The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_00Great. I'm here with Alistair Roberts, and uh you are currently working at the Davenant Institute. Is that right, Alistair?
SPEAKER_01I work for the Davenant Institute and the Theopolis Institute. And a lot of my work is also done as an independent freelance scholar and writer. I do regular podcasts and videos and I write for various organizations.
SPEAKER_00Great. And one of the areas that you're particularly interested in, and uh this is the reason why I I um very much wanted to get your uh opinion, is technology and social media. Um did you I guess you were probably an early adopter of blogging and tweeting and and uh all the other kind of social media platforms. Um why do you love it so much and why are you so alarmed by so much of it as well?
SPEAKER_01I've been using the internet since '94, I think it was, and I've been blogging since 2003. I've been on Forum for many years before that, and then joined Facebook in 2005, left in 2010, and I've been on Twitter for many years as well, and on and off. I find that the internet has considerably shaped the way that we form our communities, the way that we forge our identities, and the way that our conversations um work out. And the more that I've been involved in these conversations, I've considered the way that the format of our media shapes the sorts of conversations that we have. So, for instance, in the early days of blogging, blogging was a very, it was a sort of aerated community of a number of different people who knew each other, and you'd have a community where people were generally connected by some maybe one remove within actual real life, and people could vouch for each other, but you'd have this small community of conversation around an area of common interest. So for me, it was theological issues with a group of other people, mostly in the US, who I knew generally at one remove, and many of them I ended up meeting in person. And those conversations were very friendly, small communities, but they're aerated in the sense that you had time and you had space, you were talking on your own blog, and you didn't feel so threatened by other voices. And it led, I think, to a pace of conversation and a form of conversation that proved to be very illuminating for many people. When you're writing a book, you have to write for a long period of time, and it's you're sort of there's a finality to a book. When you release a book, it's as it were this final statement upon your thoughts on a particular matter. When you write a blog post, it's very much thought in progress. And you have conversation partners on the way as you're thinking through these issues for the first time, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00Although some of your blog posts can be kind of book length, can't they, Helest?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I have written blog posts over 10,000 words in there.
SPEAKER_00Several of them. Yes. I've I've written three books that are under 10,000 words. So some of your blog posts are longer than some of my books. That says everything about the two of us right there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but it they were happier times, weren't they? When blogging was was kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01I think what happened was a lot of the social dimensions shifted to Facebook. And Facebook is a very socially saturated realm where in the past you'd be following someone's blog for a long period of time, and you generally use an RSS feed aggregator, something like back in those days, Google Reader or something like that, to follow week by week every single post this person posted. And you'd have a sense of a consistent voice developing over time. Whereas when social media becomes, as it were, our feed aggregator, it's a collective thing where things are always placed within the context of a social response to different ideas. So you're already primed to respond to an idea by the way that other people have responded to it. So whereas I read my RSS feed aggregator in the past, and it was very much a solitary experience. I was by myself. It was like reading a book by yourself in a room, and you made your own mind up about things. Increasingly, when things are presented to us on Facebook, it's those things that are most adept at sparking emotion and certain types of emotion. So, particularly outrage, has a great viral potential to it. If someone says something outrageous, it will spread. And I find that speaking online increasingly within this context becomes like speaking into a microphone and someone else is controlling the volume switch and turning it up and down. And whenever you say something controversial, it's turned up to 11. And if you say something, for instance, if I talk on biblical theology, which is 90% of what I'm talking about, no one's listening except for the core group of my followers.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. And who is in charge of the volume?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it tends to be just the crowd. And the crowd is not really interested, they're not really interested in interpretive engagement. The thing that made blogs so great often was the sort of engagement that you had with the community. That people were talking with each other, stress testing ideas, and people were joined together in a conversation towards a common goal. I found, for instance, that the comments um sections were incredibly good. There'd be people in my comments that were always pushing back against me, testing my ideas, and they were friendly but critical. And that was something I needed to sharpen my ideas. Whereas increasingly you lose that sort of dynamic when it moves over to social media.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I first came across you actually during a I think it must have been a 2006 blogging debate, and and the two pitched sides were five and a half, uh four and a half point uh Calvinism versus five-point Calvinism. And uh you know, happier times when that and and and but there there was both heat and light generated in in those comment sections. Um but you're you're right. You're having a you're having a conversation where social media now is amplifying and supercharging all the wrong emotions. Uh and and you've got the fear of today saying career-ending things. Um I just I didn't feel that fear when I was blogging in 2007. I didn't I didn't feel the fear that this this post could completely wreck my reputation and chances of of employment forever. Now I do.
