TikTok excellence

What’s the best stuff happening on TikTok at the moment? Having been called a “TikTok legend” by the Young People’s Programme of Britain Yearly Meeting (see minute 41), and “based and quaker pilled” in the comments on my own TikTok account, I have also been hearing some more negative things about the platform – nothing specific, just a general picture that it is not useful or educational. Of course, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a social media platform and the only goal it really has is to be interesting enough to keep you on the app for long enough to see some ads. It has that in common with most other social media – when the negative comments about TikTok are made on Facebook, I don’t take them too seriously! Both platforms are very capable of spreading misinformation, exacerbating political divisiveness, encouraging harmful comparisons, only showing certain aspects of someone’s life, enabling bullying behaviour, etc.

They also have benefits. For example, one of the things I appreciate about Facebook is the way it enables me to participate in lots of different groups – international Quaker groups, groups for readers of sapphic romance books, groups for authors who use TikTok, and many more. One of the things I appreciate about TikTok is that lots of people are using it to create short and accessible educational content. I access plenty of long form educational content in other ways – reading books, listening to lectures, attending courses – so the bite-sized videos on TikTok, typically a few seconds to a few minutes, make a refreshing change. Here are some of the people I think are doing this really well and might interest you. These are just a small sample – please add your favourite accounts (and anything you’re creating yourself) in the comments!

Religion

Obviously religion is one of my big interests. Accounts which talk about religious questions well include people sharing their daily lives and people teaching about more formal material.

Dan McClellan mainly talks about the Bible, how we read it, how it was written, and responds to different perspectives on it.

Moses and Zippora are a Jewish Orthodox couple who share their everyday lives including their religious practices. 

Safaa Charif posts about Islam, being a hijabi, and how people respond to her double leg amputation. 

Arek M. shares his Unitarian faith and journey towards serving as a Unitarian minister.

Christ Church Wesham make fun videos – even including some dancing, as expected on TikTok! – about Christianity and being part of a church community.

Writing

Lots of people post about their books on TikTok, but here are some accounts I follow especially for their advice on writing, publishing, and book marketing.

R S Twells talks about being a first-time author, encourages writers with practical tips, and also shares information about what do if there’s a horse in your story.

Fiona Lucus talks about her own books, her experience of publishing, and insider insights about the process.

Georgina Kiersten shares insights into her process, reflections on the industry, and experience of writing and publishing.

Jenn has tips for book marketing, which come in a much more manageable and less overwhelming form for being short videos! 

Other highlights

Joris talks about city planning, looking at examples of how design and architecture are often unfriendly to people.

Linguistic Discovery (Danny Hieber) shares all sorts of fascinating information about linguistics. 

Casey is a coach with an emphasis on self-care and working with the way we really are.

Ruth on the Hoof shares videos of and facts about different native British horses and ponies.

Ellie Mackin Roberts talks about ancient Greece.

And I didn’t even get into book recommendation accounts, or funny accounts, or sewing accounts, or any of the many worthwhile but not necessarily educational content on TikTok – there’s much more to discover. 

Social Media Feelings

In my previous post, I wrote about the social media experiment I did during Lent. In the comments on that post, I was asked:

How did you feel after the experiment? Would you maintain across all platforms and channels a sustained social media presence for longer or have discerned your preferences? How do you think it benefitted you and your loved ones? Did you have a disciplined set time each day devoted to social media work? What were your thoughts on it for your future – in your own life and your career?

That’s a lot to answer in a comment so I’ve turned my responses into this post.

I didn’t have especially strong feelings about the experiment. Afterwards, I was pleased I’d done it, and interested in the results, and happy that it produced some more connections and encouraged me to do more of things I wanted to do anyway.

I probably will stay active across a range of social media platforms. It suits me to have a range of different spaces in which to connect with people in different ways. In the past, there have definitely been platforms which came and went in my life (for example, LiveJournal and Tumblr are places where I’m no longer active) – some of that is personal preferences changing, some of it is communities moving, and some of it is my interests changing. To some extent, the communities I’m involved in vary across the platforms – for example, when I say I’m on TikTok, I’m really mostly talking about BookTok, the community of TikTok users who mostly talk about books. On Facebook, I’m much less active in general book-themed conversation and more involved in Quaker groups. There’s often a natural ebb and flow to this as the people, platforms, and resultant communities all change.

