A Twenty-Two Year Old Web Community

May 26, 2020 10:48 PM

[The 100 Hour Board] is a BYU online forum of volunteer students who answer any question they are asked within 100 hours. It is also a place where diverse personalities can interact in a forum relatively free of a social judgments, a place where sensitive and personal questions can be addressed anonymously and given doctrinally-centered answers by a group of caring peers, and a place to learn the history of the billboard, how many pages a Word document will hold, and how to get a locker in the RB locker room. It's funny, friendly, and fascinating.
Qualifications and Requirements [to answer] · Current Aliases
Question Archive · Quote Archive · Podcast Archive
Popular Questions
posted by Going To Maine (14 comments total)

A year older than the venerable MeFi itself!
posted by fairmettle at 12:19 AM on May 27, 2020

Do they explain why 'same-sex romantic behavior' is banned by the campus Honor Code? Or why they've fired faculty members simply for posting support of LGBT civil rights on Facebook?

(I looked, but their archives seem to stop in 2016.)
posted by Umami Dearest at 2:12 AM on May 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

Umami Dearest, the archives go up to the present day. From April 2020: Here's one answer regarding LGBTQ+ policy. Includes:

THIRD OF ALL, "doesn't lead to an eternal marriage" is trash logic to back up their response. NCMOs don't lead to marriage, they're far more racy than gays holding hands on campus, but they don't dare do anything about that. PLUS, what about all the couple's on campus who are basically snogging on public couches?????? THE STANDARDS! Are not! Equal!

Thanks for the post, Going to Maine. Fascinating archives. I just started enjoying this travel narrative.
posted by brainwane at 4:39 AM on May 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

The 100 hour board is kindof an institution at BYU -- if I remember right some form of it involving a cross between a literal bulletin board and a collective advice column actually predates the web by a decade or few, so it's arguably older than 22 years.

But to further brainwane's point, that doesn't mean it should be considered a voice of *the* university and interrogated for explanations of things like institutionalized homophobia. If anything, this board is one of the spaces in which you might expect to see discussion, debate, and even dissent about matters stretching the ethical and political boundaries at/around BYU. For example:

• "What do you do when you find out about specific members in your [congregation] going against the teachings of Christ? I do not mean drinking or immodesty or even sex. I mean being cruel, not showing compassion, promoting racist ideals and treating others horribly? I know nobody is perfect but these are people who are in leadership positions" »
  
• "Is God sexist?" »
  
• "I get annoyed whenever people say that America is founded based on Judaeo-christian values. Many founding fathers were deists, or Christian deists at best. They were wealthy and educated men of the Age of Enlightenment" »
  
• "I know that 'Perfectly Suited' in Provo does custom suits, but do/have they done custom suits for women? They do really great work and I am a woman that wants a masculine looking suit, but I don't know if they are LGBTQ+ friendly or if they have ever worked with women before who still want a masculine cut. I'm scared to make an appointment with them before I know that they are safe. " »
  
• "There has been a lot of talk lately surrounding universal healthcare. Years ago, I would have said that this is socialist and a terrible idea; now, after having lived abroad and listened to many people's stories, I am much more open (even supportive?) of some form of universal healthcare... What do you foresee the future for American physicians to be, if we were to institute universal healthcare" »
  
• "I went through a faith crisis a few years ago and no longer have a testimony. ... Is it worth it to try dating at BYU as a no-longer-believer, or would I be wasting their time? " »
  
• "A very dear friend of mine recently told me he deals with same-sex attraction (that's the terminology he feels most comfortable with, so it's what I'm using). We grew up together, and he is one of the best people I know...what can I best do to help and love my friend as he works on figuring things out? How can I be a safe place for him to open up, without pressuring him or being insensitive? " »
  

There's plenty of cringe in the questions and commentary, including some likely to make alums shake their head in wry recognition, but it's an interesting open space with some windows into questions students are processing.

