ministry work, writer of books
Nashville, TN
Joined April 2008
- Tweets25.6K
- Following386
- Followers2.1K
- Likes17.4K
Pinned Tweet
"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands..."
- 1 Thess 4:11
One of my favorite things is getting missions support letters from students who used to be in youth group with me when I was a youth minister.
We are only beginning to see the effects of an entire generation primarily discipled and effectively parented by the internet.
And if you are not terminally online, you’re going to have a hard time categorizing extremists, because it’s not going to be as clean as left or right.
the kid who shot charlie was only 22. this is insane because 22 means he basically grew up marinating in the broadband soup.
he had no buffer period of pre internet adulthood, no separation between formative years & the always on firehose. his psyche was forged entirely in the age of memes, polarization, constant feeds, & parasocial rage cycles.
we are now seeing individuals in society like this reaching adulthood & have access to very sophisticated weapons. this will be a serious challenge for security in america going forward.
It seems to me that a popular worship trend of late (and maybe for a long time?) is stringing a bunch of choruses of songs together. Seen it in a few places now.
This feels like worship for the TikTok Mind to me. Stringing a bunch of popular choruses together in worship feels…
like swiping from video to video, relying on hooks to grab attention but perhaps failing to hold it.
I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeonly worship monitor, and I’m not trying to pass any sort of moral judgment here. It just feels super disorienting to me, and it sorta…
In the next few years, I have a feeling a lot of Christians orgs are going to be taken for a ride by a bunch of slick AI companies pitching them a technology they don’t understand to solve problems they don’t have, all because they’re afraid of missing “the next big thing.”
Sometimes when I’m having a rough day I zip over to the Mexican restaurant across the street from my neighborhood and pretend I’m having lunch with @brandon_d_smith and @JoelPolk, imagining it’s 2017 as a means of therapy. It’s not really about the food.
The hand-wringing around privacy concerns with TikTok is wild to me.
I think TikTok has privacy issues, but to think they’re any more urgent or real than the surveillance malpractice by the United States government or Silicon Valley tech companies is, I think, ridiculous.
We need a solid near-future animated movie with a villain named Algo Rhythm or something. Such a good villain name. He controls people’s minds through their phones and makes them perpetually break out in TikTok-style dances.
I mean look if you told me in 2020 that in 2024 a woman who went viral for a sexually suggestive TikTok meme would eventually be under criminal investigation for a cryptocurrency scam I would have said, “You mean it’s going to take that long?”
I wonder how many people in the world are playing backgammon at this moment. That’s the problem these days. No one is playing backgammon anymore.
Really appreciate this peek into the Bruderhof community in @nytimes. I have enjoyed many interactions with some members of this community over the years. Delightful people. Also, I'm heartened by many of the comments on the story.
nytimes.com/2024/03/17/nyreg…
In the war for the mental health of teenagers it is Parents v. The Best-Paid, Most Brilliant Computer and Behavioral Scientists in the World. And parents don’t stand a chance.
termsofservice.substack.com/…
Meta dropped this last night. The value of a teen is $270. And they knowingly, intentionally addicted teenagers. Here it is in their own words.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Tonight I was speaking to a group of students at Bryan College on “How to Use Social Media Without Losing Your Soul.”
When I got to talking about my love for Vine (RIP Vine) I said, “Road work ahead?” And to my delight about a dozen students replied “I sure hope it does!”