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Monday, June 10, 2013

Apologetics on Twitter?

I had the following conversation on Twitter last week:



Yeah, that’s a nice photo, but certainly what’s true for Fred is true for me. He’s got more than 350,000 followers, and so I tweeted back to him:



He responded – and if I understand Twitter, I believe all of his followers saw this tweet:



And I responded to him:



Now, I’ve seen standard “Twittiquette” (“Twitter etiquette”) rules that suggest that you don’t become argumentative with someone. However, there are a lot of people who follow this individual who will mindlessly read that sort of thing and move on.

I’m of a mind to think that my small correction will serve as a Twitter-sized reminder that will (in some small way) persuade this individual (and maybe others) to think things through before they espouse a mindless platitude, just to get a tweet in. And I think the cumulative effect of such reminders will have a beneficial effect on the whole “conversation”.

Just a bit later, he tweeted this:




After spending some time on Twitter, I’ve joked that “there are two kinds of people in the world: those on Twitter, and those who find out later”. What do you think?

@johnbugay
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8 comments:

  1. Mathetes6/10/2013 10:39 AM

    Twitter seems to be a bad platform for debate, I think - kind of like the comments section of Youtube videos. In both cases, there is a limited amount of characters to make a point and I'm pretty sure there's zero moderation for both.

    Although, now that you've started interacting with Fred's profound, diamond-tipped observations, I suppose you have an obligation to follow through.

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    Replies
    1. John Bugay6/10/2013 11:56 AM

      I agree it's not for debates. It's more like a clearinghouse -- a real "stream of information", and just about anyone can jump in.

      Delete
    2. Mathetes6/10/2013 1:28 PM

      True enough. I suppose if someone wanted more in-depth debate, they could always...try a blog >_>

      Delete
    3. John Bugay6/10/2013 1:41 PM

      You are right about blogging. Twitter is one of several media that draw from larger forms of "content" -- the big thing in marketing these days is called "content marketing" or "inbound marketing". Typically, you write the blog posts and then you Tweet them. Interested readers will refer to the blog for the detail hinted at in the Tweet.

      Delete
    4. Mathetes6/10/2013 2:31 PM

      I see you missed my ingenious pun. Scroll back and read my post out loud. Go on, I'm so darn clever!

      Delete
    5. John Bugay6/10/2013 3:01 PM

      Ha, I wasn't sure!

      Delete
  2. Jason Engwer6/10/2013 5:31 PM

    John, you did well in your exchange with Cuellar. There are problems with Twitter, as with other mediums, but a lot of people use it. It's good to have a Christian presence there.

    ReplyDelete