SPEAKER_01Part of that, I think, is we talk a lot about public-private, and that's a real thing. That there's been a weakening of the distinction between public and private online. So what you say on Facebook may be thought to be private, but you may lose your job if you say something controversial in the context of Facebook. Whereas now, I think what we've lost in the case of blogging is not so much public-private, it's not best understood that way. It's best understood as obscure places, places where you can go without everyone seeing what you're saying, potentially. When you're speaking in a blog in the age before social media, the vast social media things where everything's publicized and they can spread to an audience of millions, if not a billion, you within that context can say things that are controversial, that challenge people, but within that tightly defined context, you can deal with those ideas in a far more reasonable way, a far more calm way, because you have a sense of these are where these other people are coming from. This is part of a larger conversation where I know their values, I know what they stand for, I know that they're not going to go in this, that, or the other direction. And so this controversial opinion is bounded by all these other things that I know about them. And it just limits the degree, the degree of outrageous potential that any statement might have when you have it within a bounded community.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And now I think we've lost those obscure places, and so to find somewhere where you can have a conversation that is challenging, that isn't um just cut off from everything, you often need to go to a large email discussion list or a private fora, private fora. You can't necessarily find that in social media or in blogging as you used to.
SPEAKER_00Is this some of the reason why you you left Facebook in 2010? Were there other factors as well that made you uh disengage?
SPEAKER_01There were a number of factors. I think Facebook changed a lot in my time there. So it started off. I was in St. Andrews University, one of the few universities that had Facebook at the time in the UK. And it was just universities, and just a few universities that had Facebook back then. Then it extended to further universities, then it extended to larger um range of educational institutions, high schools, things like that. And then our parents started joining, and it became a completely different sort of place at that point. It became a context where, for instance, I find that I have a lot of different types of friends and have great relationships with many people who would not get on well with each other. But Facebook tends to collapse social spaces and contexts. So where you can talk to someone in a very defined context and have a positive relationship with them. When you're all pushed into the same context, people get on edge and they feel threatened. And it's like the way that we can have challenging conversations in certain contexts that we couldn't sustain in others. So if someone talks to you out on the street and you have a controversial conversation, that's one thing. If they come into your living room and sit around your table and have the same conversation, it can feel very threatening. And in the same way, I think Facebook is a place where people are negotiating very close relationships. It's a place where friendships and family relationships can be scarred. It's a place where people are putting forward their own identity. And that's again a part of it, that online increasingly we foregrounded our identity in these conversations. In the past, when you're blogging and in the old world of the internet, people were largely anonymous or working with pseudonyms. You didn't know exactly who people were in terms of their day-to-day life. You had a sense of their ideas, the continuity of their thought, the values that they held, these sorts of things. Whereas increasingly we're defined by a projected image that we are giving of ourselves online. And when we project that image, we can feel very threatened if people push against that. And I've talked about virtue signalling in the past. People often talk about virtue signaling as if it's something only a small group of people do. But online we're all virtue signaling.
SPEAKER_00Have you read anything by Jesus?
SPEAKER_01We're all actually projecting some sort of image of ourselves, saying, this is who I am, this is my profile, this is, and that makes things very difficult. It means that if you challenge someone online, often you are seen to be challenging not just their ideas, but their identity, because what you say is not just a statement about what you believe, it's also a statement about who you are, to a degree that it isn't when you're talking to someone in day-to-day life, where you have a clearer sense of the values, the form of life, the context, the community that surrounds them, and all these different sorts of belonging that give them a clearer sense of identity. Without that, you're defined entirely by what you say.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and and therefore your identity is tied very much to your views, and therefore you have to say the right thing. And saying the right thing, capital R, capital V is absolutely paramount. I was I was just on a private Facebook group this week, and somebody said, quickly, um, tell me all the evangelicals who have said um uh sent messages of consolation to the Muslim community at this time after the Christchurch massacre. And and I sort of found myself saying, well, actually, all sorts of people have you know expressed concern and and deep consolation and and and all these sorts of things. But then I was like, well, why are we being asked how many evangelicals are I d I don't want to say virtue signaling because none of them were virtue signaling, but the the the person who asked was in a conversation with uh a theologian from a different stream who had made the accusation that evangelicals don't care about the Muslim community. And so then it became a kind of a game of adding up Facebook posts. Um and it was all it was all about you know, signals versus how much virtue of use you signaled. And even when people weren't doing anything to virtue signal, it was being aggregated as as uh as proof that people were holding the right views. And it's it just yeah, it's it that that could almost make me leave Facebook to be honest.
