The Church Troll (@changingworship)

– September 27, 2012Posted in: Digidisciple

Photo purchased from iStockphoto by @digitalfprint

Over the past year I have been asked to help to put together a social media presence for several local churches and even the Diocese. I have also met many who have been cautious or openly hostile to the idea of a social media presence for their church. This has often been prefaced with the immortal words “I don’t do computers” or “I don’t get all that”. What is often cited as their clinching proof of the evils of social media is cyber bullying or “trolling”.

Yesterday I read an article written by Leo Traynor about his real life experience of being “trolled” on twitter. Leo managed to discover who the troll was and then a process of restorative justice ensued. It is well worth a read if you have five minutes.

Personally I was the victim of a troll around five years ago. I was a teacher and had just started at a new school covering maternity leave. One morning I started to get some strange comments from the pupils. After the second lesson two young ladies asked me if I was on Bebo? With a little careful questioning, I was then armed with enough information to spend my free period working out what was going on.

One of the year ten pupils had set up a fake account in my name using a photo from flickr. This in itself wasn’t so bad – I put the photo on flickr so I clearly wanted the world to see it. However, he was then using the fake account as a focus of his rage – which escalated unbeknown to me over a few weeks until he started to issue death threats. Just one short email to Bebo and a five minute conversation with the head teacher and he was suspended from both Bebo and the school (head’s decision) and I found myself having a mediated conversation with the troll.

As I read Leo’s account of his experience of meeting his troll I suddenly found myself remembering the emotions I went through. The fear of my new job being impacted upon by something I didn’t even know if I could control. It felt like Pandora’s Box had been opened and I didn’t know if I could shut the lid. This was the real life implications of the virtual world.

Social media has moved on a long way since then. The controls and privacy settings surrounding a Church Facebook page or a twitter account leave little scope for trolling. I have deleted things people have said. I have blocked people. I’ve had a quiet word with friends who are going to get themselves in trouble with the content that they are posting.

Social media is a morally neutral space. It can be used for whatever people choose to do with it. The Archbishop of York uses it to spread the gospel. The EDL use it to spread hatred. The question is, ‘how do we use it as Christians’?

What are your experiences? Have you had problems with a social media presence for your church or community? Have you had such negative experiences that you wouldn’t use social media for your church?

Tags: Tool, Troll

About Robb

Robb is a priest and a curate in the Church of England. He has been blogging for a few years about alt:worship and emerging church and is particularly keen on exploring the sacramantal within worship. He lives in Yorkshire and has a passion for heavy metal, playing in a pub band and riding a Harley.

Pat

Robb – a cautious question because I don’t want to divert discussion away from the practicalities of how we might use social media in the context of church, and I guess this is more of a ‘meta’ question. However I am slightly uneasy at your confident assertion that

Social media is a morally neutral space

. Ok, so I know what you mean from the way you then expand this in the next sentence, but I am wondering if it is that straightforward? Trying to unpick this a little – you are essentially framing social media as potential spaces so aren’t we obliged to co-evaluate the morality with the potentiality as it were? For example one could likewise argue that guns and knives are both morally neutral – it is the hand which wields them and the use to which it puts them where any moral value is located; however one could also argue that while a knife can be used for both positive and negative purposes, the sole purpose of a gun is to injure flesh/take life….so it can never be ‘morally neutral’.

Of course I’m NOT suggesting here that social media are similalry tainted, just that I don’t feel comfortable with the ‘it’s the use to which they are put’ claim. I appreciate that this may seem to be splitting hairs on a non-essential point and to be honest I’m not quite sure yet why it bothers me so much- but it does. Possibly because I wonder whether it could cause us to be less thoughtful in advance about the potential of, or less vigilant in the moment about how we inhabit and use such spaces…especially since, as you say, it is somewhat to akin to opening Pandora’s Box in some respects. Does that make any sort of sense to you? I’m really feeling my way in the dark here
- http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland
  
  It isn’t the same thing is it? A gun has a specific use whereas social media is a place where people are located. Like how books are morally neutral. Alice in Wonderland was a good thing. Mein Kampf was less so…
  
