Tag Archives ⇒ twitter

The Quaker Twitter eXodus

December 18, 2024
· Martin Kelley

New Friends Jour­nal arti­cle on some of the Quak­er groups leav­ing Twitter/X this week, fol­low­ing Friends World Com­mit­tee’s Mon­day announce­ment.

There’s been a lit­tle push­back, on X and Red­dit, along the lines that Quak­ers should be rep­re­sent­ed every­where. Our arti­cle quotes Alis­tair McIn­tosh, who post­ed on X:

I pre­fer it when Quak­ers bring an alter­na­tive pres­ence to con­flict zones. Has God not already got suf­fi­cient angels in heav­en? Can we not, as our 1947 Nobel Peace Prize cita­tion quotes it, act “to build up in a spir­it of love what has been destroyed in a spir­it of hatred.”

I get it but I don’t think the metaphor holds. No one is trapped on a social network. 

One prob­lem with this line of rea­son­ing is that it fails to take into account the time and resources that it takes to be on a social plat­form. Face­book, X, Threads, Bluesky, Dis­cord, Tik­tok, Telegram, What­sApp, Red­dit, Mastodon… There are so many social net­works and you can’t be every­where. As a pub­lish­er, you have to choose where you place your atten­tion. X has shot itself in the foot time and time again since Musk came in. He has no idea how to run a social network.

The qual­i­ty of dis­course at X had turned to shit. Much of the audi­ence is gone. Posts with links are down­grad­ed in the algo­rithm, giv­ing pub­lish­ers lit­tle incen­tive to stay. For most pub­lish­ers, the main pur­pose of social net­works is to get peo­ple to their web­sites (hope­ful­ly to sign up for email lists). X is fol­low­ing the lead of Meta (Face­book, Threads, Insta­gram), whose net­works have become increas­ing­ly use­less as they’ve down­grad­ed posts with links.

Many pubs are report­ing they’re now get­ting more refer­ral vis­i­tors from Bluesky than X, even with few­er fol­low­ers. For me, this announce­ment is less about pol­i­tics than it is a recog­ni­tion that X isn’t Twit­ter and that the enshit­ti­fi­ca­tion of the net­work is such that it’s no longer worth our lim­it­ed resources or attention.

When Friends World Com­mit­tee’s World Office came to us and said that a bunch of Quak­er orgs were orga­niz­ing to leave X en masse, I respond­ed with a shrug. It has­n’t felt worth it to stay on X. This is as good a time as ever to leave. Friends Jour­nal has been on Bluesky for over a year and the dis­course is sim­ply better. 

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

“Quakerism has ruined me for other faith experiences”

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Great tweet­storm by life­long Friend Susan­na Williams on why she left Quak­ers and why she remains so attached to Quakers:

Quak­erism has ruined me for oth­er faith experiences- I was empow­ered from an ear­ly age to have a direct & per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God, to give vocal min­istry (as I first did when I was 12), to dive into silent worship.

Where are the new Quak­er meet­ing plants? Where are the din­ner wor­ship groups? Where is the con­nec­tion with the Spir­it? Where is the space for Friends to encounter and share authen­tic faith journeys?

This reminds me of some of the themes I wrote about in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion (turn­ing fif­teen this year) and 2013’s Quak­erism Left Me by Bet­sy Blake. Should the kind of Friends com­mu­ni­ty Susan­na’s look­ing for real­ly be all that rare? Click on the link to read the 10-part story.


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The lost A List

October 11, 2017
· Martin Kelley

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As A List Hol­ly­wood stars come out to tell their Har­vey Wein­stein couch harass­ment sto­ries, I have to won­der about those who didn’t make it through after say­ing no — actress­es who saw their roles evap­o­rate and left act­ing. The New York Times head­lines pro­fil­ing Wein­stein accusers touts Gwyneth Pal­trow and Angeli­na Jolie but also intro­duces us a woman who is now a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor in Col­orado. How many bet­ter actress­es and strong-minded women would there be in Hol­ly­wood if so many hadn’t been forced out?