It benefited me by prompting me to do something I wanted to do anyway. I’m not sure most of my loved ones would have noticed much! I asked my wife, who is at least as active on social media as I am, and she said that it was nice when I posted about her a bit more than usual, but otherwise it didn’t make any difference. In general, I think social media benefits us both by helping us to connect with people with similar interests – to share ideas, explore hobbies, learn new skills, hear different perspectives, engage in conversations…

I didn’t set aside a specific time for social media. I normally find some time to look at social media on my phone anyway – downtime, waiting for something, a quick break between other activities – and I was usually able to include posting in that space. I also split up the steps, so I might play with an idea in Canva one day, download the finished image the next day, and post it to Instagram when I happen to be looking at my feed anyway the day after. I think if I did have a set time every day for social media I’d probably find it difficult to use unless I also had a much more detailed task list. Instead, my approach is to be playful and responsive, picking up trends (like Twitter memes) and sharing things I’m doing anyway (like reviewing books I would have been reading whether or not I was going to post about them).

In the future, I hope that social media will continue to provide spaces for sharing, learning, and connecting with people. I hope we’ll continues to develop ways to prevent the abusive, bullying, and hurtful behaviour which is common both on social media and in lots of other social spaces, and focus on using technology positively. In my experience, social media can help reduce loneliness, entertain and inform. In particular, the internet in general and social media in particular has a unique power to enable us to connect with others who are interested in the same thing. Sometimes this creates communities around dangerous or mistaken ideas, and I wouldn’t want to restrict myself to one platform or one topic for that reason. Sometimes, though, it can be extremely positive, and enables in-depth discussions and sharing of knowledge in a way that’s difficult to achieve offline unless people are able to commit to travel etc.

It’s that power to reach people interested in a specific topic which makes social media relevant to my career. It makes possible different approaches to networking, to finding out about potential contacts, to sharing information about my work, to inviting people to attend events or courses. It supports communities of Quakers, of readers, of writers, of religious people from many traditions, of people who are interested in editing or prayer or language or LGBTQ+ stories… Like any powerful tool, it has risks, but I find it extremely useful.

Social Media Experiment

Just before the beginning of Lent, I saw some posts on Facebook and and Twitter which said things like, “See you after Easter! I’m fasting from social media.” I wished those people all the best, but I didn’t feel inclined to copy them. Instead, I was inspired to go in the other direction: for Lent, I took up posting on social media every day. This is an aim I’ve had in the past – on most social media platforms, your posts are seen by more people if you post regularly, so if some of your posts ask people to do something (anything – my examples include: help a charity, join a course, buy a book, answer a question…) they will be more likely to succeed if you’ve been posting regularly in between. And maybe I’m a little contrary, because social media is generally a positive in my life and I didn’t feel like fasting from it!

I’m active on several social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and since the middle of March, TikTok – so I shared my posts round. I posted on at least one of those almost every day – I gave myself Sundays off when I felt like it, and I missed a few days when I was ill. A few things, like blog posts, I shared on two or three platforms, but mostly I created different content for each platform. My goal was to try things out and connect with people. In the following, I’m going to look briefly at the results of my experiments. I’ll explore which type of content worked best on which platform and use that to formulate some ideas about how I might use them in future.

On Facebook, I posted 18 posts during this period. (I was also tagged in a lot.) 8 were public and the other 10 were limited to friends-only (not especially private given that I have almost 3600 Facebook friends, but also not open to everyone in the world). The friends-only ones were mainly about our wedding anniversary party and going on holiday, and it’s not a surprise these were popular (the biggest number is 175 reactions on the picture of the wedding cake, just to give you an idea). Of the public ones, this post asking a question about Quaker worship got the best engagement (in stats, 32 reactions and 52 comments; qualitatively, good answers and interesting conversation). I also shared content from other people, posted about my books and World Book Day, and other more general theological or writing stuff, and that didn’t get the same level of engagement. Posts about this blog get low engagement on Facebook, but the blog stats reveal that it’s the second most common way of finding it (behind the major search engines, which are grouped together). In general, this supports my usual Facebook policy which is that it’s ‘advanced level Rhiannon’ – a mix of personal stuff and in-depth Quaker discussion. When I write for Facebook, I imagine mainly people I already know and already have some background in the topics I talk about. 

On Twitter, I tweeted 15 times during this period (and sent lots of replies). I had one runaway success with a Quaker twist on a meme – almost 3900 impressions and a 7% engagement rate, far above Twitter’s average (most brands are pleased with themselves if they get a 1% engagement rate, meaning that 1 in a 100 people who see the tweet do something, such as clicking ‘like’ on it or clicking a link in it). People also responded with some great answers. Other successes include posts about events and projects I’m involved in – especially where I can tag or be tagged by others who are involved – and some of my replies to large-ish accounts also got good numbers of impressions. Lesson: connections are important, joining in with memes sometimes is worthwhile, and it’s okay if Twitter content is often reactive. When I post on Twitter I focus on interacting, and I cover a wider range of topics than on Facebook – for example, I enjoy connecting with the writing community on Twitter and sometimes post about writing, or archaeology, or just jokes. In contrast,  when I’m connecting with writers on Facebook it’s in dedicated groups and not visible on my profile.

