The internet value increases with this Moore's Law doubling effect and information is there for the picking. How long do you think these old geezers on the Governing Body can keep this currant generation of members in the darkness of stupidity? The human mind while it has it's fault will pick up on fraud at least on the unconscious level and stop giving time and money to these clowns. I think the waters of Babylon are drying up if you know what I mean. Try as they may with threats of DF'ng they are doomed to oblivion.
Moore's Law And The Survival Of The Watchtower Corporation? When Will Instant Processing Push These Dumb Bastard Into Bankruptcy?
by Brokeback Watchtower 15 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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Magnum
they are doomed to oblivion
I know that some (many?) on this site disagree, but I agree. They tried to keep up some excitement by hyping 100 years of kingdom rule in 2014. It's now almost 2017 and the "100 years of kingdom rule" has been forgotten. They are now trying to whip up excitement with the "bunker" stuff. That excitement will die down soon. Eventually, it seems they'll have to run out of tricks. All the while, the internet will be killing them.
I believe growth will stop soon, and they will go into decline.
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Simon
Yeah, because the internet doesn't help spread dumb ideas in any way whatsoever ...
They are as dangerous as they have ever been and these groups will exist so long as there are people and governments willing to give them tax breaks.
Why would they decline? Religion is like a Casino, who can make one of those go bust ...
They will always be able to cut costs and ask for more money and their costs are minimal.
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Crazyguy
The Internet has already made it where most countries their in now no or very little growth. I think they will be in the negative in less then a decade. Other threads have talked about how thier loosing half of everyone they baptize and numbers around 250k per year are very common. If they continue to loose 2.5 million per decade or more they will be going down quickly. I think this is already happening.
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freddo
From the low baptism counts going round since the end of 2014 continuing until now they have already stagnated. I believe they will manipulate the figures to show the tiniest of growths rather than a deficit - and maybe watch out for the "love of the greater number cooling off" becoming a theme!
The "Memorial count" is interesting - not really changed in the last 5 years.
Who goes to a memorial? New ones yes but also it is the last meeting attended by the faders, the "in only for family" types and the "disfellowshipped but mentally in" types.
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slimboyfat
I agree that technology will make (is making) the Watchtower bankrupt, but not (mainly) because of exposure of their flaws on the Internet.
The Watchtower Society was essentially a book publishing business. The first hammer blow came in the 1990s when they had to stop cover charges on the literature. But the Internet and digital content is the coup de grace. Everyone is on their tablets, they are reducing print publishing dramatically. What next? Consolidation and decline, and pretty rapid too by the look of it.
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punkofnice
Whereas I believe the internet has given the opportunity for many to learn the truth about the truth(tm), there are many that will not take advantage of that opportunity. Many reasons too, it isn't as easy as saying, "Well, that was BS, I'm walking away." Many people in the cult have emotional and financial ties to the WBT$. Oh, it only it were that easy.
I like to think that they'll see bankruptcy coming and amalgamate with another company, Disney Bible and Tract Society????
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konceptual99
The WTS can go on for years simply on the fact that the majority of the the members are held mentally captive and will ignore the glaringly obvious time after time after time. I think this will be the case even with stagnation or even growing losses.
Having said that, the youth in the organisation, whilst following patterns set by previous generations, do not have the investment in the organisation that their parents have and are far more likely to be more apathetic and liable to investigate the religion on the internet. I can see from what is happening with young people I see all the time that the desire to focus on a life in WTS centric activities is low. When I was a teenager, it was more common for young men to be "reaching out", now I think the balance is the other way - few young men are that interested in pushing to servants and elders.
I am certain that the GB can see the writing on the wall and are trying their best to stem the flow with increasingly desperate measures like banging on about loyalty, keeping the pressure up on shunning, shameless emotional blackmail through saccharine paradise videos, spreading FOG through things like the bunker videos, eking out time through change and distraction, demonising those who question and so on.
It's true they have always done much of this however the recent changes to the WTS have seen them move to highly emotional messages using video. This is way different to the past. The problem for them is that this is low hanging fruit. It's captures the attention and the minds of some but only for a short time before reality kicks in again. Not only that but for any who don't buy straight into it, it simply breeds cynicism and opens the door for critical thinking. It's a short term strategy and i wonder how long it can really last as people get increasingly frustrated with the lack of real depth to anything.
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Doubting Bro
While I'd like to see them slip into oblivion, it's not going to happen in my lifetime outside a black swan event.
They can downsize to almost nothing and still run the religion. Their structure allows for that since the local elders who run the individual congregations are volunteers (not on the payroll) and the buildings themselves are maintained by the local congregations. All they really have is the Bethel's (which they are dumping all over the place), the COs (remember they dumped the DOs), missionaries (they've already stopped sending new ones out so are phasing that out)and branch staff. The printing of literature I think will cease altogether and will likely be outsourced. That way, literature orders could be moved back to a paid structure with the WTS having the local congregation submit orders to a 3rd party and pay for them at the time of placing the order. You could reduce public placements to just pamphlets that can be printed by the local congregations.
There are still downsizing levers to be pulled:
1 - Eliminate COs and turn the position into a local committee of elders. Super easy to do.
2 - Eliminate special pioneers (very easy)
3 - Stop printing literature and outsource with payment by the locals.
4 - Continue consolidating KH & AH. You could do that until you make the religion a web only religion if you really wanted to.
5 - Stop distributing print literature only on-line unless the person wants to order and pay for something.
6 - Reduce staff at branch level to just a few folks. Eventually you could even have branch stuff done by volunteers.
7 - Have RCs in the already paid for AHs or even a web event at the local KH.
Are they in decline? Yes. Certainly in influence and not growing much at all. But, religion is part business and part emotional attachment and when you put emotion and tradition into it, I just don't see it completely going away. I do think it will be a slow decline and could get to the point that they are less than 50k but I don't see them going away (unfortunately).
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Vidiot
At the rate they've been downsizing, by 2100 they'll end up consisting of just a couple of guys in a rented basement somewhere. :smirk: