God Made a Social Network

And She saw that it was good

Jeff Jarvis
Whither news?
Published in
3 min readOct 7, 2021

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Chapter 1

1 God made a social network. It was called Earth. Even She could not be certain what would follow.

Chapter 2

1 For the longest time, or so it seemed to the people of Earth, She allowed them to roam free, to explore, to commune, to be social.

2 Then She decided they required limits to test. She gave unto them Community Standards. Yet the people disobeyed. They fought. They told falsehoods. They shared graven images of themselves.

Chapter 3

1 The people divided into tribes and religions and parties and nations and they fought still. They waged crusades and shitstorms against one another. They fought wars of thirty and a hundred and many hundred years over Her.

2 They invented arrows and guns, compasses and clocks and used them not to protect but to conquer.

3 But the people also invented pictures and paints, alphabets and presses and made so many wondrous things with them: worshipful art.

4 Their scribes and their Pharisees are always blind to the wonder. They see only darkness and doom, for they believe that they — not I — shine the light.

Chapter 4

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Jeff Jarvis
Whither news?

Blogger & prof at CUNY’s Newmark J-school; author of Geeks Bearing Gifts, Public Parts, What Would Google Do?, Gutenberg the Geek