Brigham Young Virginity Club

About

The Brigham Young Virginity Club is a college club organized at Brigham Young University located in Provo, Utah that's dedicated to promoting virginity and denouncing premarital sex based on Mormon values. The club has been active since late 2020 when they started posting to Instagram and gained a following there. Since then, they've received insincere attention across platforms like Twitter where users find their messages and infographics nonsensical. Their two most notable trends that they've aided to are Mormon Soaking and Hot Girl Summer. It is currently debated whether the club is a parody or real.

Online History

The Brigham Young Virginity Club started posting to their Instagram^[1] account on September 3rd, 2020. Their first post^[2] relayed a message of modern media not portraying virginity as sacred enough, earning over 120 likes in two years (shown below).

In 2021, the club launched a Change.org^[3] petition titled, "Approve a Real Virginity Club on BYU Campus," emphasizing in their petition's description, "For too long, Virgins have gone unfairly stigmatized in a society where it’s 'cool' to make fun of people who follow the scriptures and wait for marriage." They also mention in the description interesting facts about the Mormon Brigham Young University. For instance, it's mentioned that it's one of the only universities where pre-marital sex is prohibited by school policy. The petition, over the course of one year, has reached 849 of its 1,000 signature goal.

On July 21st, 2021, news outlet Slate^[4] published an article titled, "Is the Brigham Young University Virginity Club for Real? An Investigation," where the author, Madison Malone Kircher, tried to figure out if the account was a parody or not. It's mentioned in the article, and alluded by the Change.org petition title, that the club is not officially associated with Brigham Young University.

After trying multiple investigation tactics, Kircher was able to interview the creator of the account and the founder of the club who used a voice modifier when speaking to her. He claimed he was a junior at the school and still a virgin, citing this tension as evidence for his insistence on anonymity. Kircher ended up not coming to a solid conclusion because the interviewee didn't reveal the account as satire and repeatedly insisted that it wasn't.

Highlights

Tag A Virgin

The Brigham Young Virginity Club Instagram page received its first spike in engagement on December 4th, 2020, when they posted^[5] an infographic that encouraged their followers to "Tag a virgin," resulting in roughly 17,800 comments that accumulated over two years of Instagrammers tagging their friends, mostly ironically (shown below).

Hot Girl Summer / Pious Girl Summer

On July 13th, 2021, the Brigham Young Virginity Club Instagram page made a post^[6] about Hot Girl Summer, urging their followers to engage in "Pious Girl Summer" instead. The carousel post (first and last slide shown below) received roughly 16,200 likes over the course of seven months.

The post inspired a spike in engagement for the page. As evidence of this, Twitter^[7] user jodieegrace tweeted about the post on July 13th, earning roughly 15,000 likes for her post over seven months, captioning the screenshots, "cannot believe this byu virginity club page isn’t satire," (shown below). This spike in attention was also responsible for Slate's investigation.^[4]

Mormon Soaking

On October 11th, 2021, the page posted about Mormon Soaking / Jump Humping in response to the attention that the concept received online towards the end of that year. The post^[8] namedropped its other aliases like "fermenting," "marinading" and "stewing." At the end of the post, they denounced the practice, suggesting that people should try, "basking in the Light of the Lord," instead. The post received roughly 7,400 likes over the course of four months (first and last slide shown below).

Valentine's Day 2022

On February 14th, 2022, the page posted about Valentine's Day, stating in a single Instagram^[9] post, "Reminder: just because it's Valentine's Day doesn't mean you can have sex. Thank you." The post (shown below) earned roughly 17,800 likes over the course of four days, becoming the page's most-liked post ever.

Search Interest

External References