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May 2, 2014 11:05 AM   Subscribe

 
Having grown up around lots of Josh Harris reading, Christian Side Hug, no interlacing fingers no unsupervised courtship outings people, I can't tell if this is a parody or not.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:28 AM on May 2, 2014


"Why else would you go to Africa?"

Yow.
posted by edheil at 11:31 AM on May 2, 2014


Pretty sure it's a parody. The jokes in here that I get are very dry and clever. I get the feeling that a lot of it's going over my head, though. Landscape orientation....?
posted by Diablevert at 11:32 AM on May 2, 2014


RE: Landscape orientation -- you see, the two of them were getting *HORIZONTAL* and that's NOT OK cause they're not married so an alert goes off!
posted by edheil at 11:34 AM on May 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's a parody of Christian Mingle. And spot on. And hilarious.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:36 AM on May 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh gods. I'd like to search for Christian Mingle for comparison, but I inexplicably get enough Christian Singles ads as it is.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:39 AM on May 2, 2014


Here's a Christian Mingle commercial for comparison. And hundreds of others!
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:42 AM on May 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


Oh no. I've been having all sorts of weird dreams lately--we have a newborn, so I'm waking up a couple of times a night in the middle of dreams, which I guess makes them more vivid or weird or whatever--and the other night I had this long, convoluted dream where I was trying to explain to everybody why this megachurch in my town was destroying civilization. The people in my dream were pretty much like this and it was awful.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:59 AM on May 2, 2014


It is satire, but interestingly it is by Christians, for Christians. Tripp and Tyler do the "Christian comedy" circuit, and Tripp Crosby has been the public face and emcee for the Chik-Fil-A "Leadercast" meetings.
posted by jbickers at 12:00 PM on May 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


My first kiss was at church camp. We danced and had to leave room for the holy spirit and then we made out in the designated "kiss your boy/girlfriend goodnight" spot and then the counselors made us go back to our cabins. It was effing hot by twelve year old standards.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:05 PM on May 2, 2014 [7 favorites]


Growing up I used to date only Catholic girls. It was the uniform and the fact they generally hated boring confessions.

I provided a service!
posted by cjorgensen at 12:21 PM on May 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


I feel like for a lot of conservative religious subgroups it is like this. My sister would never kiss or hug or hold her husband's hand and they have a baby together. I'm not like that. But to each their own.
posted by discopolo at 12:25 PM on May 2, 2014


I was mildly amused by the video, but when I heard the phrase "Godsend" in relation to an app...WHAMMO!

I'm pretty sure I can raise millions for a new startup app called Godsend. I have no idea what it does other than send messages of some type and involve religion. Doesn't matter, because, you know, having some sort of near-pun is critical and sufficient for funding.

I'm just going off of what all the startup guys tell me, so correct me if any of that is wrong. Also, steal my idea and I'll sue. I hear that a lot too. And mean it. Really.
posted by Muddler at 12:33 PM on May 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


Mrs. Pterodactyl, were you my first kiss? Because I have the same story!
posted by Roger Dodger at 12:39 PM on May 2, 2014


Hilarious. I could tell it was Christian humor by insiders who feel like Joshua Harris has gone a bit too far. Evangelical culture makes dating so, so awkward and this is refreshing.
posted by xenophile at 1:04 PM on May 2, 2014


This was quite spot on, so spot on that it was kinda cringey for me as an ex-fundie. The only thing which felt false was the communion thing. Maybe things have changed in the decades since I left, but communion (more commonly referred to as the Lord's Supper) was an occasional thing (no more than 5 times a year) and certainly wouldn't be done during a wedding. Weddings would be full of inspirational music and the reception would be lots of cola and various fruit juices. Buster Bluth would have been thrilled with the typical Baptist wedding reception.

Anyways, I'm off to write the GodSend app pitch deck. I'm thinking Snapchat for God, a place where you can write inspiring messages and prayer requests and attach them to inspirational photos. A team of Biblical scholars will evaluate every message before it's sent to you in order to prevent anything non-uplifting entering the network.

And then a follow-on app: Fishr, which will let you know when there's other believers in the area for those times when you need to connect and pray with a stranger.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:50 PM on May 2, 2014 [10 favorites]


I assume you will pay a tithe to Metafilter when you sell your apps to Facebook for 35 billion dollars?
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:05 PM on May 2, 2014


And then a follow-on app: Fishr, which will let you know when there's other believers in the area for those times when you need to connect and pray with a stranger.

I'm pretty sure this would turn into a grindr clone pretty quick.
posted by furnace.heart at 2:25 PM on May 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


The satire/parody was spot on. The acting was excellent. The jokes were funny. The photography was perfect.

I am a former member of an evangelical church (but left years and years ago and plunged into the depths of atheism) so my past could relate to these stereotypes. I laughed.

