On the Friday before (US) Thanksgiving, President Nelson suggested that people share messages of gratitude on social media in the next week, using the hashtag #GiveThanks. I saw a friend of a friend on Facebook point out that the other members of the Q15 weren’t all equally diligent in responding to his call. As of a couple of days before Thanksgiving, a few had not posted with the hashtag even once. I thought this was a really interesting point. The Q15 members’ response might be thought of as a little case study in how important they find it to publicly show that they’re following the prophet.
This graph shows the number of Facebook posts each member of the Q15 wrote during the week prior to Thanksgiving plus one day afterward (because a couple of them also posted on that day using the hashtag). For comparison, I also checked how often they posted during the same time period in 2019. (Note that I didn’t count a post twice when the same post was written twice but just in different languages.)
President Nelson definitely got overall participation in pre-Thanksgiving posts up with his challenge. More interestingly, the Q15 members varied in how much they posted. Before I counted, I guessed that Elder Andersen would take the top spot, as he seems the most obsequious to me. I certainly wouldn’t have picked President Ballard and Elder Renlund as the top posters, although Elder Andersen was only one post behind.
Really, the differences among the Q15 members probably aren’t meaningful, with the possible exception of Elder Uchtdorf’s zero. It seems to me that he really made a statement by not responding even minimally to President Nelson’s suggestion. I mean, if he had just thrown one post up, he certainly wouldn’t have been alone. Five other Q15 members did no more than that. But Elder Uchtdorf didn’t even reach that level. He didn’t post around Thanksgiving in 2019, and he didn’t do it again in 2020.
I realize that this is very likely overinterpreting, but I wonder if he figured that President Nelson already demoted him out of the First Presidency, so he has no need to try to stay on his good side with public displays of loyalty, as he’s unlikely to be demoted (or promoted) again. Every other Q15 member is either already in the First Presidency or is a candidate, should one of President Nelson’s counselors pre-decease him.
What do you think Elder Uchtdorf’s refusal to hop to and answer President Nelson’s call means?
I wonder if it’s because Uchtdorf isn’t American born to feel the same holiday connection. This movement may not have resonated with the global audience in the same way it did with the Utah Saints (although Soares’ post would disagree with that conclusion).
Thanksgiving is an American holiday. Like Uchtdorf I don’t think being a member means we take on American culture. Lots of foreign members don’t have similar qualms.
Pleased to see Uchtdorf being his own man. Hope it continues.
Maybe he’s like me and sees no purpose in the mind-numbing world of Facebook.
Great points, acw and Geoff, that US Thanksgiving might not seem as relevant to Q15 members not from the US. That could maybe interact with seniority in the Q15, where Elder Uchtdorf feels more free to disregard stuff that feels irrelevant to him than Elder Soares, when he’s so junior. Or maybe it’s a different general attitude toward the export of American culture in Europe versus Latin America.
Wally, perish the thought! If only you knew me on Facebook, your life could be brightened by an endless string of ridiculous dad jokes! Certainly that alone is adequate justification for the existence of the platform! 🙂
Interesting connection to thanksgiving. As a New Zealander living in Poland, I didn’t figure that out until about halfway through the challenge.
That totally makes sense, Josiah. It’s kind of amazing how US-centric the Church often still is.
Ah. This is interesting. The Church is highly personality selective. Generally to be a Church leader a man has to be a Myers-Briggs personality, STJ. S stands for concrete thinking, like in lists of things to do, and order and structure. T stands for “thinking,” lack of emotional perception as opposed to “feeling.” J stands for needing to get things done, closure, discomfort with open ideas or ongoing processes. In other words, a good Mormon leader would also be a good CEO of an ongoing business. Elder Oaks is the ideal STJ personality type.
Our best buddy, Br. Uchtdorf, as far as I can tell from his talks, is the opposite, NFP. N people see the world as a jigsaw puzzle to be worked out where gaps need to be filled with understanding. F, of course, is feeling. F people perceive the ebb and floe of emotions. P types are OK with open questions and issues and deal well with complex and dynamic situations. He is also E for extraversion: he likes to be with people. As opposed to at least half or more of the GAs who are Introverts, like Oaks and Nelson.
So he is the odd man out. I am not sure how he managed to get picked. Probably because they wanted to expand the internationality of the 15. He was an easy German. He must really feel like a fish out of water, very uncomfortable. He does not speak their language at all. He is my favorite.
His silence is very loud.
The social media accounts we see are their managed “public facing” accounts. Some, if not all, members of the Q15 have personal social media accounts. So the fact that we did not see public posts does not mean that the Q15 members did not respond to President Nelson’s call to post on social media things for which they were grateful. Simply put, we don’t know that Elder Ucthdoft did not post anywhere, only that he did not do so on his managed public account.
@anonymous for this: But doesn’t that make his silence even louder? I think you are correct that they have people helping manage these public facing accounts. Doesn’t that mean that he could have conceivably simply told someone to write up something short and nice for him, let him review it quickly, and put it up for him? It would have been so much easier for him to get something onto a publicly managed account (even to just copy/paste one entry from his private account) that his not putting anything up on this public account seems to say something.
My two cents for it being an American holiday that the church in Utah was observing-I’m Canadian. I celebrated Thanksgiving a month earlier. The hashtag in November just felt *odd*.
The church initiative ends up feeling as if I celebrated Christmas in December but the Utah church went by the Eastern Orthodox calendar and they launched the light the world campaign with videos and hashtags and music concerts on Boxing Day so it would be in full swing for January 7th. My Christmas is done by then. The music and hashtags are nice but I don’t really want to celebrate Christmas again. I’m done.
I’m not surprised Elder Uchtdorf didn’t post anything this year or last. Its not a holiday he celebrates. He probably didn’t post anything for Purim in March either. Or Japan National Foundation Day in February.