SPEAKER_01When you have that sort of situation, on the one hand, you have the expectation that if you do not say these things in these sorts of occasions, you obviously don't hold the you don't care about the Muslim community. Right. Whereas there are a lot of things that you may be doing in your concrete, in real life situation, in meet space, as they call it, that are dealing with that, that are recognizing the concerns of your Muslim neighbors and commun the community in your area, but you're not just going to put forward messages online to give a sort of signal that you hold the right views. And the idea, for instance, that silence is violence, that if you don't don't speak up on a certain issue, obviously you don't care about it. Well, maybe you just don't feel that you're qualified enough to speak, or maybe you think that it's the sort of serious issue that you need to deal with on a one-to-one level with people who are affected, rather than just making statements online. And likewise, on the other hand, you have a tendency to get involved in all sorts of different situations to become what I think it's um Freddie Debor has called planet of cops, that everyone is there monitoring how everyone is responding to everything. And if you do not say the right thing, there will be a dozen people to get on your case. That is not a healthy situation.
SPEAKER_00Especially because you've got the pressure to say something because silence is violence, but then the pressure is to say the right thing, because you know that if you say the wrong thing, then you know John Bronson's book, uh, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, is just terrifying about the twitch fork mob that could descend on you and and absolutely end your life. Um so you know, we we we did a comedy video just uh the other week, um uh kind of done in the in the style of an uh an 80s infomercial. Um, you know, uh we sort of uh played it as uh a man who doesn't know whether he's got the right thing to say about uh the the latest cultural issue, then try not posting anything. Not posting anything is the is the craze that is not sweeping the internet. Um and we just we just see that that is that is absolutely the case. Everyone wants to have an opinion, but they they constantly have to self-censor as well.
SPEAKER_01Um so it's it's it's both those things happening at once, and and maybe the fact that you're engaged in an act of pub pri you're branding your own identity, yeah, and you're creating your own brand, and if you say the wrong thing, you have to engage in some sort of um PR relation, relations management and um public relations management, or you need to um negoti see the right sort of apology, whatever it is. Yeah, it just is not a healthy situation. Whereas in actual day-to-day life, it's worth thinking about what things we don't see online. You don't see the way that people relate to their neighbors, you don't see the sort of charitable work that people do, you don't see a lot of forms of social need online, you don't see disability for the most part online, you don't see age online, you don't see poverty for the most part online. And in all these different ways, we become closed in upon ourselves. I've compared the internet very much to a situation where you have a two-way mirror where there's one room that's very bright and another room that is darkened, and the room that's very bright can be seen from the darkened room, but the darkened room can't be seen from the bright room. And it's as if online, typically when we have conversations, the convers the room in which we're having the conversation is the dark room. It's that we're not focusing upon our internal relationships within that group. What we're doing is focusing upon reality that's beyond us, looking out through that um mirror into the world that's brightly lit by our investigation. But increasingly online, what you have is as it were the lights on reality being dimmed and the lights of our social context online being raised, and increasingly we're starting to perform in front of a mirror. Right. We're thinking about how do I look when I say this? Um, I need to self-censor because this will not come across well. Whereas people who know me in person, they know, well, if I say that, it's obviously something to take into context with all the other things that I stand for, with the things that I do, with the way that I treat them, etc.
