The (Not So) Secret Obsessions of Agnostic Bloggers
Mormon wives, fundamentalist murder cults and the golden age of reality TV
Like anyone with Impeccable Taste, I’ve spent the last week and a half captivated by the new Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” I’ve written before about my unabashed love for reality television and how I see the genre as a mirror for larger cultural conversations, but this show really sits at the intersection of so many of my niche interests that it almost feels specifically designed for me.
If you know me IRL or have ever had the pleasure of hearing me say “like” every other word on an episode of The Ghoul Gang, you’re aware that I’m obsessed with cults and never shut up about them.
I’m not sure where this started. Maybe it was growing up secular and finding a strange, anthropological fascination in attending various church services with my religious friends. Maybe was almost getting conned into sending my last $100 to a beautiful Mary Kay rep who accosted me outside a job interview in downtown Chicago when I was 22. Whatever the reason, as long as I’ve had unfettered, 24-hour access to the internet, I’ve spent much of my free time in a rabbit hole of obsessive research (and occasional reporting) on cults and groups with cultic dynamics.
First came multilevel marketing, which led to research on EST and large group awareness trainings, which led to deep dives into Scientology, then Mormonism, offshoot Mormon doomsday cults, self-help cults, new age alien cults, yoga cults, NXIVM, QAnon, and even the cultic nature of abusive relationships and family dynamics.
While this may seem like a grab bag of bizarre but disconnected human behavior, once you become familiar with the rhetoric and psychology of cultic movements, you realize that they’re all intrinsically linked — whether through ideology, structure or, most crucially, the utilization of love bombing, emotional manipulation and corrosive control tactics to catch and keep devotees.
I want to note that the people who fall into these groups aren’t dumb — in fact most cult leaders specifically prey upon intelligent, empathetic people who are looking for meaning in their lives. For the most part, these are people who want to feel a part of something bigger, to understand the secrets of the universe and help others do the same. And while the things they believe and the lifestyles they’re promoting might differ wildly from group to group, even a minimal amount of digging will lay bare dangerous connections between cultic groups and culture in general.
A (Hypothetical) Backstage View
For example, let’s say a beautiful, intelligent and hilarious young woman named, say, “Coraline Jones” once worked in PR for a charismatic self-help guru. Hypothetically, let’s say that self-help guru donated a lot of time and money to a Mormon nonprofit organization that claimed to be dedicated to saving victims of sex trafficking, but was actually using its platform to spread QAnon-coded misinformation about the nature of child sex trafficking, while at the same time enabling the founder of the organization to (allegedly) commit actual sex crimes against women on his payroll.
Now, perhaps Ms. Jones was also tasked (against her will and many protestations) with doing PR content and strategy work for this organization as they prepared to release a feature film detailing the fictional life of said founder. And in the process of this work, she may have, hypothetically, done a lot of research on this founder and his belief system. It’s possible that Coraline, like me, had also spent most of her adult life entrenched in Reddit threads about cults and was, at the time, closely following the case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, a Mormon couple who killed their spouses and two children in service of a fundamentalist interpretation of Mormon doctrine. And let’s say, for the sake of argument, the things preached by Daybell sounded suspiciously similar to the things which the founder of this organization also believed.
For legal reasons, Coraline may or may not be a real person. But the trials and tribulations of disgraced Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) founder Tim Ballard are unfortunately very real, as is the fact that he shares a belief system with Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow, and noted family YouTuber turned child abuser Ruby Franke and her (in MY OPINION) freaky little therapist girlfriend Jodi Hildebrandt.
All of these people are members of a fringe offshoot of Mormonism centered around preparing for and gathering followers ahead of the coming End Times. And as noted by true crime reporter Lauren Matthias in a truly incredible feat of years-long investigative journalism, the through line for these beliefs is a book called “Visions of Glory,” which details the apocalyptic visions of another, unfortunately real, man named Thom Harrison.
The belief system in “Visions of Glory” is too complex to fully summarize here, but in addition to the general tenants of Mormonism (think: little to no rights for women, being gay and drinking coffee/alcohol are sins, sex for any purpose other than procreation is wrong, Jesus Christ came to America after he was resurrected, Black people are the descendants of Cain, etc), it includes reference to multiple lives or “probations,” a binary good/bad rating system for all people, magical portals that allow true believers to teleport, and evil spirits possessing the bodies of regular people.
