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The Internet runs on outrage. This hasn’t always been the case. In the early days, it ran on Star Trek and porn. But that could only go for so long before people started getting more and more outraged about Star Trek and porn. Or Star Trek porn. But you know what I mean.

And one of the essential rules that has always governed our world (not Rule 34--that one came late in the game) is, “if it motivates people, it will be monetized.” This always works. It is why we have Star Trek. And porn.

And it is why the people who were once known as Mormons have apparently been circulating a dumb petition to label as “religious discrimination” a dumb movie poster that riffs on a painting by a Seventh-Day Adventist that is often used in Mormon manuals.

And it is why respectable newspaper sources are reporting on the dumb petition and reprinting the dumb movie poster for free. And why a lot of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Santsians are forwarding the petition and the news story and the dumb poster.

And all of this is, I suspect, exactly the way that the people who made the dumb movie planned it. In fact, though I have not seen the viral marketing campaign plan, I am pretty sure it went just like this:

1. Create a poster that will offend a demographic that is overrepresented on social media.

2. Forward the poster around with a bunch of outrage markers, “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO US!!!!!!!!!!!”

3. Start a fake petition drive and get a lot of real people to sign it.

4. Get Fox News to interview some dweeb patent lawyer and say that Mormons should sue.

5. Get liberals outraged by forwarding the clip around and saying, “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT MORMONS ARE TRYING TO DO TO FREE SPEECH!!!!@!”

6. Sit back and watch as your dumb poster for your dumb movie sequel gets forwarded around in two completely different sets of outraged-fueled echo chambers.

7. See if you can get Mormon bloggers to become complicit in the campaign by running allegedly witty commentary on the whole affair.

8. Use the money you were going to spend on Internet marketing to buy a small country or something.

