The Social Media Douchebag
Fads, trends, buzz words and industry jargon are the tools of the trade used by Social Media Douchebags to obfuscate their lack of skills and knowledge of the emerging social media industry.
They prey on unsuspecting people desperate to be part of the Web 2.0 revolution (see that, I inserted 5 year old jargon there to confuse you). According to the sales pitch, companies and individuals can and will fall increasingly behind the times and become irrelevant in today’s fast paced market.
Slick salespeople are ready to sell you on SEO (search engine optimization), LinkedIn profiles, blogs, cross-communication and community development through online resources like Twitter and Facebook. Through a synergistic application of new emerging techniques they will be able to monetize your blog into a book deal in no time flat. You will be able to produce your own commercials and broadcast them via Youtube, causing you and your brand to go viral!
Sound confusing? Don’t worry, there’s an emerging industry full of Social Media Douchebags who are more than happy to help you with everything from building your LinkedIn profile, to operating your Twitter account to managing your “brand” online. How else is a newbie supposed to navigate the Twitterverse?
The Fresh Expressions Minister
The church has its own emerging “professionals”: the Fresh Expression Ministers. This group of dedicated renewal experts are all too happy to come to your church and tell you that your tradition is wrong, that it doesn’t speak to the times and is irrelevant to today’s confusing post modern secular world.
The first thing to do is throw the font out with the bath water.
Your church needs to be gutted for liturgical renewal. The space needs to be flexible for the new rock/praise service you simply must do to attract young families.
The next thing is to empty out the endowments to pay for these projects to bring youth into the church. Build a skate park in the parking lot, and hand out bibles. Maybe take your church to a bar and talk about Jesus with the patrons.
The Fresh Expression Minister will show you flashy videos of churches that are casting off their tradition and heritage to attract new people into the building to consume a cathartic Sunday morning experience. Brief testimonials will be delivered by the new congregants about how relevant this new style of church is in their lives. You will swoon and before you and the rest of your leadership team knows it, you have been sold the new Fresh Expressions model of ministry.
Problem is, that is not Fresh Expressions; at least not according to the Fresh Expressions people.
Buyer Beware
Social Media is about community and the internet is a meritocracy. The best rise to the top and the betterment of the community as a whole is the goal of those who are truly invested in Social Media.
Whether the Internet lives up to this ideal or not, you can’t sell merit. Some Social Media Douchebags will try, but eventually the internet sees through the smoke and mirrors and calls out those that are less than honest.
This is also starting with the Fresh Expressions movement. The desire to make the Christian story relevant to a new generation is commendable, but not at the expense of the entire tradition. The theological grounding of the Anglican tradition simply can’t be represented by the Fresh Expressions movement in its Canadian incarnation. Fresh Expressions Canada has even partnered with the United Church of Canada to create a broader – and more diluted – base for it to sell it wares.
The theological principles and grounding of the original movement has been lost as the current leaders of the Canadian movement seek to find new “clients” to sell their liturgical innovations. The watering down of the “product” continues as entire centuries of tradition and prayer books are scuttled in favour feel-good liturgies and innovation. Eucharistic prayers are completely re-written without any thought to their sotoriological significance. The epiclesis is trashed, gutted or altered beyond recognition that we can no longer be sure if the Holy Spirit is descending or someone is passing gas.
Don’t get me wrong, as an ordained person who practices Fresh Expressions and whose partner works in the social media industry it is difficult to criticize movements that I see such possibility in, but I’m left wondering at times at the horrible hybrid that could be released upon the world if the Social Media Douchebag and the Fresh Expressions Minister were ever to join forces.
Simply put, it would be a match made in hell.
I am less confident than you, Marty, in the ability of the Internet (if it can be described as a collective entity) to see through such smoke and mirrors, and more hesitant in considering it a meritocracy; however, I agree that there are many people who do use the Social (or New) Media for the betterment of their communities whether online or real (in the sense of being located somewhere in time and space).
Bishop Sean Rowe (ECUSA, diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania) spoke at the Ottawa diocesan Synod this past week-end, and spoke in terms very much like what you say here. He also showed a modified form of the video which you played that one time at a community time presentation at Huron.
Net neutrality is supposed to allow for the democratic governing of the internet by the internet itself. In a perfect world this would create a meritocracy. (in a strange way and how it actualizes I think it is pure capitalism but with information)I agree though that this is an ideal and we are far from it. But if we don’t strive for the ideal then what is the point?
I also have faith in humanity to eventually see through the smoke and mirrors of salespeople and see a scam for a scam. Sometimes it just takes longer then others.