E-Shunning

A Country Girl’s Perspective

Thought 1

I grew up in farming country, surrounded by numerous Anabaptist communities within a two-hour radius. I didn’t understand these mysterious people, the Amish and the Mennonite, who dressed funny and didn’t like outsiders.

As I matured, I understood the differences were based in deep and abiding faith that, right or wrong, guided every moments of their lives from birth to death, from eating and dressing to machines and transportation.

For the most part, I can live and let live. There is one practice though that bothers me. I know I’m not a part of the community, so I can only comment as a non-believing outsider looking in.

They believe that only adults can choose faith and Christ and baptism by extension. Through baptism, they have access to the social life of their church, including marriage. The decision for baptism involves a full commitment to all the rules of their church as developed from Scripture. These rules are called the Ordnung.

To enforce the rules of the Ordnung, the community practices an enforcement act called shunning. Interpretation of Matthew 18:15–17 serves as the basis for shunning. In shunning, the “sinner” is excluded from the social life of the church and the community by extension. Methods to enact the shunning include:

• The person being shunned cannot eat at the same table with members in good standing
• Members in good standing are not permitted to patronize the businesses of people being shunned
• The person being shunned may not give anything to people they love who are members in good standing
• The person being shunned cannot ride in the same car with those in good standing

The general idea is that being cut off from the social life of the community will bring about an attitude of better submission to the Ordnung.

Thought 2

In my Medium travels, I have seen some solid commentary on how Medium shares our stories. I have reviewed criticism of the Stats page, including how to apply its meaning and whether its accuracy even warrants review.

White Feather wrote “Medium Is a Draining Bathtub,” an excellent satire of how it feels to write on Medium, either as a non-mainstream voice or as a writer of written forms not easily given to online electronic expression.

Mike Essig responded to White Feather’s piece by identifying and describing the issues with statistics that writers have to face. Not only do we have to consider the statistics, we also have to consider the accuracy of the statistics.

Another prolific satirist and critic is Roy Schlegel. His wit and wisdom have been hiding in graphics and graphic stories he likes to tell. Some of the ones I’ve really enjoyed include Medium Meandering, Risque Business (no, I haven’t figured out how to get funky tilted apostrophes over my letters yet), and 2027: When Social Media Blew Up, with many other fun pieces.

Synthesis

Social media is so concerned about clicks and likes that they’ve developed these algorithms to try to ensure we only see what we want to see with a few mickeys of what they need us to say thrown in. Facebook, Medium, Pinterest, LinkedIn — they all do it.

So when you can’t seem to get readers connected, and you can’t seem to increase your likes, what’s the problem? What is it about you, your posts, your connections that the algorithms don’t seem to like? What can’t they just let everybody see you?

Have those of us plagued with this problem broken some kind of secret e-Ordnung that we don’t know about? Did we complain about Medium changes once too often? Were we too critical of a Facebook suggestion? Do we connect to others differently than people of our same sex, gender, social class, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, economic reporting band? Is our posting pattern too erratic, our content too counter-cultural?

I propose that the algorithms might need tweaked again (tweaked, not twerked). They’re developed by geeks and eggheads, so I can’t believe the creators would intentionally shun freaks, geeks, and outcasts by not finding better connections that might have great need of what must be said.

I recognize that the algorithms were probably developed to service 80% of the population. The problem is the dissenting population, the population with the unusual views and voices, is probably in the 20% the algorithms don’t yet cover.

If this 20% isn’t addressed, they will continue to be disenfranchised. They will continue to feel like freak, geeks, and outcasts with no voice and no impact. That will silence some because we’ve learned that peer pressure is usually effective.

But you have to watch that 1%…

We tend to have experienced shunning or outcast status or unseen and not-in-the-feed status so often that it just doesn’t work. We learn the system, and then we use the system to break the system.

*eyes dart around*

Wait, I think I’m in the wrong meeting room. This isn’t Sons of Liberty. Go back to listening to “Gloomy Sunday” and swinging your hat-shaped stein.

*vanishes without a physical trace while the NSA and FBI follow the electronic paper chase*