The demise of online subcultures?

March 31, 2017

An inter­est­ing pro­file of a niche com­mu­ni­ty affect­ed by the shift of atten­tion from community-led sites to Face­book, “How Face­book – the Wal-Mart of the inter­net – dis­man­tled online sub­cul­tures.”

Over time, these chal­lenges to the BME com­mu­ni­ty became increas­ing­ly prob­lem­at­ic. Mem­bers delet­ed accounts or stopped post­ing. By 2015, the main com­mu­ni­ty forum – which used to have hun­dreds of posts a day – went with­out a sin­gle com­ment for over six months.

Hav­ing pre­dict­ed many of the web’s func­tions and fea­tures, BME failed to antic­i­pate its own demise.

It’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing I’ve seen in my niche world of Quak­ers. I start­ed Quak­erQuak­er as an inde­pen­dent site in part because I didn’t want Google and Face­book and Beliefnet to deter­mine who we are. There’s the obvi­ous prob­lems — Beliefnet hir­ing a pro­gram­mer to make a “What Reli­gion Are You?” test based on a few books picked up the library one afternoon.

But there’s also more sub­tle prob­lems. On Face­book any­one can start or join a group and start talk­ing author­i­ta­tive­ly about Quak­ers with­out actu­al­ly being an active com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber. I can think of a num­ber of online char­ac­ters who had nev­er even vis­it­ing a Friends meet­ing or church.

Our tra­di­tion built up ways of defin­ing our spokes­peo­ple though the prac­tices of record­ed min­is­ters and elders, and of clar­i­fy­ing shared beliefs though doc­u­ments like Faith and Prac­tice. I’ll be the first to argue that this process has pro­duced mixed results. But if it is to be adapt­ed or reformed, I’d like the work to be done by us in a thought­ful, inclu­sive man­ner. Instead, the form of our dis­cus­sions are now invis­i­bly imposed by an out­side algo­rithm that is opti­mized for obses­sive engage­ment and adver­tis­ing deliv­ery. Face­book process is not Quak­er process, yet it is large­ly what we use when we talk about Quak­ers out­side of Sun­day morning.

I think Face­book has helped alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ties form. I’m grate­ful for the pop-up com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est I’m part of. And there are sites with more user gen­er­at­ed con­tent like Wikipedia and Red­dit that hold an inter­est­ing middle-ground and where infor­ma­tion is gen­er­al­ly more accu­rate. But there’s still a crit­i­cal role for self-organized inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions, a niche that I think is con­tin­u­ing to be over­shad­owed in our cur­rent atten­tion ecosystem.

Delayed readership

May 12, 2016

A Quak­er edu­ca­tor recent­ly told me he had appre­ci­at­ed some­thing I wrote about the way Quak­er cul­ture plays out in Quak­er schools. It was a 2012 blog post, Were Friends part of Obama’s Evolution?

It was a bit of a ran­dom post at the time. I had read a wide­ly shared inter­view that after­noon and was mulling over the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a behind-the-scenes Quak­er influ­ence. This sort of ran­dom­ness hap­pens fre­quent­ly but in the rush of work and fam­i­ly I don’t always take the time to blog it. That day I did and a few years lat­er it influ­ence spline on some small way. 

It reminds me of an old obser­va­tion: the imme­di­ate boost we get when friends com­ment in our blog posts or like a Face­book update is an imme­di­ate hit of dopamine — excit­ing and ego grat­i­fy­ing. But the greater effect often comes months and years lat­er when some­one finds some­thing of yours that they’re search­ing for. This delayed read­er­ship may be one of the great­est dif­fer­ences between blog­ging and Facebooking. 

Story: The teapot that survived

March 4, 2013

“What do you think of this?” It was prob­a­bly the twen­ti­eth time my broth­er or I had asked this ques­tion in the last hour. Our moth­er had down­sized to a one-bedroom apart­ment in an Alzheimer’s unit just six days ear­li­er. Vis­it­ing her there she admit­ted she could­n’t even remem­ber her old apart­ment. We were clean­ing it out.

Almost forgotten history.
Almost for­got­ten his­to­ry. by martin_kelley, on Flickr

The object of the ques­tion this time was an antique teapot. White chi­na with a blue design. It was­n’t in great shape. The top was cracked and miss­ing that han­dle that lets you take the lid off with­out burn­ing your fin­gers. It had a folksy charm, but as a teapot it was nei­ther prac­ti­cal nor aston­ish­ing­ly attrac­tive, and nei­ther of us real­ly want­ed it. It was head­ed for the over­sized trash bin out­side her room.

