do you know about this new thing called twitter. i'm sure it does more than this, but basically it allows you to update what you are doing almost continuously. i know this is going to sound judgmental, but it isn't meant that way at all. there is someone i greatly respect who "twitters," so it's not about anybody using it.
it's just this - it seems a bit presumptuous to me. i'm one that can't stand the E! network phenomenon - fame for fame's sake. we hear about people who may or may not be famous; about their every move until someone is made famous by their own famousness if that makes sense.
it seems to me that twitter is the E! channel for the more pedestrian; my own show about nothing but me that i actually think people will watch. i suppose blogging is not far off of that - though i find blogging to be for me...working my thoughts out. i already know where i am and what i'm doing, so i don't blog about that. on the other hand, i do update my status on facebook, and that is not far away from twitter.
i guess it just dawned on me that it is pretty sad to think of a person who is actually sitting around watching someone else's twitter messages, pregnant with anticipation of the next update; "now i'm on the crapper." whoa, what could be next!
no offense twitter-ers, but somehow the existence of such a thing points to a broken world.
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ouch! That'll leave a mark...
ok pastor. i think twitter is all in how you see it. for instance, your post has 20 references to "i" "me" or "my" language and only 3 references of "you" language.
social networking is just like anything else. it can be about "i" "me" or "my" or it can be about "you." we are asking the question, "how can social networking be about "you" and "us" rather than a voyeuristic immersion in "me." i think it is a worthy exploration. it's an effort to take something that is somewhat value neutral and generate redemptive best practice around it. The issue for us is friendship. How can social networking, in this case twitter, catalyze, cultivate, enhance and even deepen real friendship?
How can Twitter make a potentially meaningful contribution to relationships? Our emerging answer: mindfulness. I twitter in order to cultivate mindfulness of my friends and myself. For me it's not about documenting my every move and thought and potty break, but rather about sharing both sublime and ordinary facets of my every day life with others and staying connected with others in like fashion.
Pastor, I would love to have a sense of what you are working on through the day. I wonder if you get tired like I do. What is making you laugh today? What has your chaos meter tripping over tomorrow? It's like seeing snapshots in a scrapbook of your life. I suppose it's up to you how carefully you edit those snapshots into an image or preferred projection of yourself. It's the cumulation of small glimpses of one another over time that contributes to the possibility of friendship. It holds the possibility of leading us out of the endless role-playing games of life and into ordinary human connection. Mindfulness. It calls to mind my favorite African practice of greeting: Sawabona! Sik Hona! "I see you." "i am here."
At the end of the day this really isn't about twittering or not, but about false selves and true selves. It's about the lifelong aspiration to see and be seen as our real selves.
I find the more I am honest, open and appropriately vulnerable (regardless of the relational medium) the more others reciprocate and the more our friendship flowers. And I find that where friendship flowers, fruit is not far behind. This flower actually fragrances and beautifies our ordinary days. The fruit actually nourishes the Kingdom of on earth as it is in heaven.
I suppose what I'm after Rob is a bit more careful critique of social networking and an honest assessment of it's incarnational capacities and limitations. Let's think about it through some helpful theological lenses and then let's work together to generate a sense of good pactices and approaches that help us avoid the pitfalls and garner the potentials.
so friend-- come and twitter with me and let's see what happens. i would love to have a good theologically trained, pastorally wise and praxis savvy mind like yours to help us think this through to some good ends.
Watch for more on this on a blog near you soon. ;-)
thanks for your thoughts, jd. i hopw you are doing well. not sure you'll read this here, but it can be posted to your blog if and when the subject comes up. some comments and questions regarding your post.
1. is "pastor" used here as a positive or negative term? ;)
2. the presence or absence of pronouns "i" and "me" and their possesive forms are not necessarily the best indicators of whether a post is focused on the writer or on the community. for instance, it doesn't matter if a person writes "coming home from the store now" or "i'm coming home from the store now," both are about the writer. saying "i think" at the beginning, or "i suppose" is actually more gracious to others and less about the writer since it is creating space to disagree...it is an opinion and not a statement of fact.
3. the value neutral thing in question is social networking. the exploration is assessing the various forms of social networking. at the heart of the post is an opinion that twitter, to the level understood (note the beginning of the post "i'm sure it can do more") seems to be more monologue, self-focused and over-indulgent than the other popular forms of social networking.
4. do you have more dialogue on your blog, your facebook, or twitter? why do you think that is? this is the exploration, does twitter lean more toward personal bulletins of activity and talking at people, or more toward dialogue and talking with people?
