Stuff Christians DON'T Like

There is a good reason that my blog is titled Misadventures and that most of my blogs are directly related to the stupid things I do - because that topic offers an amazing wealth of material.

I have never been a big Twitter fan, but eventually became convinced to join up and I am sort of getting into it. Some comedians say funny things, some Christian leaders say meaningful things, and Husker updates are coming my way with great frequency... so it's not all bad.

I have found the downside to Twitter though.

First, let me explain some things to anyone not in the know. On Twitter, you write updates or "Tweets" that are no more than 140 characters long - it started via text message and those have a 160 character limit. You can follow pretty much anyone you want and anyone can follow you. Your name is preceded by at @. If you put in a person's Twitter id with the @, they can see what you write on a tab with their @mentions. If you put a # before a word or group of words with no spaces it is called a hashtag. This allows you to tag topics you are mentioning so that people can see the "trending topics" - basically what is popular.

I hope that is enough, it is more than I knew about until a few days ago.

So here is my latest act of buffoonery.

On Twitter, I follow a guy named John Acuff who wrote a book titled "Stuff Christians Like." I have read only a bit of it while standing in a bookstore, but I have read quite a few of his blog entries (http://stuffchristianslike.net/) and I can tell you it is pretty funny stuff. Based on what I knew about the guy, I quickly clicked the "Follow" button when I saw who he was. I was pumped.

I got less pumped pretty quickly. Several of the first tweets of his that I read consisted of him talking about being friends with other people that are pretty famous in the circles I run in. They weren't funny. As isolated tweets, they sounded like he was just dropping names.

Here is where we need another couple of  Twitter side notes. First of all, it turns out that dropping the names of the people you are with is pretty much just what you do with Twitter. It is you describing who you are with and what you are doing. It is why you can do the whole @ thing. It turns out that I felt like he was name dropping in part because he was talking about those famous-y people I referenced and in part because I was new to the whole scene.

As I grew accustomed to how things were on Twitter, I grew less hostile about it. I had added some friends to my mobile notifications because it is cool to get their tweets throughout the day, but just as quickly I removed some of those friends from mobile updates because I didn't want updates every half hour about what restaurant they were at.

There are different types of tweeters. Some tell you where they are and what is happening no matter what. Some just like to retweet what other people say, incessantly. Some tweet their thoughts, or if something they deem significant is happening. Some tweet all of that. Some people never tweet.

This John guy tweets about anything. Looking back, a lot of it is pretty funny. A lot of it isn't. It is just a lot. About every time I check my account, I see his tweets. I miss a lot of his tweets because of the volume.

Now, the plot thickens.

That means it starts to get relevant. Sort of.

I had been sort of annoyed by his tweets. Several of them that I had seen in recent days weren't funny - most of them weren't intended to be. While I was going back reading some tweets, I was bothered by finding that he had dropped like 3 names in three tweets. It was too much for my taste. I reacted hastily.

I had been thinking of ceasing my following of @prodigaljohn. This was the tipping point. Seeing as I wasn't his follower anymore and I figured he wouldn't see it, I shot off 140 snarky characters about how he dropped names too much and how unfunny his twitter was, that I would just have to stick to his blogs. Turns out he reads his @mentions. Whoops.

He retweeted me.

That means he basically copy and pasted my comment and tweeted it himself - with some added commentary. He claimed he had dropped 3 names in his last 100 tweets. I didn't know about his tweet because I was no longer following him. When his followers caught wind of my affront they responded with their own tweets about my lack of math skills and courtesy. One guy said something about how it makes sense considering my Illinois heritage. A friend of mine tweeted about how funny it was that I had been called out.

Only then did I realize what was going on.

In my defense, while he may have only dropped 3 names in the last 100 tweets, he had dropped those 3 names in his last 3 tweets.

Of course I stink at math, I went to Bible College.

I am not from Illinois, and I haven't even lived here 4 years yet, I can't imagine that is part of my problem.

They guy had every right to do what he did. He was mostly right and I was kind of a jerk. Not totally a jerk because I didn't actually intend for him to read it.

Here is what I mostly feel bad about. He seems like a cool guy and if we knew each other we might be friends. His reply is probably about what any of my better friends would have done to me. He is supposed to be funny, saying something like that is to be expected. Unfortunately in this instance, he not only known as a comedic author, but a Christian author.

Before I even knew about anything happening, it seems he had already been thoroughly chastised and had deleted the tweet, replacing it with another retweet. This one wasn't funny. It was something about how we should pray for people who don't like us, not  retweet them.

I don't dislike the guy. In fact, I really like what he writes and I felt bad enough about the whole deal to REfollow him. To me, it seems like he got steamrolled by someone who apparently took things a little more seriously than anyone intended. He is somewhat of a public figure and apparently as a result, isn't allowed the freedom to be human. As he said - Twitter is insta-accountability, but to what?

You know you have a problem when you can't read what a comedic author writes and recognize a joke.

The problem, I suppose, lies in the fact that he has thousands of followers and several of those followers followed suit. They piled on. They weren't even funny. I think they tried to be, but missed the real nuances of what had come to pass.

Maybe if I had 240 or 440 characters my tweet wouldn't have come off quite so bad. If he had 240, his retweet may not have gotten him scolded. Those 140 characters simply don't allow for anything to be placed into context.

I experience similar things. As a minister, there are certain expectations of how I act, talk, and live. I fail to live up to those expectations a good portion of the time. That is in part because I recognize when expectations are unrealistic or unreasonable and in part because I am human.

I would love to blow off the expectations that don't have a reasonable basis. I would love to place the responsibility all on those people to change their expectations to something that makes sense. Unfortunately I recognize something in myself that I saw in this whole Twitter fiasco. If you hope to have followers, the responsibility to incite change starts with yourself.