborah Frances-White for example. At a certain point though, around 2017/18 there was a falling out - and Louise temporarily gained control over the podcast and locked out Lloyd and James. Louise then put out a podcast explaining some behaviour by Lloyd that they had an issue with related to dealing with CSA survivors I think. It was basically an entire podcast denouncing Lloyd's recent actions and was quite shocking at the time. It reminds me very much of what has happened recently with Kim. Then somehow, Lloyd and James wrestled power back of the podcast and Louise Goode started a new podcast called JW community podcast with an Australian woman which lasted another few years.
I was trying to search back to the old jwpodcasts / Facebook pages and it all seems to have been scrubbed. I can't quite recall now what it was that set off the dispute. I wonder whether it ties in to all the stuff going on now. Can anyone remember that incident who can explain what went on?

https://archive.ph/o/6b8mR/https://...ead_part_cinque_police_investigation/hx5pxiu/

I know you touched on the BCG thing in the OP, but that podcast episode sounds interesting. The comment is right, I haven't been able to find the podcast itself. Fingers crossed someone else can.