5. The post in question was provocative in order to solicit participation. this technique was learned from a really skilled blogger...who twitters. :)
NOTE: outside of quotations, this comment contains no 1st person singular pronouns; possessive or otherwise.
NOTE 2: could never get twitter to send the kingdomtide scriptures no matter how much the settings were monkeyed with.
rob
sounds like i hurt your feelings. sorry. i guess that i, me, my you thing was a bit caddy.
pastor is meant positive.
let's cut to the chase and discuss the merits of twitter as a practice cultivating mindfulness of one another. it's not necessarily about dialogue-- i didn't mean to make that claim if I did. I am saying it's about mindfulness.
and i'd be glad to give you a twittorial and get you hooked up to twiturgy for sure. and i would like to enagage you in the twitter friends social networking experiment so you can help us think about it.
my feelings are unhurt; i too am sorry if i communicated that. i grew up in a household of siblings who debate in love if that makes sense. my context for this is fun sparring as have been all my comments to your blog. you have not hurt me, i know your heart is good, i'm sorry if my teasing portrayed something else.
ok, chase cutting (with a smile...promise). i am open to entering a conversation, though not having been in on it from the beginning, it may not be all that helpful.
here are my thoughts. most people have a finite amount of time, attention, energy etc. to devote to social interaction. Social networking can be great in making it easier to apply their "social recources." However, social networking can also steal these social resources away from where they should be applied - close friends, spouse, co-workers, God.
Therefore, balance and restraint in social networking are wise. If that is true, shouldn't people use the social networking option(s) that, for them, produce or sustain friendships the best?
i am a verbal processor, a verbal relator. face-to-face is best, conversation (dialogue) is next, "information about" is last for me. so as i compare facebook, blogging and twitter (as i know it...which isn't great) i find the latter to be lacking.
finally, what you describe as mindfulness and snapshots (legitimately...and these can be helpful in relationships) can easily slip into attention-seeking and bombardment.
perhaps because i am so social/relational, and perhaps because i know my soul and how easily i can seek the attention of others (not even necessarily approval, but attention) i am wary of social gluttony. i am also concerned with a plethora of non-engagement interaction that steals my social energy without really supplying a friendly encounter.
i agree with you in the sense of the severe limitations on our social engagement. if the incarnation means anything-- and it means a lot-- it means that God in Jesus embraced the severe limitations of being one, single solitary person. technology constantly tells us that we have no limitations-- that we can be friends with any and everyone, that there is no limit to our ability to socially engage. this is a lie. we are severely limited. i think this is something that you are getting at in your critique of all things social networking. you gravitate towards those social networking tools that tend toward engagment, interaction and dialogue. that's good.
this is one of the angles we talk about a lot with respect to social networking--- are we using it to attempt to transcend our human limitations or does it help us, in fact, embrace our limitations. does it help us move toward the other in relationship? can technology help us to deepen human attachments to one another? can they humanize our friendships and help us share joy in the quotidian mysteries of daily life?
i am not a twitter champion-- not an advocate-- but a pastor-theologian attempting to discern the wise use of it. i am trying to get people who lead ministries to experiment with us in examining its potential and pitfalls.
you have established it is clearly not your preference and that it, in fact, tends to aggaivate your own weaknesses. i respect that.
twitter-- in its simplicity-- is designed to deal with the most frequently asked question in anyone's ordinary every day life--- "what are you doing." that's it.
our staff team is finding twitter quite a nice thread that weaves the fabric of our every day lives into richer tapestry via the practice of mindfulness. this isn't taking us away from those places where our social energy needs to be directed--- rather it takes us deeper into those relationships.
are you tracking with me. this is not an attention grabbing voyeuristic look-at-me enterprise we are attempting here--- but an every day as you go life sharing exercise.
it's astounding just how much we don't really know those people we live and work closest to. it strengthens the bonds of the Kingdom-- doesn't it?
it certainly CAN do that, particularly when contextualized in that kind of relationship with your work team, with the kind of community-established parameters of which you speak.
I sense that you heard my concern; the belief that each time energy is spent answering the most asked question of the day, less energy is available to address the deeper issues of life. I hear what you are saying, that answering that question to an entire community on some basis with the minimum amount of energy burned creates conduits or environments for the deeper issues of life to be brought up.
Perhaps we are describing the "curbs" of the social network avenue.
Two side comments; I really was being provocative for effect when I said Twitter's existence is a sign of a the broken world. Second, I have no idea on earth what "quotidian" means...but I'll look it up.
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