I’m Naomi Frandsen, and I created the character of Greg Fox. I want to apologize for being stupid enough not to see the stupid parts of what we did, for being insensitive enough not to understand how people would really feel when they found out what was going on, and for being presumptuous enough to think that an explanation is the same thing as an apology. I think I am starting to see that one of the things that continues to cause the most hurt and anger is the fact that we didn’t see from the beginning and we’ve continued not to see that what we did was wrong.
Yesterday, APJ wrote, “Try dealing with the fact that this blog struck a lot of people as a bad idea, instead of justifying it by explaining yourself as innocent as possible in hindsight.” I think that has been one of the hardest things for me over the past few days—letting go of my protestations about being misunderstood and realizing that I’ve been deceiving myself. I don’t exactly know how this self-deception, which has had such seismic consequences, first began or how it managed to color the way I thought about what we were doing. I suspect that my self-deception was fed by a certain giddy delight in attention and, to a certain extent, acceptance and power. I also really liked the camaraderie of my fellow Gadianton robbers, who have been friends through several major junctures in my life over the past six months. In any event, I managed not to see the wrong in what we were doing for a very long time, and I feel sick as I come to realize that I have misled and mistreated a lot of very good people.
This brings me to another apology: that it took a debacle like this to extract an apology in the first place. I have been compelled to be humble, so to speak, not because of my innate sense of right and wrong, but because suddenly everyone was mad at me. I know that casts doubt on the apologies you’ve been reading—you probably wonder where this would have all gone if we’d managed to get away with it after all. So I realize that this apology is extremely self-serving—I’m sorry because you’re mad at me. But I’m also sorry, and getting sorrier, for my part in the bad decisions that took place all along.
Okay, I don’t want to stray into the hyperbolic or ridiculous. It would be pretty underhanded of me to make anyone feel bad for making me feel bad, so I want to stop well short of that line. I did something stupid, I had a fast, fun ride, and now I’m paying up. Quite frankly, the duped Bloggernacle is having the last laugh, and we deserve every bit of it.
Now some more specific apologies. In creating the character of Greg Fox, I wanted to see if there was a place for a nonmember in the Bloggernacle. I based him on a guy I met just before my mission while working at Catholic Healthcare West. He wasn’t Mormon, but he’d just broken up with a Mormon girlfriend of several years, and he recognized my religion from my CTR ring, my backward sense of style (sorry to all you more fashionable Mormons out there), and the four younger siblings I frequently towed around with me. I was amazed at how much he knew about the church—the different offices in the priesthood, the first principles and ordinances, current General Authorities. I had a hard time believing that he could know so much about Mormonism and not believe it was true. It was actually quite disconcerting for me, and I think it was a valuable thing to experience as a soon-to-be-missionary. In any event, I have remembered him ever since, and I have often wondered what he must have felt like at church and among Mormons. But I realized, as I tried to write about things that Greg would write about, that this was an arrogant goal. I *didn’t* know how someone like Greg would feel in a community like ours, and I was not being very fair or respectful toward people who are actually in his position. So I would like to apologize to any of the readers that have felt particularly betrayed or disgusted by the fact that it was a Mormon writing a non-Mormon the whole time. Especially to my good friend who is not Mormon but who reads here occasionally—Greg was not based on you and was not meant to be a caricature of your experience.
I would also like to reiterate the apologies of my fellow bloggers to our commenters who bought into this. Annegb, on one of Greg’s first posts—the one about the apartment he was living in—you said that you enjoyed reading the interactions between the roommates because they reminded you of how your future son-in-law may have been with his friends. It was at this point that I should have thought, “Oh no, I am deceiving someone I like and respect.” Instead, I thought, “Wow, I really sound like a boy?” I’m sorry about that—this was extremely prideful and very juvenile. At this point, I think you would be a better friend to all of my non-Mormon friends than I have been. Not that you want more people to take care of.
I also apologize to my mom, who, if she ever finds out about this, will be absolutely sick. She’s had to clarify my heterosexuality in public before; I’m sure she’s sick of me making a fool of myself in such exposed places. I am the most oblivious and least reliable of the Frandsens, and my actions in no way reflect on any member of my family. Also, if she ever reads any of Greg’s posts, she’ll be even more saddened to see how easily foul language comes to me when I’m trying to sound male.
Finally, my apologies to my fellow bloggers for being such a coward and taking so long to put this up. We’ve all put ridiculous amounts of time into this wrong-headed endeavor, and none of them ever made me feel inadequate or guilty, even when my posts were mediocre and infrequent. I truly hope that the bloggernacle will not suffer any casualties because of our actions. I actually predict that by tomorrow afternoon, you’ll all be talking about something else, and my 15 minutes of infamy will be cold to the touch. But the bloggernacle has been an exciting and welcoming place to me, both as Naomi and Greg, and I am sorry that I did anything to weaken its power to do good.
