There seems to be a couple to types of people I encounter on the internet - tweeters and re-tweeters.
Creators of content (tweeters) and replicators of content (re-tweeters).
Both serve a function and have a place. I will be honest however, I do not care to much about reading the re-tweeters re-tweets.
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| Re-tweeting picture :) |
Re-tweeting is rather safe to do and involves little engagement with the re-tweet. Most of the time when I re-tweet I just post what I am re-tweeting without any context as to why I am doing so. "Hey! Here is a quote I found. Re-tweeted by a person."
Re-tweeting is not a bad thing at all. It however is not the same as tweeting.
When you tweet you create something new and put yourself out there. You have to give some context as to what you are doing or why you are tweeting it. You have to share something about yourself and be expose to criticism. When we only re-tweet we have the ability to hide behind it and no one is sure if we agree, disagree with the re-tweet. No one knows if a re-tweeted comment is meant to be a joke or serious.
Many of us clergy in my beloved denomination might be described as ministry re-tweeters. We say we want to do different ministry or creative or innovate ministry, but this is a code for something else. Most of the time clergy want an different/creative/innovative ministry that someone else has somewhere else but no one is doing it here. For instance, I ministry re-tweeted the
Fort Worth Dish Out.
A ministry re-tweet is not bad, it just is much safer and puts the clergy at a safe distance from the failure or success of the ministry.
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| tweeting pictures :) |
What the UMC is perhaps missing are clergy and laity who are ministry tweeters. The ones who are creating content/ministry. The ones being vulnerable, exposed and opening themselves up to failure and even, dare it be stated, shame. I am currently working on a couple of ministry tweets: Jubilee Bank (a micro-finance for the working poor in Fort Worth Texas using the connectionalism of the UMC) and Five Thousand Words (which first incomplete draft can be found
here).
Others can account to the amount of ministry tweeting and re-tweeting I participate in, but the UMC might be a fruitful place if we were to find a balance between ministry tweeting and re-tweeting.
Functional Fixedness is the reason people are not good at coming up with new uses for an old thing and it is the reason that you and I come up with the same - predictable? - list of uses for a brick. 