Posts by dubstepped

35

Not Being Invited To Gatherings.

by kennylazo1 in

jw
friends

have you ever found out that your "buddies" from the kingdom hall went out to have fun and did not invite you?

if so how did you feel?.

dubstepped

A story, maybe two:

My wife and I were never in the cool club. We spent most weekends trying to entertain ourselves. One Sunday we drove up about an hour and a half away to pretty much just go for a drive. There were some cool state parks up that way so we drove through them too, did a little hiking around, just bored and kind of killing time but trying to find something to do.

On the way back from the last park the car started acting funny. Radio started going in and out. Headlights stopped working so I went to the brights, and then they stopped. It was night, and very dark and kind of cold out, and on rural roads in the middle of nowhere. Had to use a flashlight to see where a driveway was to pull off. I knocked on the door of this creepy place to let them know why we were blocking their drive. Nobody answered. Probably best.

I called my JW friend that lived in my neighborhood back home. He was a mechanic. Well, it just so happened that he was driving back from a football game about an hour past us. Now, he was a good dude, and he met up with us and I was able to drive home following him. Apparently my alternator over charged and blew my headlights.

Anyway, we didn't go straight home. We had to stop somewhere first. We had to stop at the restaurant parking lot where all of the local JWs our age from congregations all over had met to go up to a football game. I LOVE football and probably knew more about it than any of them. Nobody ever invited us though. So our sad selves sat in a dark car in a parking lot surrounded by all of these young dubs fresh from having great fun at a football game and we just felt awful. We never were invited. In fact, they started a fantasy football league, and I was never even invited to that.

Oh, and on the flip side, once I invited a bunch of young dubs over to my place. I was new in that congregation and had moved there. Most said yes. I bought a bunch of pizzas.............and had to throw most of it away because not.......one..........person........showed.

77

Trying To Leave - Im Going Crazy

by pale.emperor in

this is my first post.

i really feel i need to leave the jw's rather than go along pretending everything is perfect etc.

no friends, me at work.

dubstepped

Wow, what a cool thread bump.

@All or nothing - glad you liked it. :)

28

Our very own pale.emperor on the "shunned" podcast.......

by dubstepped in

well, i offered in one of his threads to have him on the show and posters seemed excited at the possibility and we got it done so now you can hear from the man himself on the newest episode of "shunned".

one of our very own stepped up to tell his story, well, aside from myself of course.

it was great getting to actually speak with him.. this is my first international interview for the podcast.

dubstepped

Simon: Just listening now ... even though he's a scouser
Re: the transcribing, Google now have a voice-to-text service as part of their Cloud Platform that may be worth looking at - they are exceedingly competitive when it comes to pricing and have excellent tech for image and voice recognition. Their pricing is $0.006 USD per 15 seconds so ~30 minutes would be about $0.75c going off my math.
Also, for the funding, you might want to consider having some ads on your site to help pay the bills. Let me know if you need any help or advice on the SEO too - sometimes it's not the SEO per se that matters but making content shareable on Facebook / Twitter etc... so it appears with a nice image that can really help to drive traffic by increasing social sharing.

I learned a new term.......scouser. Had to look that one up, lol.

Thanks for the cool tip on the transcribing. In my research so far it looks like people are actually kind of doing a voice to google doc approach. I'm not sure if it will work, but I'm going to do some experimenting on what it will require. Generally the less I ask of my guests the better, so I'm not sure what they'd have to do on their end. In other words, I'd have to figure out if 1. Everyone can use Google Voice for calls and 2. If I can record the audio to a google doc while we record for both sides. I don't want to have to rely on the person on the other side getting theirs set up too. Anyway, there's lots of questions there, but it's one heck of a suggestion. I've read that you can and that you cannot take previously recorded audio and play it through speakers and have it transcribe. It's worth a shot, so I'll play around with it all.

What kind of ads do you suggest? Are we talking Adsense or something like that? I'm not sure I get enough traffic for that to pay off, but if I get some content through transcription and do some basic SEO to get traffic up it might repay some of it with ads. Then again, I don't even know offhand what my traffic numbers look like. I have a plugin that should track it, but I haven't set up Google Analytics yet. I have a lot to do on the back end for some of that stuff. More to learn.