And then I got stuck in thinking about how we would have responded if this had been a parody of another religious/ethnic/racial/gender-identity group, and felt a tad uncomfortable....
posted by HuronBob at 2:25 PM on May 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


And then I got stuck in thinking about how we would have responded if this had been a parody of another religious/ethnic/racial/gender-identity group, and felt a tad uncomfortable....

Inside baseball's different, I think, and you can tell this us inside baseball.
posted by Diablevert at 2:29 PM on May 2, 2014


I agree with Huron Bob--while it is entertaining, funny and well done i started to feel just a little uncomfortable...... If it is inside baseball then I assume it was posted in that context and by someone sensitive to an insider's joke. I am confident this would not go over so well by the insiders, and perhaps outsiders, if it were about Conservative Muslims or Hasidic Jews. I have very very little patience with any religious fundamentalism (including the Amish) but I do wonder how this would go over with other faiths.
posted by rmhsinc at 2:49 PM on May 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I personally don't have a problem with it at all, but I used to be trapped in conservative Christian culture so I'm always happy to see it skewered.

The parody was so well done that I assume the people behind it were members at one point. But, I wouldn't have a problem if this was done by outsiders. Conservative Christians of the fundie / evangelical churches have secular power in this country. Their power is waning, but they still have influence and have had influence for decades. In many cases, this influence has been rather toxic. Because they put themselves in a position to impose their will upon non-believers, they are full and clear targets of whatever parody or ridicule the non-believers want to create. There's no reason to feel the least bit guilty.

And that's the rule for me personally. If you have money and power, and use that power to write laws, then you're a legitimate target. In the US, conservative Jews and Muslims don't really have much power so most parodies by outsiders would feel cruel and badly targeted. In places where those groups do have power, then parody by non-believers is perfectly appropriate.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:08 PM on May 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


I'm not sure I get the second one... so, he's overtly hostile to her and she thinks God is telling her not to have sex with him?
posted by Reverend John at 3:13 PM on May 2, 2014


@xenophile: By "so, so awkward" I presume you mean relative to the baseline awkwardness of dating itself.
posted by HillbillyInBC at 3:27 PM on May 2, 2014


And then I got stuck in thinking about how we would have responded if this had been a parody of another religious/ethnic/racial/gender-identity group, and felt a tad uncomfortable....

while it is entertaining, funny and well done i started to feel just a little uncomfortable

Not to sound glib, but I don't think the purpose of satire is to make people comfortable.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:29 PM on May 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


"I don't think the purpose of satire is to make people comfortable."

I suspect I should have been clearer. I meant that I was uncomfortable that we (meaning the community members of Metafilter) are establishing/moving forward a norm that it is acceptable to post FPPs that demean, make fun of, poke or stereotype (even in supposed good nature) groups based on religion, race, ethnicity, etc.
posted by HuronBob at 3:47 PM on May 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


God, every time there's something funny on Metafilter there are people chiming in to say it's actually NOT FUNNY, and I hate to be that person this time, but I hate this joke. I especially hate that it's being made by married evangelical Christian men.

The evangelical church, in general, couples a strong belief that people shouldn't be "unequally yoked" to non-Christians with a total lack of concern for the massive gender imbalance in their ranks. I know a lot of women who have really wanted to be married for ten years and have had almost no serious romantic relationships in that time, and in all honesty it kind of breaks my heart. And it's especially frustrating in the context of a church atmosphere that glorifies marriage as almost an essential part of a godly life.

Anyway. I'm a much less conservative Christian, and I married an agnostic, and Christian Mingle commercials creep me out a bit. But I'm glad it exists.
posted by gerstle at 3:53 PM on May 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


A team of Biblical scholars will evaluate every message before it's sent to you in order to prevent anything non-uplifting entering the network.

I'm pretty sure your target demo does not trust "Biblical scholars." The language you want is something like "Our strict guidelines ensure that only biblical messages are permitted on the network."
posted by straight at 4:07 PM on May 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Atom Eyes: "Not to sound glib, but I don't think the purpose of satire is to make people comfortable."
This is satire that is clearly meant to be laughing with the people it is skewering, who are not the people who are normative here, and I am really glad that the prospect of laughing at them for being different seems to be making us so uncomfortable as a community.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:18 PM on May 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


with a total lack of concern for the massive gender imbalance in their ranks

What, really? Is this something that has developed in the last couple decades? I grew up in the evangelical world and don't remember seeing anything unusual about the gender ratio.
posted by Mars Saxman at 4:24 PM on May 2, 2014


I am confident this would not go over so well by the insiders, and perhaps outsiders, if it were about Conservative Muslims or Hasidic Jews. I have very very little patience with any religious fundamentalism (including the Amish) but I do wonder how this would go over with other faiths.

The thing is, this isn't attacking the root of Christianity at all, but a particularly weird outgrowth/corporatized "flavor" of it. I don't think anyone need fear that it's anything close to a truly hostile view of Christianity as a religion. It would be interesting to see a Muslim take on their religion in this way, but Islam is not familiar enough for most Westerners to get whatever jokes there might be to make. But certainly it could be possible.