I thought of this after read­ing by a tweet from the actress Rose Marie. She’s best known as one of the jovial side­kicks from the 1960s’ Dick Van Dyke Show. Not to dimin­ish the rest of the cast, but Rose Marie is one of the best rea­sons to watch the show, espe­cial­ly dur­ing those rare moments she’s allowed to step out from her character’s wise­crack­ing spin­ster per­sona and sing or act. On Twit­ter, she shared that she lost a music con­tract in the 1950s because she wouldn’t sleep with a producer.

What if a tal­ent­ed actress like Rose Marie had been giv­en more oppor­tu­ni­ties and wasn’t just known for a sup­port­ing part in a old sit­com? What if the psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor had got­ten the Shake­speare in Love lead? (Imag­ine a world where Pal­trow was only known to 800 or so Face­book friends for too-perfect fam­i­ly pics and memes from dubi­ous health sites.)

Dis­claimer: This is a minor point com­pared with any actress­es who weren’t able to deal with the harass­ment and the indus­try silenc­ing machin­ery. I’m sure there are tragedies that are more than just career pivots.


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Derecho Storm Damage in Mays Landing

June 30, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Last night a huge thun­der­storm front with a phe­nom­e­non called a dere­cho swept across South Jer­sey. Where I live in Ham­mon­ton the strangest part of it was a strobe-light effect caused by dozens of cloud-to-cloud light­ning flash­es per minute, punc­tu­at­ed by light­ning strikes. Fur­ther east into Atlantic Coun­ty winds took down incred­i­ble amounts of trees.

This morn­ing trav­eled to Mays Land­ing, which was sched­uled to host a street fes­ti­val today. A few brave mer­chants like Brown­ies Squared opened with­out pow­er and made the best of it, sell­ing refrig­er­at­ed goods at half-price. But most of the town was deal­ing with trees across downed pow­er lines. Accord­ing to NBC40 Weath­er 162,000 house­holds are with­out pow­er – con­sid­er­ably more than were out in last year’s hurricane.

Links:
* http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​e​r​e​cho
* https://​twit​ter​.com/​n​b​c​4​0​w​e​a​t​h​e​r​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​2​1​9​0​7​8​6​6​2​5​3​0​6​7​8​784

Future of Quaker media at Pendle Hill next month

April 27, 2012
· Martin Kelley

I’m part of a dis­cus­sion at the Pen­dle Hill con­fer­ence cen­ter out­side Philadel­phia next month. Every­one’s invit­ed. It’s a rare chance to real­ly bring a lot of dif­fer­ent read­ers and media pro­duc­ers (offi­cial and DIY) togeth­er into the same room to map out where Quak­er media is head­ed. If you’re a pas­sion­ate read­er or think that Quak­er pub­li­ca­tions are vital to our spir­i­tu­al move­ment, then do try to make it out.

blankYoutube, Twit­ter, pod­casts, blogs, books. Where’s it all going and who’s doing it? How does it tie back to Quak­erism? What does it mean for Friends and our insti­tu­tions? Join pan­elists Charles Mar­tin, Gabriel Ehri and Mar­tin Kel­ley, along with Quak­er pub­lish­ers and writ­ers from around the world, and read­ers and media enthu­si­asts, for a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion about the future of Quak­er media.

We will begin with some wor­ship at 7.00pm If you’d like a deli­cious Pen­dle Hill din­ner before­hand please reply to the Face­book event wall (see http://​on​.fb​.me/​q​u​a​k​e​r​m​e​dia). Din­ner is at 6.00pm and will cost $12.50

This is part of this year’s Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions con­fer­ence. QUIP has been hav­ing to re-imagine its role over the last ten years as so many of its anchor pub­lish­ers and book­stores have closed. I have a big con­cern that a lot of online Quak­er mate­r­i­al is being pro­duced by non-Quakers and/or in ways that aren’t real­ly root­ed in typ­i­cal Quak­er process­es. Maybe we can talk about that some at Pen­dle Hill.

An unlikely story from twit​ter​.com/​@​e​r​r​o​l​m​o​r​ris on a conspiracy that never was.

November 28, 2011
· Martin Kelley

An unlike­ly sto­ry from twit​ter​.com/​@​e​r​r​o​l​m​o​r​ris on a con­spir­a­cy that nev­er was.

Embed­ded Link

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‘The Umbrel­la Man’
On the 48th anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Errol Mor­ris takes a crit­i­cal look at the one man seen stand­ing under an open black umbrel­la at the site.