SPEAKER_00So, what should we do? So uh today, as we record this uh interview, the the Mueller investigation has uh completed its its uh investigation into Trump. And uh the question, did Trump conspire with with Russia to hack elections? Uh has said no. Uh that's unproven. Uh did the did the president obstruct justice? Uh well, there's insufficient evidence of that. Um but it's it seems like the Mueller investigation has been a great example of what I see on the internet quite a lot, um, which is a kind of a huge if true narrative. Um huge if true is just a really um it's a really easy thing to do on on Twitter. You you hear about something, you're not quite sure whether it's true, but it's sensational enough and it's tasty enough as a morsel of gossip or whatever it is to share it, and you just say huge if true, um, and then the if true might be like incredibly uncertain. Um, and all that anyone ever then cares about is the huge thing. And it seems like for two years we've had we've had a kind of a huge if true situation. Um and on the narrow issue of did Trump conspire with the Russians, uh the answer seems to be no. Um, but I just I wonder if we have handled that issue on on social media um correctly, um, or whether that's going to put things to bed. Do you have any do you have any hope that uh you know this this investigation will put that question to bed?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's not gonna put that question to bed. I think when we're looking, particularly someone like President Trump, he is he is the first president to really be that active on Twitter. And his activity on Twitter also leads to questions of where does the pres the word of the president end and the world the word of Donald Trump begin? Um when is he speaking in his professional capacity, when not? And that's also a problem for many pastors. There's pastors and church leaders online, it's very difficult to discern where the bounds are. And in the past, you'd have formal public official speech would be the sort of speech that you engage in from a pulpit. But now the sorts of speech that we engage in on Twitter, I can reach hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter. And I can say something that spreads out to that multitude without necessarily taking the sort of responsibility that I would do if I was standing up in a pulpit. Now that I think leads to the way that we handle these issues, that we don't have a sense of responsibility, and so we easily spread things as a sort of there's little friction. Um, whereas if you have a more authoritative structure, there is friction because there's responsibility and accountability. If you say the wrong thing, you will be held accountable, you'll be able you might lose your job or something like that. That's not quite the same online where you can spread a rumor, you can spread um some conspiracy theory, whatever it is, and not actually face consequences for that. So when social media has become our primary conduit for news, it makes a situation that is just ripe for these sorts of theories to spread without any sort of testing first. And the speed of it as well. That in the past, for instance, if the Prime Minister had to cast judgment on a particular issue, they'd often have days to do so. Something would happen on the other side of the world, and the news would take over a month to reach us. And now they'll have to answer first thing in the morning. They may not even have time to get dressed before they're expected to have a formulated opinion on a matter. And it's on the same on Twitter. It's just not a healthy situation. Likewise, I think the issue of what some have called subsidiarity that the concept of subsidiarity is that issues. Should be dealt with with the lowest competent authority, the nearest competent authority to that issue. Right. Whereas social media makes things into spectacles that everyone is expected to have an opinion on. Now, I don't know the specifics. I mean, I've not undertaken the Moolah investigation myself. I haven't read the report. I am not equipped to cast judgment upon the status of the election and how the Russians were or were not involved in that. But online, I feel the responsibility to say something, to have an opinion, to fall down on some side of that debate. And that's an unhealthy thing. I'm not a competent judge. And the more that we are pressured, silences violence. If you're not speaking out, then you're obviously complicit with injustice, you're complicit with some sort of corruption, whatever it is. Our need to step back from and refrain from judgment for the sake of just judgment is something that we've forgotten. Because if we're going to have good judgment in society, often it requires the reticence of people who are not competent judges who say, I just don't know enough. I'm going to stand back. I have, I may have opinions, but they are not opinions that are suitable for public consumption. They're not informed enough. I don't have the right to have a made-up mind. And that sort of position is one that social media will weed out of people because we're all expected to have opinions right away on a host of different issues we're simply not informed enough about.
SPEAKER_00So what should we do with something like so the other week I I watched Leaving Neverland. Um so two accusers of of uh Michael Jackson um and very serious uh sex abuse allegations there. Um what should I not have watched that? Should I uh how should I because again it's it's it here's another example of a huge if true kind of thing. Um and and certainly um certainly Radio 2 seems to have taken action over things, the Simpsons have pulled the Michael Jackson episode. Um when is it right to say that the preponderance of um evidence seems to lean in a certain direction and I can sort of I can sort of you know believe that it goes in that direction? And when should I just entirely say I don't know?
