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| Author. Tweeter. Meme Inspirer. |
(Note: This post is an experiment. It's a normal post where I've included my self-critical internal monologue. My internal monologue is written in bold italics.)
by Ben Howard
A few weeks ago, mega-church pastor Rick Warren tweeted out
the following rather cryptic message to his mass of followers:
“New churches: Buy land as soon as you can but delay
building for as long as you can. Cant explain all the reasons here.”
Now that’s just a weird statement. It sounds like vague
pronouncement of an apocalyptic future where property rights are still intact
and you need a lot of land, or it’s some kind of financial advice that exploits
a church’s status as a non-profit for financial gain (yay!).
This could actually be valid advice. Are you sure you aren’t just
dismissing it because you don’t like Rick Warren? And if you don’t like Rick,
why is that? Is it because he’s popular? Is it because people listen to him and
they don’t listen to you? Are you mocking him because he said something dumb or
are you doing it because it makes you feel better about yourself?
Since the internet is the internet, and Rick has a fairly
well-established group of anti-fans (enemies is a bit strong), this tweet
spread across the web pretty quickly. However, in this instance, the tweet is
not the point of the story.
Anti-fans? Really? That’s the passive aggressive stuff you come up so
you don’t have to say what you feel. That’s weak.
Late one night, a few people started sending messages using
#RickWarrenTips. Essentially, they were absurd tweets full of vague and
ridiculous advice, quotes from movies, TV shows, bizarre usage of clichés;
normal twitter stuff.
And then it grew, and grew, and eventually by mid-morning
the next day, most of the people I follow were tweeting out Rick Warren Tips
non-stop.
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| There's always money in the banana stand. Can't explain here. |
I wonder if this doesn’t say more about you and who you follow than it
does about the level of humor or virality of the hashtag. Maybe you’re just at
the middle of a giant ball of groupthink that keeps perpetuating a mass
feedback loop.
A few refrained, they mentioned that it was in some sense
dehumanizing to mock a pastor just because he was famous. It was belittling and
beneath them to join in on this simple, yet arguably mean-spirited joke.
Then something interesting happened. Rick Warren joined in.
Did he actually join in? You know you’ve wondered about whether or not
he actually sent those tweets. Do you know why you’ve wondered that? Because
you want him to be a villain, and this kind of thing humanizes him. You’re torn
between wanting to hate him as a personification of an idea you don’t like and
knowing you need to treat him as a human.
His tweets weren’t particularly funny (he joked about the
dentist and diarrhea), but it was interesting to see someone take something
potentially insulting and spin it into something else. It was interesting to
watch Rick Warren steer into the skid, or lean into the pitch, or whatever
metaphor best exemplifies making fun of yourself so you can be part of the joke
and not just the punchline.
You even go out of your way to say his jokes weren’t funny. Even when
you’re including him in the conversation and commending his action you still
have to qualify it.
I’ve always been a fan of this kind of reaction when
celebrities do something worth mocking. Why react with indignation? Why take it
personally? If you just take the joke and join in, it shows that you’re
self-aware and you don’t take yourself too seriously. It makes people like you.
What about the times when we should be offended? What about the jokes
that we shouldn’t take part in? What are we supposed to do when our desire to
do right is more important than our desire to be liked? What then?
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| Fun with anachronistic weapons! |
Last week I wrote about the Djesus Uncrossed sketch on
Saturday Night Live and I was making the same argument for institutions. It’s
easy to be offended, but if you take a little time to dissect what’s being
mocked, maybe you can join in on the joke because it just might be worthy of
mockery. The Djesus skit made fun of the relationship between the peaceful
Jesus of the Bible and the military ideology of the Religious Right. That is a
thing worth mocking.
Was that the really the joke they made? Or is that the joke you wanted
to see because it validates your worldview? Did they say something profound or
did you interpret something from it that wasn’t there? And if it wasn’t there,
what did you really see?
Sometimes we’re wrong. Sometimes we should just join in on
the joke.
And sometimes we’re still wrong, and we just haven’t realized it yet.
Peace,
Ben
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