Posted to my Twitter, I wanted to make this a matter of record on my blog
I’ve been spending more time with my family and more time away from devices these past few days. I have a new appreciation for just how synthetic all of this crap really is. The evangelization is real, but the game we play in order to do it is not. It’s a participation in a circus that someone else creates, and it can only be as authentic as the ring master allows.
To edify, and to evangelize, we have to pretend to be as stupid as the ring master, and halfwitted as those who are part of its sideshows in between acts (the culture, not the readers). The readers are the audience, but the producers/writers/creators have to pretend to be sideshow freaks just to make the work matter. Jump up and down, do cartwheels, pour a bucket of confetti over our heads and hope for another Like, or to catch the attention of another follower—not for fame, but to legitimize our accounts so that we get better reach.
It’s the game we have to play in order to evangelize. But I think I’m going to change how I play it starting this week. Reality is too precious and how we have to occasionally empty it of meaning and dignity by performing in this circus is just vulgar. No more.
If you want to overrule the social media circus, please subscribe to my Substack using the form below. Free, easy, painless. If you’d rather not, that’s fine also. I’m not abandoning social media as it’s still a decent evangelization tool. But from this point forward I’m going to own my little corner of this circus and redefine the show. “Come one, come all!”