SPEAKER_01I think there's a way that you can recognize the weight of evidence, as you were saying, the preponderance of evidence doesn't mean that you're casting a final judgment upon that case. It can mean that you recognize that there is a weight of evidence that may have consequences for you. That how are you going to relate to his music from now on? Um, in the light of the evidence that you've seen, you may want to step back and you won't play that music on certain occasions, or you may just not play it at all. That is, I think, a reasonable response. The problem comes when we increasingly present ourselves as qualified judges on these issues. There are ways in which we can recognize that the court of public opinion is one that has a place. If someone hasn't been committed, uh hasn't been convicted of a crime, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are not guilty. There are some people who are guilty, but they can't be found guilty through the systems of the courts. And we should recognize in some of these cases that the evidence is very strongly against them, that they got away with it perhaps. And in those sorts of cases, it's not inappropriate to say, okay, we're not going to um hire this person for a particular role or something like that. It may be wise to keep our distance. But we need to think very carefully when we do those sorts of things. What sort of capacity are we acting in? Are we acting justly? Are we acting as responsible people, or are we just acting as um people who are moved by the herd? And the herd can stampede, are we just following that stampede? And I think these comes in, this also relates to deeper questions of the responsibility of exercising our trust in an accountable and responsible manner. There are situations where we are not competent to judge for ourselves, but we are responsible for who we trust. Do we trust someone who is competent? I think this is one of the questions that for Christians we need to ask ourselves. And it's one of the questions that I think when we look to Christ, there are good reasons to trust Christ. It's a reasonable thing to trust Christ. And our action of trusting Christ is not just throwing up our hands and doing some, just taking a leap into the dark. It's a responsible action, it's trusting someone who is trustworthy. And in the same way, I think that we need to take those sorts of actions, but we need to recognize the weight of that. That the weight of that is not at or the weight of an action where I'm trusting some of the reports that I've heard about Michael Jackson. That's not enough to convict a man. And I need to be very careful about how much weight I am putting upon my word in that situation and how much weight I'm expecting people to take my my word with. And again, this is another problem online. When we speak with a finality and authority and a determination to every single issue, we lose the weight that our words should have, where they really need to bear that weight. I think this is particularly a concern for Christian leaders, where I mean, our words need to have weight when we're talking about Jesus Christ, because he is the one who is the authority above all authority. He's the one who, when we bear witness to him, we are bearing a more serious testimony to anything else. But if we go on social media and we have opinions about each and every little issue, and we're following the crowd, and we're treating our words as if they were light things, and could be thrown around, our testimony could be thrown into every single case, into every single ring we will um throw our hat, that does not bode well for a confidence, a confident and trustworthy witness to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00Perhaps though there is a an opportunity, though, that I think everybody feels uh as though there's fake news everywhere and there are there is sinking sand out there if we're looking for somewhere to trust and looking for somewhere to put our weight. Um I don't know if anyone knows who to trust. I think I think the Muller investigation has kind of shown that maybe Trump did not conspire with Russia in this particular thing, but you know, are there such things as as uh Russian bots and and you know, do do they meddle in Facebook, etc.? You know, just last week I a friend shared something that was particularly sensational about Brexit. And you know, you go onto the page of the person who supposedly wrote this and it's it's only their you know eighth post and nothing else has any shares, and this sh this one has 9,000 shares, and you think, hmm, um am I dealing with a human being or uh or a Russian bot? Um, you know, and when when the media wants to cast um wants to make uh a premature um uh kind of verdict on on that case for for two years, and then when the other side wants to come out and say, no, therefore Trump is purer than the driven snow, um nobody, nobody is trusting the media at all. And I mean the media has just sort of gone through the floor in terms of of public trust. Maybe the church has an opportunity to say, yeah, I I don't know about these things, but here here is the rock that we can found our lives on. Here, here is Jesus Christ, and here is here is actually uh a narrative um that actually makes sense of your worlds and and isn't just confusion, you know, but perhaps perhaps Christians will seem ever more attractive as we as we speak of the rock of Christ when there's the sinking sand of fake news.