I turned it over in my hands. There, on the bot­tom, was a strip of dried-out and cracked mask­ing tape. On it, bare­ly leg­i­ble and in the kind of cur­sive script that is no longer taught, were the words “Recov­ered from ruins of fire 6/29/23 at 7. 1067 Haz­ard Rd.”

We scratched our heads. We did­n’t know where Haz­ard Road might be (Google lat­er revealed it’s in the blink-and-you-miss-it rail­road stop of Haz­ard, Penn­syl­va­nia, a cross­roads only tech­ni­cal­ly with­in the bound­ary of our moth­er’s home town of Palmer­ton). The date would place the fire sev­en years before her birth.

We can only guess to fill in the details. A cat­a­stroph­ic fire must have tak­en out the fam­i­ly home. Imag­ine the grim solace of pulling out a fam­i­ly heir­loom. Per­haps some grand­par­ent had brought it care­ful­ly packed in a small suit­case on the jour­ney to Amer­i­ca. Or per­haps not. Per­haps it had no sen­ti­men­tal val­ue and it had land­ed with our moth­er because no one else cared. We’ll nev­er know. No amount of research could tell us more than that mask­ing tape. Our moth­er was­n’t the only one los­ing her mem­o­ry. We were too. We were los­ing the fam­i­ly mem­o­ry of a gen­er­a­tion that had lived, loved, and made it through a tragedy one mid-summer day.

I stood there and looked at the teapot once again. It had sur­vived a fire nine­ty years ago. I would give it a reprieve from our snap judge­ment and the dump. Stripped of all mean­ing save three inch­es of mask­ing tape, it now sits on a top shelf of my cup­board. It will rest there, gath­er­ing back the dust I just cleaned off, until some spring after­noon forty years from now, when one of my kids will turn to anoth­er. “What do you think of this?”

Update March 2017

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Prob­a­bly the old­est pic­ture of Liz I have, from 1931. Eliz­a­beth “Lizzie” “Gram­my” Williams Noll, Eliz­a­beth Klein­top, Puerette “Puri” “Pap­py” Noll. On porch of Colum­bia Ave. home, Palmerton.

Beyond all odds, there’s actu­al­ly more infor­ma­tion. Some­one has put up obit­u­ar­ies from the Morn­ing Call news­pa­per. It includes the May 1922 notice for Alvin H. Noll, my moth­er’s great grandfather.

Alvin H. Noll, a well known res­i­dent of Palmer­ton, died at his home, at that place, on Sun­day morn­ing, aged 66 years. He was a mem­ber of St. John’s church, Towa­mensing, and also a promi­nent mem­ber of Lodge, No. 440, I.O. of A., Bow­manstown. He is sur­vived by two daugh­ters, Mrs. Lewis Sauer­wine, Slat­ing­ton, and Mrs. Fred Par­ry, this city; three sons, Puri­et­ta Noll, Samuel Noll and Thomas Noll, Palmer­ton. Two sis­ters, Mrs. Mary Schultz, Lehigh­ton; Miss Aman­da Noll, Bow­manstown; two broth­ers, Aaron Noll, Bow­manstown, and William Noll, Lehigh­ton. Ten grand­chil­dren also sur­vive. Funer­al ser­vices will be held at the home of his son, Puri­et­ta (sic) Noll, 1067 Haz­ard Road, Palmer­ton, on Wednes­day at 1.30 p.m., day­light sav­ing time. Fur­ther ser­vices will be held in St. John’s church, Towa­mensing. Inter­ment will be made in Towa­mensing cemetery.

And there it is: 1067 Haz­ard Road, home of my moth­er’s grand­fa­ther Puri­ette Franklin Noll one year before the fire. So I’ll add a pic­ture of Puri­ette and his wife Eliz­a­beth with my Mom eighter years after the fire, at what the pho­to says is their Colum­bia Avenue home. Wow!

Francis turns two

August 29, 2007

Mar­tin and Theo cel­e­brat­ed Fran­cis’s sec­ond birth­day with an after­noon out­ing to fav spot Bat­sto Lake. 

Francis turns two Francis turns two Francis turns two


Pho­tos: Fran­cis laughs by the lake, Theo mak­ing rip­ples, group shot, video speech.