My wife is my hero on social media. She handles a lot of the initial posting on Instagram and Twitter because I'm so busy between here and Facebook and reddit and fielding emails and trying to set up and record interviews and setting up the links and descriptions for each episode, plus keeping up the website and learning some basic SEO to try to help myself out. I do jump in and chat with people there and leave comments, but she gets things going to help out. Things are really picking up there.

Thanks so much for offering to help and already doing so with the transcription suggestion. It's nice to get some input. It's tough to figure it all out on my own sometimes.

28

Our very own pale.emperor on the "shunned" podcast.......

by dubstepped in

well, i offered in one of his threads to have him on the show and posters seemed excited at the possibility and we got it done so now you can hear from the man himself on the newest episode of "shunned".

one of our very own stepped up to tell his story, well, aside from myself of course.

it was great getting to actually speak with him.. this is my first international interview for the podcast.

dubstepped

stuckinarut2 - Great work as always Mike! Thank you so much
We would be more than happy to support your work via Patreon. Will set it up soon.
I loved the way Mark (Pale Emp) was "outed" by his family member and harrassed by the elders when they said "does the name Pale Emperor mean anything to you?" It is so similar to my story!
Speaking of which, I am Sooooo close to sharing my full story with you on your podcast if there is a chance...

First, you're very welcome.

Second, you're my first ever Patron! Thank you so much!!!!!!!! Every bit will count toward the transcribing of the episodes. I already pay for audio hosting, website hosting, and the equipment I got to get started. Finally got some rechargeable batteries as my recorder was going through them quick.

Third, I remember being here on this forum when Mark got outed by his relative. I remember the posts about it. Ticked me off that she was going through his computer. JWs sure are a nosy bunch. My mom would comb through our rooms and later when we had computers (I was out of the house by then) she had key loggers and such to spy on what my brothers wrote online.

Oh, and you know that if you want to tell your story I'll make it happen. :) I work everyone in as I can.

Again, thanks for your support.

26

Not posted for a year because mum died did not want blood.

by Witness 007 in

i posted here weekly until a year ago when my mum died of a mild form of lukemia which is easy to treat with 2 blood tranfusions a month.

you can live to 100 with treatment, but no my mum chose to die a faithful witness after 2 years of chemo and hell for her family and doctors.

her chemo doctor cried when she only had weeks left to live knowing that she could be saved with one bag of blood!

dubstepped

Oh wow, I'm so sorry for your loss. As was said above, they are the ones that are truly bloodguilty. Someone once pointed out that the JWs are like a slow, methodical Jonestown. So much needless death. Hugs to you, and I'm sorry, which feels hollow in the face of such a stark reality.

138

LEAKED: WHQ Accounts: 2016-2020 Budget

by Fay Dehr in

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 1 of 5] https://youtu.be/g08tw2v3b4s.

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 2 of 5] https://youtu.be/rpceb5v0vbe.

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 3 of 5] https://youtu.be/2xa08ukc_6i.

dubstepped

Jehovah is speeding up the work!!! Watch out for that chariot!!!!! It can move in any direction, including backward, spins, etc. The FDS is sooooo discreet. You can tell they're being directed by holy spirit by the sexual abuse cover ups and financial issues. I might go back.

138

LEAKED: WHQ Accounts: 2016-2020 Budget

by Fay Dehr in

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 1 of 5] https://youtu.be/g08tw2v3b4s.

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 2 of 5] https://youtu.be/rpceb5v0vbe.

leaked: whq accounts: 2016-2020 budget [part 3 of 5] https://youtu.be/2xa08ukc_6i.

dubstepped

Anybody else get 4:55 worth of video on video four even though it says it's 9:55 long? I've never seen something like that before. It goes that far and then it just spins, but the reality is that it's at the end of the video timeline even though there should be 5 minutes left.

