It has been three weeks since the airing of Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War and I couldn’t imagine how much of an impact it would have on all of us. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone was forced to face their experience and reflect, regardless if one is in the “TM is the devil and has so much blood on their hands!” or “TM WAS THE BEST EXPERIENCE EVER!!!” Someone on TikTok talked about how the documentary put them in a 2-week funk from rehashing their experiences. I too had a 2-week funk, although I think it’s starting to turn into a 3- or 4-week ordeal. Out of all of this, I’m a big fan of calling this the Documentary LTE!
I made some predictions about the blowout following the documentary’s airing based on my experience with the MSNBC exposé Mind Over Mania. Let’s see how good my predictions were:
Thankful HA Alumni will be just as shitty (50% correct)
I noticed the big hype for the documentary’s release and how a lot of alumni were talking about it. I assumed that the Thankful group would be upset about Shiny Happy People. I was correct in that regard. They went as far as to review bomb the show to try to dissuade viewers. Ron Luce apparently made some posts defending himself and Thankful ate it up wholesale. I might have read something about Dave Hasz making a post about it, but I can’t recall accurately. The gist that I am seeing is that the Thankful alumni are of the notion that the documentary was one-sided, didn’t tell the whole story, and was more of a mockumentary than anything.
I figured that pro-TM alumni would flood this blog and leave snarky comment after snarky comment. This was my experience last decade when people came out of the woodwork to praise Teen Mania and claim no fault on Ron Luce or other leaders. Granted, the blog accepted anonymous comments back then, something I’m glad to not continue here. At least, anonymous in the sense that you didn’t need a username to comment. Now you do, even if the username doesn’t identify you by government name. So, I’m grateful that the comments section hasn’t been toxic at all. I think in the 15,000ish new users, only 1 comment was borderline pro-TM.
Huge uptick in blog visits (Correct)
This was an easy prediction. Now, the fanfare has died down since July 23rd, but lots of people are still visiting the blog. We had a huge boom following the week of the airing, peaking at almost 8k views in a single day!
While it may seem somewhat disheartening to see the trend return to pre-Shiny Happy People views, we’re still much higher than before. Even if it was just 1 view a day, I would consider this blog a success because it’s supposed to be a resource available for everyone. Well, actually, it’s really just for me but I am happy that other people get to use it. If just one other person uses this blog, then the blog is already doing 100% more work than I originally anticipated.
This documentary will get people to unpack their experiences (Very yes)
This is probably the biggest correct prediction I made. I am seeing post after post and TikTok after TikTok about how alumni are facing their pasts. Almost everyone I have seen mentioned how they had to confront their experience and they questioned how good or how healthy everything at Teen Mania was. Lots of people still seem to think that the friendships were great but the LTEs and teachings were terrible. I’ve seen parents talk about how they would never let their kid go through what they did knowing what they know now. I’ve seen people never think about how not normal the HA was and are now coming to terms that this was legitimately crazy. I’ve also seen people describe their healing journey as long, nonlinear, and meandering. A lot of us have already deconstructed or unpacked TM or even Christianity as a whole, but the documentary brought to light some deep-seated, and I mean deeeeeeep-seated, memories and traumas. I’m in this category. Plenty of us have joked that our therapists will be able to send their kid to college.
This documentary will get people to deconstruct (Correct)
In a similar vein, I predicted that many alumni have already deconstructed and left the Church in part or entirely. Now, that’s an easy prediction because my echo chamber already has a lot of these people. However, I also included in my prediction that people who didn’t attend anything TM related would start to question things. I’ve seen many comments and received several emails from these people describing their churches growing up, or participating in other high-control groups. The documentary included James Dobson, Chuck Coulson, and the other organizations trying to install Christian nationalism into our government and many people are now talking about how they grew up in a Dobson home with all of its horrendous teachings on how to be married and raise a family.
Missed Predictions
I can’t foresee everything so, of course some things popped up as a surprise. I am shocked that I didn’t include predictions of reactions from Ron or Dave; probably figured it was obvious and went without saying. I would assume that they would dismiss all of the claims. Some time after, Ron did release a statement essentially stating that he did nothing wrong, doesn’t regret any of his “scripture-based” teachings, and that this documentary was an attack on Christianity. When he talks about the negative experiences we shared, he gets really victim-blamey and questions if there was something wrong with us to result in such a poor experience. The statement is horrible and I am tempted to hand it to one of my fellow English teachers to grade. The punctuation, capitalisation, and grammar is atrocious. Yes, this is a nitpick, but didn’t Ron demand that we were excellent in word, thought, and deed? This also extended to writing an essay and we were nitpicked to hell at the HA.
Just how many alumni would reconnect with each other. We’re a fairly splintered group but we all seem to have carved out our own niches with fellow alumni. I’ve yet to reach out to any of my fellow alumni from my time and I’m wondering if I even want to. I have so much baggage with my family core and roommates. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m pretty bitter and that bitterness is towards my friends for some reason even though most of them have not harmed me. Just one more thing to add to my therapy sessions…
How much this documentary would fuck my shit up. I’ve mentioned it in my reaction posts (3 links there) and even in this post, but the docuseries really kicked up a lot of mud. I was shook to my very core. I wished that I was more mentally prepared for it because I could not function for weeks. Even now, I’m trying to scramble and prepare for the new school year starting next week but for a while I could only think about this blog and my recovery. I ended my 1-hr time limit on TikTok so I could keep seeing videos from alumni. I even logged back into Facebook! I am hopeful that by listening to stories and reflections, I can empty out the closet full of skeletons. I think Marie Kondo suggested that we empty out a room and put everything into a pile to sort. The documentary put everything into a towering pile and I’m actually taking the time to sit down and see what sparked joy at TM and what I should actually toss away.
There’s probably even more stuff going on outside of my sphere. I don’t have my fingers in a lot of pies and we all seem to have our own little groups to support us in our recovery. I’m curious, what are some things you have seen in your circles?