On Instagram, I posted 14 times during this period. (I also shared 1 story and didn’t get into Reels or anything else…) Instagram isn’t a medium which comes naturally too me because it’s so visual, but as well as posting some pictures of books and food, I experimented with making specific Instagram content with Canva. I only used free elements on Canva, and I tried creating content focussed on my usual themes – Quakers and philosophical stuff. Those posts did better than my others, and this one about Quaker meeting for worship did especially well – it didn’t get comments, but it did have 212 impressions and was seen by 188 accounts – of which 55% weren’t already following me. That’s reaching significantly more people than my other posts and means that ‘keep playing with text in Canva’ will be my Instagram plan for the next few months. I’d like to know a) whether this trend continues and b) whether I can adjust so that there’s more conversation, not just likes!

Finally, midway through March I was overcome by some sort of social media energy and started a TikTok channel. At first I’d ruled it out – isn’t TikTok too visual for me, like Instagram? – but on exploring TikTok further I discovered a subset of posters who are all about the verbal content. That I can do! So in the 8 videos I’ve posted so far I’ve done some experiments. My most successful post so far was a book review, and since I enjoy connecting with other readers I’m planning to focus on book reviews and some posts about my own books for a while. It’s too early to say much more but if you’re interested please come over and say hello!

I didn’t count Goodreads in this experiment, because I post there when a book thing happens, but it’s another social media site where I am active. Very few people in my circles seem to be using CuriousCat any more, but it’s there if you want to ask me questions anonymously. In general, I plan to keep using social media, and perhaps this post will help you choose where to follow me or think through how to use any social media you participate in.

What social media do you enjoy? What kind of things do you want to share and what conversations do you want to have? Have you ever done an experiment like this?

The Internet is Real

The internet is real. Things which happen online really happen.

Depending on your experience of the internet, this might seem anywhere from completely obvious to blatantly untrue. In this post, I want to explore why after some consideration I’ve decided that it is true, and why it matters.

Recently I hear someone describing a meeting from a while ago in which some of the people were physically gathered and some were present via an internet connection. In her description, she contrasted those who were ‘really’ there with those who were there ‘virtually’. I understand why and this is a common way of thinking about such situations – but I also think it opens up the path for a really problematic mistake.

There’s also a lot of discussion around at the moment about how a remote meeting, for example via video conferencing software, is different to one taking place in person. I agree that it’s useful to get at that difference and notice what does and doesn’t happen – but that difference only makes it a different thing, not an unreal thing.

A meeting held online is still a meeting. A person you talk to online is still a person. A relationship which happens through an internet connection is still a relationship and it involves a connection between two people.

Why is it a problem to say that the ‘virtual’ is different from the ‘real’? When I was young, I was taught that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. I spent a long time trying to pretend that was true – but it isn’t. Words and the lack of words, the way you are treated and the way people behave, has a very real effect. This is not to diminish the problems of physical violence: sticks, stones, fists, and bombs are all damaging and at the same time that lockdown is putting some of us in much more contact with the internet, it is also leaving some people in more physical danger from abusive relationships and other problems. It is to place a value on mental and emotional health which isn’t always present in the society in which I live. If it were true that words could never hurt, they could also never help or otherwise affect us. If it were true that the social world to which words belong had no effect on us, it might also be the case that stuff which happens online wasn’t real.

Words can hurt – and encourage and support. Someone in a video conference (as those who have been trolled or Zoom bombed know) can hurt – or help. At the moment, I’m talking to a lot of people, mainly in the Quaker community, who were previously aware of the internet as an option, perhaps for a limited range of activities or in a rather abstract way. They are now suddenly using the internet for almost everything, and finding steep learning curves with new software and being surprised by just how many things are already happening online. A lot of us are very grateful to have this option – and aware of those who don’t. Some are also puzzled or inclined to keep regarding it as unreal or second-rate. Saying that the internet is real doesn’t mean you have to like it, either: I don’t like mangoes, but they’re real.

There are things for which a purely online meeting is obviously not adequate: getting a massage or going to the dentist, for example. But a meeting held by video conferencing is still a meeting – it can make you feel better or worse, decide your action points and your attitude – even as you might struggle with the dissonance of the presence of faces and voices in the absence of bodies. And the chat you have on Facebook is real, and the connection you feel when someone posts is real, and the affection – and the annoyance and the ambivalence – we build up as we meet the same people again over time are all real. It’s virtual too, of course, but that’s the medium, not the message: a hologram of a dinosaur is a real hologram of a dinosaur.

