Dear Reader,

Yup, the policies and algorithms of our culture-dominating social media platforms are clearly driven by deliberate efforts to manipulate. However, the crippling of beloved communities isn’t some nefarious conspiracy. It’s just collateral damage. The main motivation? Plain old greed. It’s in these platforms’ best financial interests to condition us into thinking that their digital spaces are the very glue holding the universe together.

But truth be told, genuine community, friendships, and the potential for effective change still come down to the long-term labor of one-on-one relationship building. Remember, the main strength of Twitter (X), META, and the whole social-media ecosystem is to manipulate opinion and encourage us to buy into things we’d otherwise not want or need. To give them credit for facilitating a “real” community is like binge-eating Pringles: unhealthy, addictive, and ultimately, not “real” at all (if eating a potato chip was your intention).

Think about how we used to organize for social justice actions (or, in my case, planting a new church). It was all analog and person-to-person. Maintaining connections between friends and “co-conspirators” required intentional one-to-one communication through in-person meetings, phone calls, and snail mail (remember mailing actual Christmas cards?).

Inefficient? Yes. But the results (as far as quality of relationships and effectiveness of associations are concerned) were, arguably, much richer. Bottom line: Twitter (X), META, etc., are superficial “friend-ertainment” experiences and opinion-scapes between acquaintances, not genuine “communities.” Essentially, they’re the “diet” version of community: less calories, less nutrition, and lots of unhealthy side-effects.

So don’t waste your time mourning the loss of something that wasn’t that good for us in the first place. And don’t work yourself into a tizzy: we can demand accountability and call out harmful, manipulative practices all we want, but the reality is that our opinions don’t matter to these technological krakens.

What CAN we do? Abandon our comfort zones! Leverage your dissatisfaction with social media to nudge you toward (back into?) whatever means of person-to-person connection brings you more engagement and meaning. People of faith have always had to adapt to resist the constant evolution of systemic injustice — and this is one of those moments.

At our best, people of faith have imagined, built, and reworked just the kinds of safe connection points that post-pandemic captives of Trumpistan are longing for — especially those seeking companionship in offering resistance.

The forces of exclusivity, privilege, pettiness, and hate are actively dismantling virtually every element of the beloved community so many of us have aspired to our whole lives. But our efforts to establish community have never been dependent on one platform or one method of engagement. The yearning for real community is palpable out there and it’s long past time to reclaim the feeling of “belonging” from the digital spaces that have seduced us into thinking that they’re all we need.

It is time to be intentional about reconnecting in creative ways as we advocate for a culture that respects the dignity and worth of every person — be they online, “in the flesh,” or somewhere in between!

~ Rev. David Felten