Outing Myself

In case anyone is wondering, here is my Twitter feed. I don't Tweet very much at all, so don't expect to find much of interest there. If I do post, mostly it's just a simple retweet without commentary of a message I consider to be Christian. Sometimes, rarely, I go on a bender and I actually compose my own content. Often I wind up deleting these tweets.

In the past, I've retweeted Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Armenians, and Copts. In that way, I'm still a typical Episcopalian ecumenical omnivore after all these years. Catholics tend to dominate my feed lately, as among other things, Twitter seems to be made for Catholicism in a McLuhanian way (the way that broadcast television was made for Evangelical Protestantism). 

Mostly, whether it is my own content or others, I retweet just to give back a little, to turn the crank of the app, out of some tiny obligation to the people who follow me but whom I don't know. By far the biggest reason I use Twitter is to follow others. I don't watch television, nor listen to public radio, nor do I visit news sites that Apple endorses for me in its curated selection, so I get much of my news and commentary from other people's tweets. I wind up seeing most everything important in the news that way anyway. And yes, I see lots from the other side. Lots.

Sometime down the line I'll share the names of the select group of people I follow most closely, the ones whom I've chosen to trigger a notification on my iPad, when they post. Almost none are blue check marks. You wouldn't recognize most of their names. And no, I don't mean the 17th letter of the alphabet, or anything like that. One needs no "secret sources" to know the truth these days.

Rather I mean plain old gumshoe-type of investigation and reporting, of patiently sifting through endless press releases, legal decisions, legislative records, court filings, press conferences, youtube videos, treaties, foreign news sites. I mean the kind of slow-motion processing of the real world that requires lots of reading.

These people I most admire, and which I follow most fervently, are the true journalists of our time, working for bit pay or donations in an era when mainstream "professional" journalism has degenerated to posing for cameras while scoring boo-yah points against political enemies and auditioning for late-night television spots. It is infinitely easier just to "speak your lived truth" to "craft a narrative" that will change the world at the speed of light. We all know where we want to go. We can sort out the details later.

Without these intrepid truth-tellers in my feed, no doubt I'd be foundering in a sea of confusion about current events, as many people are, even on my side. I might have lost hope about the world.

But I'm not confused, nor in despair. I feel a great serenity and confidence. Because of the intelligence I've received from smart people, I've rarely been truly shocked by anything that has happened over the last few years, even in how the unexpected developments have played out. Can you say the same? My sources are very reliable that way. They are manifestly smarter than me on manner levels. They can patiently sift through many solid sources, digest the information, and provide it in a way that makes coherent sense, even before it happens.

I don't follow any of my personal friends from real life. Twitter is not for that. It is not at all like Facebook for me, where I was very active and connected with people I know personally, before I abandoned it. I don't want to know what my friends and family post about on social media, as it is usually too much to bear, and usually strains my charity from the first few posts I read. I've regretted the few times I've broken that rule. If any of them wanted to follow me, I wouldn't mind, of course, since this is all public, but I would not solicit that.

Why am I outing myself like this now? It is certainly not because I expect anyone I know will care much, or that I expect anyone to follow me. I am, I've realized, highly uncomfortable with online discussions and purposely avoid online back-and-forth. The last thing I want is lots of "followers." And the short form enforced by Twitter is not my natural mode of expression (as one can see by the length of my blog posts). 

Mostly I just want to make sure my personal accounts are connected, amidst all the databases, and that anyone who might come for me, to investigate my heresies in order to cancel me, as the kids say, has all the fuel they would need to build the bonfire. I'm very small potatoes, of course, but it's clear they will come for everyone eventually, even me.  Even you. There was a time for lying low, and avoiding the growing madness. But that time has passed. If nothing else, it is time to stand up and be seen.

Here's a hint about Twitter, in case you didn't know---if you want to know what someone's real interests are,  their Tweet feed per se will tell you only part of the story. Often the page that comes up first is groomed for public consumption, and can often be somewhat sanitized. Click instead on their "Likes" tab.

Edit: By the way, I made my Twitter profile background image (the collage) myself a couple years back with Adobe software. As far as the profile image itself, I couldn't find a decent photo of myself that would do, so I use a stylized photo of this man. Many physicists would say he was the greatest physicist of the Twentieth Century, if they had to name someone. Not the man you expected, eh? Curiously for most of his life he was, as many in the modern era have been, a strong atheist.