I'm a Mormon

This is obvious, but everything around us is becoming more modern by the minute.

I am one of the people who use YouTube every single day as a tool to keep up with news, find music, or simply have a few laughs. According to the YouTube Fact Sheet, "people are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube."

2 billion videos a day are being watched. 2 billion.

For the past little while, YouTube has been placing 30-second video advertisements prior to several videos as a way to make money. This means that there are probably over 1 billion advertisements watched a day (just a guess).

Last week, Cody mentioned he saw an advertisement before a video about a man being a Mormon. I thought this was very odd and had yet to see it myself, but stumbled upon it earlier this week. Have you seen the ads?

Now, I want to make it clear that this blog post is not to judge or criticize another person's beliefs -- that would never be my intention. But in my personal opinion, what Mormon.org has done with advertising on YouTube is very tasteless.

The videos themselves are quite nice actually (watch them here), and represent several different people's lives. Up until the very end, you would never have any clue what the actors were going to say about themselves. The videos are not the thing that I find tasteless.

What is tasteless to me is how many people are being forced to watch a religious advertisement before they watch something on YouTube that may be completely unrelated. I went to find a Dallas Green video about 20 minutes ago and had to sit through this advertisement first. Is this right? Should I have to watch something about a specific religion that has nothing to do with me, or what I am going to be watching?

Let me put it this way -- what if the ads we had to watch were about Atheism? I feel as though there would be an uproar of complaints if people had to sit and listen to any other type of religion. Even if my personal beliefs were being advertised, I would still feel the same way because I do not think it is something that should be advertised.

I understand that Mormon.org is trying to avoid religion entirely to show people it is okay to believe in God, and they are your average every day people. That said, I'm pretty sure most people understand that.

My point is, I think that religion is very personal and it should not be something that is advertised. Being a Mormon may be an excellent choice for a variety of people, but it is not right for others, and we shouldn't be forced to sit through it before watching something completely unrelated. I think their approach is much more modern and is certainly raising some awareness and attention (they did their job?) but the approach will make some people very uncomfortable and I think the ads are unnecessary.

What do you think? Do you think the more modern approach is tasteless or tasteful? Do you feel that religion is something that should be advertised on YouTube, or should YouTube be relating their ads to the videos we are going to be watching? I'd love to hear your feedback!