28

Our very own pale.emperor on the "shunned" podcast.......

by dubstepped in

well, i offered in one of his threads to have him on the show and posters seemed excited at the possibility and we got it done so now you can hear from the man himself on the newest episode of "shunned".

one of our very own stepped up to tell his story, well, aside from myself of course.

it was great getting to actually speak with him.. this is my first international interview for the podcast.

dubstepped

Yeah, I wasn't sure about that. I've heard that they're fatal in predominantly Muslim countries but wonder how they handle it in more developed countries (if that's the term). Can't go around killing dissenters in the USA, for instance, much to the chagrin of the WTBTS.

28

Our very own pale.emperor on the "shunned" podcast.......

by dubstepped in

well, i offered in one of his threads to have him on the show and posters seemed excited at the possibility and we got it done so now you can hear from the man himself on the newest episode of "shunned".

one of our very own stepped up to tell his story, well, aside from myself of course.

it was great getting to actually speak with him.. this is my first international interview for the podcast.

dubstepped

See my second post in this thread for other ways to listen. Let me know if you have any other questions. I hope that helps.

Here's some info from a quick search on Google Play that might help:

https://support.google.com/googleplaymusic/answer/6343833?hl=en

28

Our very own pale.emperor on the "shunned" podcast.......

by dubstepped in

well, i offered in one of his threads to have him on the show and posters seemed excited at the possibility and we got it done so now you can hear from the man himself on the newest episode of "shunned".

one of our very own stepped up to tell his story, well, aside from myself of course.

it was great getting to actually speak with him.. this is my first international interview for the podcast.

dubstepped

Oh, and I just thought I'd throw this out for those that might be interested. If you subscribe you'll get this little episode in the middle of the month. If anyone has input I'm happy to take it in. It's weird to ask for money (I never enjoyed it as a dub either and rarely did it at the doors), but I have good reason.

So I think I'm going to drop a little bonus episode in the middle of this month asking for donations and outlining why specifically. I have a listener to my This JW Life podcast that has helped me with some SEO, and part of that was getting all of my episodes transcribed. Having written content is a huge part of SEO. For those unfamiliar, SEO is search engine optimization, a way of working with sites like Google to get your site indexed and found.

This listener paid out of his own pocket to get my This JW Life podcast transcribed. He used a site like Trint.com which charges $15 per hour of audio, and it is done through a speech to text program. It isn't the most high quality transcription, in that it is a computer listening and it won't get every word accurate, but it's far cheaper than true transcription and has the same effect of getting lots of written content on the site. Still, he must have spent hundreds to get my story transcribed.

If I could get these episodes of "shunned" transcribed, especially with some of the diversity that I hope to get in the interviews, I think I could build a site that will rank well. Why does that matter?

If it ranks well more people will find it and listen. For example, with the work that my listener and new friend has done on This JW Life I'm getting more traffic in the search engines and it shows. Suddenly I'm getting many more spam comments on the site to moderate (yay me), but I'm also getting a rash of emails from real people that are starting to listen and are getting help through it and reaching out.

I actually had a spike in May due to some of the work he's done for a podcast that I no longer even produce. This JW Life is going to hit 20,000 downloads this month.

I pay out of my own pocket for everything with "shunned". I added it up and it looks like it would cost about $330 (rough and dirty math) to get the current episodes transcribed. Then it will cost around $30-60/month for future episodes (assuming 2-4 hours).

I've also paid for a course on SEO so that I can know what I'm doing and do some of my own for the "shunned" podcast and I've been taking that for weeks now.

So with some financial backing (wouldn't take much, if I have let's say 1,000 downloads a month, if I could get like 60 people to do $1 per month on Patreon, or 30 at $2, or....or...or....) I can keep building content out that will help get the site ranked and competing for traffic online. That will get more of our stories heard, maybe even bring in other shunned groups. The more the merrier. Things seem to be picking up, probably somewhat even because people listen to This JW Life and then transition over to "shunned". It all works together.

I'll be putting something together in the middle of the month. I know that people sometimes get freaked out if people seem to make money off of these things. I'm not seeking to make money, though I think it would be super cool to make a living doing something like this and helping people, but I can't afford as a house cleaner to be putting it all in on my dime every month.