SPEAKER_01I think that's possible. I think a lot depends upon the way that we exemplify that fact. Are we people that will speak in a way that recognizes the weight of truth in a world where words are light and they're thrown around without any consequence? And particularly online where words are many and actions, I mean, online you're defined by words. People don't see actions online. And for the most part, as Christians, we should be those who are defined primarily by actions. And there are many occasions where we could say fine words, but we are called to actions that may lead us in a situ leave us in a situation where people won't hear fine words from us, they'll hear challenging and unsettling words, but we need to be faithful in those sorts of situations. And speaking is there's a way to speak, I think, that manifests that you are someone who cares about truth, particularly the way that we handle reports. For instance, the way that we'll take things seriously, we will we won't rush to judgment, but we will take a report seriously. And if you take a report seriously, it means that you weigh it, that you investigate it, that you look into it, that you're not going to rush to judgment because the words are weighty, and as a result, they deserve investigation. I think this is one of the areas where our constant question, do you believe this or not believe it? Often you need to investigate it first. And if you're not investigating and seeing whether it bears weight, then there's a problem that you're not giving it the seriousness that it should be given. And often our focus, particularly in this age, where everything's about social relations, is about saying obliging words to each other. Those obliging words often carry no weight at all. We're saying something, for instance, when people talk about Christianity and they affirm Christians and they say it's great that you have this religion, it's obviously doing good things for you, that you clearly believe in Jesus Christ, but that I mean, you can believe in Islam, you can believe in Christianity, you can believe in Judaism, you can believe in Buddhism or Hinduism, and all these things ultimately they come down to much the same thing. When someone says that, I don't feel that my faith in Jesus Christ has been taken in any way seriously. They're not giving the words any weight. And what they're saying is merely designed to oblige me, to make me feel good about myself and not feel threatened. Whereas someone who says, I believe in Islam and I believe that what you're saying about Jesus Christ is categorically wrong, let's argue about this. I feel that my view about Christian faith is being taken seriously in that case, because it's being given the weight that it deserves, that it merits. Because if Jesus Christ is who we say he is, then those words need to take a weight that words seldom have online. And so getting into the habit of speaking as people who weigh our words, as people who are slow to speak, who are slow to take the role of judges. I mean, this is something the book of James speaks to on many occasions. This being slow to speak, not taking up the role of teachers, knowing that the danger of the tongue, and I mean, James was talking in an age before social media, and he talks about the power of the tongue as a fire and a flame that this great fire that a little spark can kindle and the rudder that can move a great ship on social media. We've seen that that power has been amplified. And unless we are people who have internalized that lesson, we will not be people who are characterized by a deep truthfulness. And truthfulness, when you see it, when you see someone who's not just about glib words, about light words, about obliging words, and about words that are expedient, people notice that because it stands out. There are so few people like that. And as Christians, I think this also involves saying we don't know about a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It reminds me of uh something you said uh in a conversation with Paul Vanderclay recently that uh uh when when Jordan Peterson speaks, um, so often it it it seems like there've been sort of squabbling children and a grown-up has entered the room. Um and I guess that's what you're talking about in terms of someone who speaks with weight, with conviction, uh, as though every syllable matters. Um you'd like to see more of that in in Christians? Very much so.
SPEAKER_01Because we are bearing witness to the word, and we're bearing witness to the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. And if we do not, in the way that we speak and the way that we communicate with others, express something of the weight of that reality, then we are not bearing witness. We can say whatever we want, but those words will be like just dust in the air. It just scatters, it has no weight to it at all, unless we are people that be token in our lives that these are words that are like metal rods driven down into reality, that we can hold on to these. Well, they're like um these hooks in a wall that can enable us to ascend this high peak. We can't do it by ourselves. And so, if we're not those who bear words with weight, we I think will fail to do uh to bear a faithful witness to Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00But clearly, um technology and social media can enable us to engage the world with such words. Um, and so you're you're not saying let's retreat um maybe come off Facebook, but um you're you're very active uh on Twitter, you're very uh active on YouTube and podcasting. Um what is it about those platforms, perhaps, that that you think enables you to bear a different kind of witness?