I originally saw it on Stuff Christian Culture Likes's Facebook page, and it's definitely in the same exasperated-insider vein.
posted by emjaybee at 4:29 PM on May 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


The thing is, this isn't attacking the root of Christianity at all, but a particularly weird outgrowth/corporatized "flavor" of it.

This, once over. This isn't making fun of christianity at all, this is making fun of a cultural aspect of American christianity, which can be really messed up and unfortunate for a lot of people. I personally have experienced alot of emotional turmoil over conservative christian values and how they translate to relationships.

There are some really unhealthy viewpoints and dynamics on sexuality and relationships that the church holds today, and this is poking fun at them. It doesn't matter if they are 'in' that culture or not, the critique is a valid one.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:04 PM on May 2, 2014


I grew up in the evangelical world and don't remember seeing anything unusual about the gender ratio.

According to this study, if you're a never-married 30-40 year old woman looking for a similar man in an evangelical church, there's a 73/27% gender imbalance working against you. Combine that with some issues in both genders in those cases, and it can be a little brutal. Non-evangelical churches still have more women than men, but it's only 62/38 there.

The female/male ratio has been getting increasingly skewed in US/European churches but it's notably worse in Evangelical circles.
posted by Candleman at 5:30 PM on May 2, 2014


I would be interested in seeing similar parodies by the insiders of Fundamentalist Muslims or Hasidic Jews. And those groups, to the best of my knowledge, have not embraced parodies/satire by outsiders. If there are no insider parodies I think it is reasonable to conjecture that they take themselves, from my perspective, just a bit to seriously. As much as I dislike any extremism or fundamentalism in any faith/religion a sense of inside satire is at least a bit reassuring.
posted by rmhsinc at 5:43 PM on May 2, 2014


fantastic in the most creepy way. Did he ask her to pull his finger so he could fart? Or is that just me?
posted by greenhornet at 9:44 PM on May 2, 2014


OMG, I totally know people like this! Really funny and somewhat accurate parody of Christian Mingle.
posted by Chad Wild Clay at 10:15 PM on May 2, 2014


This is somewhat related ...
Hayes Carll - She Left Me For Jesus.
posted by dougzilla at 10:45 PM on May 2, 2014


Being worried about making fun of Christians is like being worried about making fun of white men.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:09 AM on May 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


MartinWisse: "Being worried about making fun of Christians is like being worried about making fun of white men."
If that were making fun of generically powerful amorphous blob of the whole 2.2 billion of us sure, but this is a marginalized community that, aside from the one awesome user you're already thinking of, is not at all represented here. Laughing at the struggles of evangelical women in dating is punching down and it is very much worth being thoughtful about how not to do that.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:35 AM on May 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


It seems to me that parodying or satirizing religious/faith groups should be an exercise in equal opportunity--either all groups are or fair play or it is a thing best left undone. What troubles me is if certain groups are treated separately because of special sensitivities. And to say that it is OK to satirizes Christians because iit would be like poking fun at white men is only partly accurate--ask some of the Christians in the Mid East, Africa, Asia who are not exactly culturally embraced. My personal preference--satire is appropriate if equally applied and not mean spirited.
posted by rmhsinc at 3:15 AM on May 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


What troubles me is if certain groups are treated separately because of special sensitivities.

I totally get what you're saying, and I don't disagree exactly, but I always return to the idea that it doesn't cost me anything to be kind to others, and to avoid doing things to hurt them. I don't know where to find the balance between kindness and respect, and tiptoeing around cultural ideas because of fear of retribution, though.
posted by kalimac at 5:14 AM on May 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


And then a follow-on app: Fishr, which will let you know when there's other believers in the area for those times when you need to connect and pray with a stranger.

I'm pretty sure this would turn into a grindr clone pretty quick.


thatsthejoke.jpg
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 6:03 AM on May 3, 2014


Not enough "my hot/beautiful wife" comments.
posted by Corduroy at 9:59 AM on May 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


but this is a marginalized community that, aside from the one awesome user you're already thinking of, is not at all represented here.

Marginal on MeFi perhaps, not so much in real life (and marginalised from mainstream US culture largely out of their own free will too). Christians in the US of whatever flavour, excepting maybe Mormons, don't need to worry about persecution for their beliefs; in quite a few ways Christian beliefs are privileged in US cultural discourse that Muslim, Buddhist or Jewish, let alone atheist beliefs aren't.

I also didn't see this particular satire, whether or not it's done from within or without this particular community of Christians as laughing at evangelical women; both videos seem to skewer the men in these ads more than the women and more than either of them, the philosophy behind Christian dating.

ask some of the Christians in the Mid East, Africa, Asia who are not exactly culturally embraced.

Irrelevant in the context we're talking about.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:26 PM on May 4, 2014


MartinWisse--who is the "we're" you are talking about and what is the context to which you are referring.
posted by rmhsinc at 7:29 PM on May 4, 2014


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