  France is a morally neutral place. When the forces invaded and the trenches were dug the war was terrible. It didn’t make France a terrible place. However the guns that were there were not morally neutral although some of them were used for the greater good.
  - Pat
    
    Hmmm – I think to say that social media is simply (ok I know you don’t use the word but I reckon it is implicit in your argument!) ‘a place where people are located’ is to understate the case quite considerably though. This makes it sound like it’s simply the digital analogue of a meeting room (which, were it the case, I think I would agree IS morally neutral) – whereas in fact it has potential power/extentsion which a room lacks. Hence I would say that it has just as much a specific use as a gun or knife (or more accurately, a variety of specific uses).
    
    So I guess my disquiet is maybe that to mark something with so much potential power as a ‘morally neutral’ meeting place may stop us from considering/conversing about some aspects of how and why we use its tools – particularly in the context we’re discussing here about usage in connection with church/gospel/christianity/religion.
    
    Lest it appear otherwise, can I just emphasise that NONE of this is to say that I think we should avoid using social media in these contexts – on the contrary, I think we should be actively engaging with this form of interaction. exploration and expression. But I also think we have to be savvy about ALL its dimensions.
    - http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland
      
      Social media just lost a 20 min reply. I agree. It’s not morally neutral. It’s evil.
      - Pat
        
        Your last made me laugh – but also got me thinking….
        As an aside – in one of the first experiences I had of more extended social media usage (Blackboard-based forum for theology distance learning students at Westminster) aeons ago, we did indeed have a virtual bar – it had an animated barman clip in the header and people did indeed order drinks and pictures of them eventually appeared – some animated. (I did a jukebox once that played when you clicked it!)
        
        Anyway, back to business. Perhaps what I’m itching over is in fact just another side of what you say above
        
        I don’t think there is a virtual world. There is the world n there are cyber bits of it. You can be good or bad in all of it.
        
        especially the last part. It’s perhaps too easy to assume that mastering the technicalities of use or of good design equates to mastering the medium and so we are not aware of or don’t sufficiently attend to the fact that it is NOT a virtual world peopled by avatars, it is a real world inhabited by real people who react as people are wont to do.
        
        And I guess that this links then to my comment about power and extension – because of the way the electronic ‘world’ works, things become amplified both quantitatively and qualitatively in a way which probably IS outside most people’s ususal experience – and which they may not know how to deal with.
        
        Which I suppose is why I am not happy that we begin by saying ‘it’s morally neutral’ – because that could be the foundation of, or at least a factor in, encouraging people to approach it in a way which is potentially too naïve.
      - http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland
        
        As I wander through Rouen in France I know that there are good and bad alike here. I don’t know which is which because I am unfamiliar with the territory. That doesn’t mean it is morally bad because I am unfamiliar with French culture. I assume that the people drinking in the car park at 10:30am are more likely to harm me than the people sipping coffee next to the cathedral. However, I cold be wrong. In Bourgogne I spoke to a guy living on the street off vin rouge who had travelled widely and spoke perfect English about Voltaire. (I wonder if this says more about my bad cultural assumptions in my own familiar England)
        
        Being unfamiliar with how to distinguish between the good and the bad parts of this city doesn’t make the city less good than an English one. Nor does my lack of cultural awareness.
        
        When people “discovered” the US, they assumed that there were no rules because the rules belonged elsewhere. Cue the gun toting and the rootin’ and tootin’. People soon realised that they also needed to police it.
        
        The Internet has rules. People may not believe they have to obey them but they are being enforced more and more.
    - http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland
      
      How do you think it has a power/extension?
      
      I’ve long contested the distinction between virtual and real. As though this is somehow not real.
      
      I suspect that is what trolls rely upon – real/unreal an a pseudo cognitive dissonance. We are seeing many cases in law where reality is coming into the Wild West mentality of some who believe tinternets is free game. Five years ago I brought reality into play. Leo brought it not play. I don’t think there is a virtual world. There is the world n there are cyber bits of it. You can be good or bad in all of it.
    - http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland
      
      Welcome to long and fruitful discussion on someone else’s page/living room/bar. There should be a real ale button where we can order each other drinks. Real ones.