SPEAKER_01The platforms themselves are limited. And I think one of the things we need to do is to recognize the character of the platforms, their tendencies, their limitations, and also their strengths. So, for instance, one of the things that I've found helpful about YouTube is it recovers the power of the spoken word, and that's not something we've had a lot of emphasis on. We've had a world of sound bites, particularly in TV and our sort of entertainment media. We've not had long discussions and this the sort of thing that we're engaging, engaged in here, you would not have this on TV. It's not something that would naturally lend itself even to the print medium. This is something that would generally take place in person. Whereas on YouTube, it's possible to engage in this sort of conversation and in podcasts as well. There's the aspect of convenience that people now, for instance, can listen to podcasts on their way to work, that there's a period of time into which you can speak. And there are ways in which you can follow a podcast over a period of time as well. So people will subscribe to a channel, and there's again a sense of continuity and engaging with certain voices as they're thinking through issues. Beyond that, there's the question of where are people? And if you're going to reach people, you really have to go to where they are, even if the place that they are is not the most convenient place for communicating with them. The limitations of social media are different from the limitations of the TV. The TV is very much an entertainment media, and as a result, for instance, as Neil Postman and others and amusing ourselves to death and other books, authors have highlighted the way that the television is oriented towards entertainment and how that twists the way that people communicate on that medium and moves things in the direction of a sort of sound bite, advertising, these sorts of forms of communication, and away from a more deliberative and discursive engagement with the ideas that, for instance, we're trying to engage in here. This would not make good TV.
SPEAKER_00Right. We're too good looking for TV, Alistair.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And also, thought does not make for good TV. People don't say, let me stop and think about that for a little while.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It just is not entertaining, it's not fast-paced enough. And the other thing I've found is if you're careful in crafting a community around yourself, you can often mitigate some of the limitations of these media. That you don't actually have to experience all the negatives. If you're someone who is careful and thoughtful about the way that you appropriate the medium, you do not have to use Facebook or Twitter or YouTube in the conventional way. There's no rule book, there's no book of etiquette. You can decide how to use it. And for me, at the moment, I generally go on Twitter from time to time and when I'm in the US generally, and I'll have long discussions on Twitter. And it tends to be long form Twitter, multiple tweets in a row. And it's not the most user-friendly form of Twitter, and the rest of the time I just use it to send out links from my accounts to publicize things. Now that's not an orthodox use of Twitter, but I found it's helpful for me and the people that I want to interact with. And that's all it needs to be. It doesn't, you don't have to do it in the way that everyone else is.
SPEAKER_00And how do you how do you mitigate against the excarnational aspect of social media? Um, that it's a quite disembodied format. How how do we uh how do we get our technology and our social media to lead towards embodied community?
SPEAKER_01I've used the illustration of scaffolding before, and I've found that a helpful one. That social media is very much like scaffolding. You don't live in the scaffolding, but the scaffolding can help you build a far more elaborate building in a far better way than you would be if you were just left without scaffolding and just having to use ladders, perhaps, or some other means. When we're using social media, then we should be thinking very much towards concrete communities. And that can often be something that's forged through the medium of the internet. So the internet will connect you with people, that then you can build out those connections in real life. Or you could think about it as building a bridge that you shoot across a line across a chasm, and then you use that line to take over a chain, and then that that chain eventually becomes the basis for building a larger bridge. When we're engaged in social media, I found I try and make friends online and I try and meet those people in person. And at this point, I've met over a hundred, well over a hundred people through the internet. Um well over a hundred people. And everywhere I go, I will generally say, I'm going to this place. Is there anyone that would like to meet up? Things like that. And I try and forge connections through the internet and make those into real life connections. I found that to be the most helpful way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So important, so important. So, um, Alistair, how can people catch up with you online?
SPEAKER_01Um, all sorts of places. I have a daily podcast and video series, which generally is concerned with biblical theology. So at the moment, I'm going through the story of Abraham and his family. That's on YouTube. If you look for Alistair Roberts, it should come up. If you go to Alistair Adversaria, that's my blog. And I also have Adversaria Podcast blog. If you look for any of those things, you'll find me. Mere Fidelity, that podcast, I'm with every week, pretty much. I'll do a podcast with them. And I'm involved with the Theopolis Institute and their podcast. So any of those places, you can hear my stuff.
SPEAKER_00Highly recommend all of those things. And uh, we'll put the links uh in the show notes. But uh Alistair Roberts, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much for having me on.