Posts by dubstepped

17

Story out of Sacramento demon possessed pioneers

by poopie in

anyone heard anything?.

"Confessions of a teenage Jesus jerk"

by stuckinarut2 in

has anyone else seen the movie "confessions of a teenage jesus jerk"?.

im still processing it, and trying to work out my thoughts..... i would be interested in others thoughts..

dubstepped

*****SPOILERS BELOW******* READ AT YOUR OWN RISK********

Well, thanks to Joho above my wife and I just watched it. I'm not sure how I feel, so I'll work it out here. Well, I know how I feel about Joho sharing it, she's the freaking best. :)

First, my wife heard the creator of this movie on a podcast recently. He doesn't like the ex-JW community and that we're too bitter. He looked into it a bit and peaced out on it and wanted to go on with his life.

I feel that it's reflected in this movie. He paints and ugly picture of life both in and out of the cult. It seems to me like the creator of this movie hasn't worked through his own stuff yet and still paints an ugly picture of life outside. It's like he still sees "worldly" people like the JWs teach. They were all fucking anything that moves, drunks, really none of them seemed to have many good qualities. I think he paints a narrow and maybe JW driven perspective of life outside.

The sex stuff was spot on. So much goes on. My wife believes that the creator was disfellowshipped for "loose conduct" and maybe something similar to the movie. She wasn't sure. But there is so much stuff that goes on in the cult. Some gets brushed under the rug, other things get blown up to rape status, it's all so confusing. The cousin fucking was just a really odd thing to throw in. The movie had an old school grimy feel to it. That cousin stuff didn't help things. Though with the confusion instilled in a kid like that, you can see how anything could happen.

Somehow despite the ugly portrayal I felt like there was some sort of sympathy toward the cult. I can't put my finger on it, maybe it was some of the cutaways, particularly the one old man.

Like Joho said, the stuff about the parents being so concerned about their precious congregational position was triggering. That was my dad.

The hanging part...............damn. As soon as the watch fell out my wife and I both looked at each other and groaned. We knew what that meant. That's tough.

I was confused about the dad and CoC and his meeting with the elders where he took the book in and the holes punched in doors and such. There were things that were thrown in that didn't add up to me, but I'm not good at figuring that stuff out usually. I often need things spelled out for me in movies a bit more.

The way it ended suddenly, but with that black screen after he did the finger thing, was very poignant, at least from what I read into it. I may be way off. But to me it looked like he was trying to escape, once again, using the fingertip touching trip shown throughout. Now though there was no escape. Reality had crashed down. There were no fluffy clouds in the sky, no fantasies, just utterly dark realities.

That movie has me feeling some type of way. I'm just not sure what. Kinda sick a bit. It was just bleak and maybe kind of dystopian, but that's also the realities. We know that's the realities inside the cult, reminiscent of the dystopian novel 1984. I felt like the portrayal of life outside though was also kind of painted the same, like nothing had value or meaning, and that part I don't really jive with.

21

RIP Anthony Bourdain

by freemindfade in

so sad to hear about the loss of one of the best storytellers.

such a great unique personality.

he will be greatly missed .

dubstepped

I'll be honest and say that I don't really know who he was. I've heard of him, but never experienced what he put out into the world.

It just goes to show though that happiness is an inside game. You can't get it from money, or experiences or anyone else. It's something you have to find within.

RIP Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade too. Sorry life on this planet wasn't bearable for you.

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

@LHG- Great points. Put a bunch of socially backward narcissists together and see what happens.

19

"Confessions of a teenage Jesus jerk"

by stuckinarut2 in

has anyone else seen the movie "confessions of a teenage jesus jerk"?.

im still processing it, and trying to work out my thoughts..... i would be interested in others thoughts..

dubstepped

Interesting. I just added it to my "watch list" on my phone, otherwise known as "the things I will likely never find time to watch". If I write it on a list it makes me feel like I did something though. So there's that. I'll report back if I get around to it. Thanks for the recommendation.

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.