The Big 12 Fan's Guide to Making Fun of Mormons
Hi.
We know we're new here and you've probably been sitting on some jokes that you think are hilarious and will really get our panties twisted, but I'm gonna shoot straight with you: whatever you have probably has been said a million times by every other fan base we've ever played regularly and the reaction you'll get is gonna be more like this:
You might get some no namer angry on the twitter machine, but where's the fun in making one jabroni mad when you can get an entire fan base riled up?
A Preliminary Note
It's not your fault, it's a bit confusing and it's one of my biggest pet peeves is that it is spelled Latter-day, not Latter Day. You probably see the latter (ba dum tss) more often than not in twitter bios, and on baptism/baby blessing/missionary/wedding announcements, sending them out with "Latter Day" is as rampant as people sending "Merry Christmas from The Smith's" out on their annual postcard. Yuck.
So step 1 if you want to go correction route is arm yourself with that.
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Boring, Overdone, Unoriginal
Any and all of the following have been done before and just aren't funny:
- Any comment about "magic underwear"
- Something something polygamy
- Dressing up like a missionary in the stands
- Equating Mountain Dew to something alocholic
As a general rule, if you've thought of it by now, we've probably heard it before and it stopped being funny about 500 times of hearing it ago. It's not that we're upset, it's just boring. Come up with some better material will ya? You sound as gauche as George Kliavkoff saying "we haven't decided if we're going shopping yet" last year at Pac-12 media day in reference to the Big 12 after the Big 10 rekt his conference.
When the majority of us spent 18-24 months as a door to door religion salesman, we've heard it all already. We're largely immune to it. 95% of us just ignore it. But I'm here to show you a better way.
Some Inspiration
If you really want to get a good reaction, you have to go deep into Mormon culture to pull things out. We call ourselves a peculiar people and are some of the most self-deprecating people on the planet. There's plenty to make fun of and talk about and we do it ourselves often.
In a sermon from January 18, 1857 Lorenzo Snow said:
Place a cucumber in a barrel of vinegar and there is but little effect produced upon it the first hour, nor in the first twelve hours. Examine it and you will find that the effect produced is merely upon the rind, for it requires a longer time to pickle it. A person being baptized into this Church has an effect upon him, but not the effect to pickle him immediately. It does not establish the law of right and of duty in him during the first twelve or twenty-four hours; he must remain in the Church, like the cucumber in the vinegar, until he becomes saturated with the right spirit, until he becomes pickled in “Mormonism,” in the law of God; we have got to have those things incorporated in our systems.
The stuff I said above, that's not even touching the rind. So here's your gameplan:
Start studying LDS doctrine - not the cliche out of context things or off the wall quotes from 1849, but the OG canonized doctrine. Then find your closest LDS friend, neighbor or coworker and ask them to explain things so you can really get to the bottom of the weirdness.
Then if you want to see the culture part, ask that same person when their next "ward party" is and if there will be funeral potatoes there. Then go with that person to the party and see how strange it is that somebody tries to cram a musical number pulled from the hymnal in front of a water balloon fight or something along those lines (but really there probably won't be that, you can just see how we're all dweebs).
THEN after you've done that, make the trip to a football or basketball game in Provo. And find some BYU fans on twitter (HMU if you want) who are going. You might find that you decide to adopt us as your second team and make multiple other trips out to come to games at LES and even a road game in Knoxville (not that that's happened before...)
After doing all that and enjoying a Cougar Tail and a serving of Graham Canyon ice cream, you'll be ready to make up a joke like
"Your mom's beard is longer than Brigham's"
or
"You were probably the elder nobody wanted as a companion"
or
"Every girl at the stake dance turned you down when you were a kid, huh?"
or
"You know all the words to the songs in Saturday's Warrior"
or
"You have a 1 cow wife"
I could keep going, because these are all really petty and pretty niche. But the fact of the matter is, you're not going to get much more than eyerolls unless you pull one from way out of left field. 99/100 LDS folks will tell you that they love the smell of cigarette smoke in a meeting, becuase it means all felt welcome. In the end, we're just glad to be here with you, so there's no need to be a jerk about it. If you make us laugh, we'll probably be best friends. And if you see one of us acting out of line, tag me so GEHB Nation can tell them to STFU and stop making us look bad.