Also you can get a window into the difference between a bop and a jam.
posted by weston at 5:33 AM on May 27, 2020 [12 favorites]

MetaFilter: there's plenty of cringe in the questions and commentary
posted by Fizz at 5:45 AM on May 27, 2020 [7 favorites]

I love where this answer about SLC Pride mentions that making rainbow pins is a great way to stay awake in church.
posted by brainwane at 5:54 AM on May 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hey look, images are permitted! (Just saying.)
posted by beagle at 6:44 AM on May 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was today years old when I learned that the Park51 mosque was built by Sufis!
posted by Going To Maine at 7:25 AM on May 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Oh wow, I haven't thought about the 100 Hour Board in a long time. I read religiously when I attended BYU, and yes it is definitely not in any way an official publication. I originally missed this in the summary, but I feel it bears reiterating that it's run on a volunteer basis by current BYU students. It's actually one of the few places where I'd see ideas and discussion from my peers that didn't always toe the line, so to speak, and I'm definitely grateful for that. I've long since stopped reading, mostly because I'm not a practicing member of the LDS church these days (we disagree about too many things) and, well, they are still students, and most of them are still very young and tend to have a youthful perspective on things.

(I looked, but their archives seem to stop in 2016.)

I don't think you looked hard enough.

Hey look, images are permitted! (Just saying.)

They allow images because the staff of the 100 Hour Board are the only ones allowed to post responses.
posted by Aleyn at 9:04 AM on May 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

The editor's choice section (https://100hourboard.org/questions/editors_choice/) is fascinating for at least two articles- the ones listing all 88 (at time of writing) offshoots of the Mormon Church and another about how to start a (hypothetical) pandemic, where the writer looked at air traffic and said New York City would be your best breeding spot for an influenza-vector virus. In 2019.

So, who knew, no way to predict it, right?
posted by lon_star at 10:58 AM on May 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't think you looked hard enough.

Sorry, what I meant to say was that the search engine, when I tried it yesterday, was only returning results up until 2016 for some reason. (It seems to be working now though.) But thank you for your helpful comment, Aleyn.
posted by Umami Dearest at 10:08 AM on May 28, 2020

Hey look, images are permitted! (Just saying.)

Heresay!
posted by blue_beetle at 2:12 PM on May 28, 2020

I dove in and found a few particularly interesting questions and answers, and am trying to resist getting sucked in further. (I have LDS family, some of whom attended BYU, so the particular voice I hear in these answers feels familiar and I feel some tenderness toward it.)

2016: the history of the board itself including "2005: BYUSA shuts the Board down due to censorship issues. No one is happy with the situation."

Multilingual wordplay

How do different translations of "Let It Go" cause us to read Elsa differently in Frozen? (For instance, the Czech version of the ending ("Let the storm rage on / The cold never bothered me anyway") is more like "I'm blooming in the storm / I want to live my own life in the endless winter".)

Politics, gender, and sexuality:

2007, on modesty

a few days ago - what people wanted out of General Conference this year

asking whether cis men could do the same things trans men do to grow full beards

straight man asking how his gay roommate's dating fits with the BYU honor code

on coming out as bisexual

from June 2019: impeach? (answers: yes)

March 2020: marshalling facts to help a questioner explain to their dad "how women and minorities have been impacted since he became President"

Some statistical and scientific explorations:

"True or false: the relationship between the number of marathons/marathon like things in Utah and the number of unwed and thus sexually frustrated YSAs in the state is statistically significant."

"what if the sea floor went as high as it is deep in the ocean and all the land masses swap like that as well so they are now as deep as they are high now"

"I have wondered for years how much faster early church missionaries traveled (walked) to and from Salt Lake City than did companies in wagons or pulling handcarts."

cooling a bathtub with a few tablespoons of absolute-zero temperature water

how much human blood do you need to forge a ring from metals in that blood?

"Why does Mountain Dew Baja Blast mixed half and half with Tropicana Pink Lemonade turn clear?"
posted by brainwane at 4:23 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Umami Dearest, I'm running into a similar thing with the search engine; results from the last few years don't seem to turn up. Maybe the problem is intermittent.
posted by brainwane at 4:24 AM on May 29, 2020