That last point is the most dangerous. Daybell used the idea of spiritual possession to justify the murder of his wife and Vallow’s husband and children. They were already dead, he claimed, stuck in a limbo between this reality and the next, while devilish spirits used their bodies to thwart the Godly actions of Daybell and his apostles. Hildebrandt and Franke used the same notion to justify the horrific abuse they perpetrated against at least two of Franke’s children, who were found starved, bruised and partially bound in Hildebrandt’s expansive Utah home last year. As detailed in a diary kept by Franke, she believed the children were possessed by evil spirits who needed to be punished in increasingly extreme ways — from forcing them to work outside in the hot sun all day without water to treating cuts and scrapes with a diabolical mixture of honey and cayenne pepper. In a recent interview with Matthias on the Hidden True Crime YouTube channel, Ballard’s former friend and business associate Ryan Fisher said Ballard too was afraid of evil spirits possessing his body:
“When you turn porn on, they enter through the crown of your head and they take over your body, trying to experience the euphoria of masturbation,” Fisher explained. “That’s what’s described in the book.”
While Harrison’s account of future historical events is not officially sanctioned by the LDS church, he remains a member in good standing despite the fact Daybell, Hildebrandt and Ballard were all in direct contact with him throughout their individual descents into madness.
At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a reality show that’s ostensively about a group of Mormon TikTok creators in Utah who call themselves #MomTok and down Stanley cups of Diet Coke and cream between fights and coordinated dance numbers. But while the show is on the surface a fun and frivolous romp through the lives of hot young influencers, there’s a intriguing layer of darkness peeking in through each episode: What does it mean to be raised in a high-control religious group that infantilizes women, demonizes sexuality and nurtures beliefs that can be used to justify the abuse and murder of children?
A Brief History of MomTok
In 2022, “Secret Lives” star Taylor Frankie Paul infiltrated my deeply unhinged TikTok algorithm when she went on live to tell the world that she was getting a divorce. While I am not normally served videos of beautiful 20-something moms dancing in palatial Utah mansions, Paul’s divorce announcement was so juicy it cut through my FYP’s iron curtain of weirdness. Her divorce, she explained, was due to the fact that the girls in MomTok and their husbands had been “soft swinging,” throwing and attending “everything but all the way” wife swap parties. Paul caught feelings for another woman’s husband and ended up sleeping with him in a situation that, to be perfectly frank, does not sound like a consensual encounter for her. The outing of the MomTok’s drunken after hours behavior blew up on every side of the internet, and executives at Hulu took notice.
In my opinion, the underlying business of MomTok makes “Secret Lives” work in a way few modern reality shows can. While I love all the Real Housewives franchises, there’s always a level of disbelief or unreality that comes from watching people who all openly hate each other interact as a “friend group.” In the last season of “Beverly Hills,” for example, every all-cast group dinner or party felt forced and uncomfortable. Same with season 11 of “Vanderpump Rules” — you just knew from watching it that none of these people would be hanging out if the cameras weren’t there to capture it. But what’s a reality show without the drama of discord?
“Secret Lives” solves this problem by putting MomTok at the center of the show. It’s an existing business venture, one that catapulted the women involved to TikTok influencer fame and fortune prior to the Hulu deal. Despite the Mormon church’s emphasis on men as providers, all the wives in MomTok are revealed to be the primary breadwinners for their families. They’re in business together, and while you might not always like your coworkers, you have to hang out with them anyway.
Thankfully for the show, these women do not like each other. Early in the season, two warring factions of MomTok are established: The Saints, who position themselves as pious, holier-than-thou Mormon believers, and The Sinners, who drink, swing and get pregnant out of wedlock. The self-proclaimed leader of The Saints is Whitney Levitt, who you may remember from her pre-show TikTok cancellation that came about after she posted a bizarre video dancing in the ICU next to her RSV-stricken baby boy.
