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.

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:

Last night, at the BPW forum, my opponent’s statement said his childhood home “didn’t even have indoor plumbing.”

Oh, Bill. Indoor plumbing’s still pending at our old farm house.
You can’t out-hillbilly me. Unless you eat squirrel brains. I draw the line at squirrel brains. pic.twitter.com/hGMJvQ8Yhq

— Shawna Roberts (@RobertsOhioD6) October 20, 2018

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)

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

Friends Journal

Who tells our story in this time?  In today’s world of immediate news, and social media, and everyone having a twitter account and an opinion – there’s a lot of misinformation out there.  Some of it might be damaging and outright manipulative.  Some of it might just be misinformed people, who are confusing Quakers (for example) with Amish folks, or Shakers.

One of the reasons I’ve been so involved in Quaker media is my longtime concern that we’re in increasing danger of being defined by outsiders. A mainstream site with a page on Quakers can easily show up higher in search results than pages we create.  For a long time back in the day, an entry on Quakers written by some Unitarians on Religioustolerance.com was a top hit. Google and Facebook have long had more say in defining Quaker beliefs than any of our national organizations. Even when real-life Quakers are involved— in Facebook groups, Wikipedia editing, blogging, and the original Quaker.org—there was none of the kind of formal Quaker process (for better and worse) that historically characterized Quaker publishing.

One happy irony is that Kathleen herself came in through a channel with no Quaker involvement. She writes: ” I had never heard of Quakers until I took an internet quiz in my mid- thirties.” This is almost certainly the “Belief-o-Matic” Beliefnet quiz (confirmed in comments). The site was founded as a venture-capital-fueled  attempt to win the advertising religion market in the heady years of what we retrospectively call the dot-com bubble. The original quiz dates further back to a still-going site called SelectSmart, which hosts dozens of quizzes (“Which Bond Villain Are You?,” “What Pizza Topping Are You?,” “Pink Floyd Album Selector”), one of the most popular of which is “Belief System Selector.” The site is Curt and Lori Anderson, a husband-and-wife team; he was the techie who programmed the quizzes; she hunted for content. She used online sources and her local library to coming up with questions for him to plug in for the belief quiz (read some of the story here and also here). Beliefnet started hosting it independently, giving it a UI refresh and renaming it Belief-o-Matic. For whatever reasons of wonky algorithms huge percentages of people who took the test came out as “Liberal Quaker” or “Orthodox Quaker.” No Friends were involved in the quiz, hence the archaic names (few Friends have identified as Orthodox for generations).

In the 2000s, this quiz was inadvertently far more successful in outreach than any program conceived by Friends (sorry PYM/FGC/Pendle Hill donors). I think we’ve all become better at media and telling our own story but Kathleen’s question—who tells our story in this time?—is still a key one. After all, Lori Anderson’s checklist of beliefs (on SelectSmart and Beliefnet) are probably one of the most-read definitions of Liberal Quakerism.

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quakerkathleen.org

Updated July 2018

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.

X (formerly Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter)

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.

X (formerly Twitter)

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/wiki/Derecho
* https://twitter.com/nbc40weather/status/219078662530678784

Youtube, 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/quakermedia). 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.

Embedded Link

‘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.