Leavitt’s husband is a closeted gay man, a fact that’s never overtly stated but is instantly clockable from the first time he opens his mouth, then underlined when Leavitt tearfully reveals to MomTok she found him on Tinder *cough Grindr* because he is “confused sexually.” She describes her wedding night as “out of a horror movie” and complains to her mother that she didn’t even know what sex was when she got married.
Leavitt is solidly the villain of the season, leading the pack in mean-girl gossiping, pile-ons and hurtful pranks that, at first glance, seem wildly juvenile for a married mother in her mid-20s to be engaging in. But that’s where the darkness peeks in, because of course she’s stunted in adolescence. Of course she’s lashing out at women she feels aren’t adhering to the strict rules she’s been raised to believe she has to follow. That old binary of good vs evil is so deeply entrenched in her psyche with no room for nuance, I truly don’t think she understands how insane she looks to the general public. Maybe she’s not an adherent of the exact beliefs that led to the recent true crime headlines coming out of LDS enclaves in Utah, Arizona and Idaho, but “Secret Lives” feels like a cautionary tale, the tip of an iceberg with a core of frozen blood.
The rest of the cast are equally as chaotic, if less overtly unhinged. One of them was married at 16 to her 21 year old boyfriend after an accidental pregnancy, another somewhat proudly proclaims she’s 22 with two kids and has never once had an orgasm. Two more are in abusive relationships with scary, controlling men who I genuinely fear may kill or seriously injure them someday soon. While “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” uses Mormonism as a backdrop for drama, “Secret Lives” brings the faith front and center, laying bare the contradictions (they won’t drink but will do recreational nitrous at Botox appointments), turmoils (being married to gay men, abusers and statutory rapists) and above all, the real life consequences of coming of age in an ideology that nurtures and protects men like Thom Harrison at the expense of women and children.
While MomTok may in reality have very little to do with “Visions of Glory” or the gorgeous Miss Coraline’s hypothetical experiences in the wild world of public relations, this was the context in which I watched “Secret Lives.”
As we enter the final month of an election season heavy with strange, Christo-fascist rhetoric, it feels important somehow to point out the the very real dangers and outcomes of these ideologies, even when they’re wrapped up in a frivolous, reality show packaging. The rise of MomTok, tradwife and homesteading content coming alongside a rollback on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ legal protections isn’t a coincidence. Sorry to the haters, but sometimes reality TV is actually a lens through which we can view wider society — and I’m not loving what “Secret Lives” has to say about the culture.
I am going to leave you with a few recommendations for other things I’ve been recently obsessed with, and because you made it all the way to the end, I’ll also throw in a few of my favorite summer outfits! As a treat!
Influencing Corner
If you were at all interested in the threads I was pulling at today, I implore you to subscribe to Hidden True Crime on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I think they also have a Patreon that I used to subscribe to but then one day I realized I was paying like $90/month on Patreon and I had to make some cuts. Anyway it’s a husband and wife team — Lauren is a journalist and John is a forensic psychologist and they do some of the best, most respectful and in-depth true crime reporting out there, especially as it relates to the connections between the LDS faith and cultic groups. Highly recommend!
On a similar theme, another YouTube channel to check out if you’re interested in LDS faith and deconstruction is Mormon Stories, but I will caution anyone heading over there that the average episode is like 5 hours long. That said, I’ve learned so much from John Dehlin over the years and these discussions are always fascinating.
I recently watched the movie “Oddity” and it was so good — like genuinely the best horror movie I’ve seen in years. I actually screamed out loud on more than one occasion and it went places I did not expect it to go. Don’t look up anything about it, just throw it on and let it ride. I promise you’ll like it if you like horror movies. Like, obviously don’t watch this if you’re a lil scaredy cat or whatever.
The authors of “The Expanse” series just came out with the first book in a new trilogy!!! It’s called “The Mercy of Gods” and I really liked it. You might like it too if you’re into immersive science fiction universes. If you read it please comment or DM me because I want to talk about it and no one I know except my dad has read it and I already talked about it with him!
Clinique Black Honey lipstick. That’s it, that’s the Tweet.
Anyway here are some outfits:
Byeeeeeee!
Awesome.
So good. PULLITZER