Implying that things which happen online aren’t real, while perhaps useful for expressing frustration at what the internet can’t do or enabling you to dismiss things about it you dislike, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the situation. For those who have made real connections through the internet – often an important source of social contact for disabled people, for those who are isolated, for most of us who are in lockdown or social distancing, and for those who anyway chose to connect online through social media, email, dating sites, and so on – hearing that online friendships aren’t real, online dating is disordered, or connections through the internet will never measure up to the standards set by those who can choose to focus on in-person connections, can be deeply hurtful. Please don’t even start down that road. Online stuff is real stuff.

I is for Interaction

At the end of last week, I was at the Quakers Uniting in Publications conference for, oh, almost twenty-four hours. In that time, I presented a two different sessions – one with Gil Skidmore on the Quaker Alphabet Blog project, and one with Susan Robson about Living with Conflict (the book, the website and the Facebook page). Both sessions were lively and interactive, and the interaction was at least partly around the topic of interaction: conflict and disagreement in the broad sense require interaction (the ‘it takes two to tango’ principle), and questions about the alphabet blogs sometimes focussed specifically on the nature and purpose of the interactions taking place. Interaction is key to community, of course, and to communication, and also to many people’s learning styles.

In teaching, one of my interests is to encourage interaction with the material and with other students or participants in a course. It’s possible to take this too far – some topics need a certain amount of straightforward input, and some people are much more comfortable listening to a speaker than discussing questions in a group. That said, I think a lot of people don’t go far enough, and much of today’s media (at least, the traditional media: TV, radio, newspapers) don’t readily support interaction with the material they present.

The nature of online material often makes interaction much more possible – comments sections on news articles, message boards and blogging sites where you can share you views with other fans, and of course social media sites which are designed to facilitate interaction (and then market your desire for possible interaction as a point at which you can be shown an advert). It’s not always clear what these interactions mean and what weight they should be given. To some, a handwritten letter is more precious than an email; depending on the topic and recipient, I can spend an hour on an email and dash of a handwritten note (in ink pen on proper letter-paper) in ten minutes, so I don’t tend to share that weighting. Sometimes when people click ‘like’ on Facebook, they also comment to say what they mean (“Liked for happy ending”), but much more often we are left in the dark. Does ‘like’ mean that you’ve seen it, that it made you pause, made you smile, made you happy? All we can say for sure is that it made you click your mouse.

Sometimes, of course, there is a much more substantial interaction – in response to my post last week, Gordon Ferguson posted at Sheffield Quakers, and we continued the conversation a little in the Quaker Renewal UK Facebook group. At other times the interaction is less obvious, or not online: people coming back months or even years later. After my workshops, I try and measure ‘impact’ (an academic ‘i’ word I’m avoiding writing about!) by asking people whether they will change what they do or say. Of course, at 4pm having only met the material for the first time at 10am, they don’t really know. It’s the bits which come back later – the ministry inspired by something which was said, or the way it feeds into another project – which is the longer term and I feel more valuable form of interaction.

Faith and social media

Michael Booth recently wrote a piece for Living with Conflict, a website which I help to edit, about Email, Social Media and Conflict in the Church. It’s a very interesting report and it came at just the same time as some discussion in the Quaker Renewal Facebook group about the possibility of revising our Book of Discipline, currently called Quaker Faith and Practice – a discussion partly prompted by Oliver Robertson’s post on Nayler about the subject. The combination reminded me of some discussions in a study group about QF&P which I ran in 2013; we looked at ten chapters from the book over ten weeks, looking for our favourite passages, most useful passages, and for gaps. One of the gaps we detected, and which has come up in other conversations since then, was a lack of material about online activities – understandable in a book approved in 1994, long before Facebook had been invented, but an obvious omission to our ways of living in Britain now.

One of the exercises I set the study group was to try writing a new ‘Advices and Queries‘ passage, engaging with the concerns we had identified as absent from the current book. I chose to write something about internet use, and produced the following:

Sharing online can be an important part of our lives as social beings. Does your internet presence reflect you as a whole person? Strive for a right balance between electronic and analogue communications, and remember that working asynchronously can provide extra time for thought and prayer. Do you consume news and other information in ways which support your freedom and positive engagement with the world?

Looking back on it after almost two years, it still reflects many of the issues I am considering. I might add some of Michael’s points about who we represent online, not just ourselves but our organisations; and in a book of discipline generally, I would now also want to add something about the use of phones and tablets in worship or Meeting for Worship for Business. (Not, I should clarify, to ban them, but to encourage thoughtful and appropriate use, and patience and charity from those who do not understand what they are being used for.) On the other hand, the question about whether your online persona represents your life came up again over Christmas, when some people posted on Facebook about it being particular hard at that time of year to see everyone’s happy-family-together pictures and posts, and others responded to say that this was only a part of their experience. How honest are we going to be online? I know there are things I avoid posting in some spaces – I have my reasons for this and they feel like good reasons to me – but do those omissions lead people to an untruthful, or at least one-sided, picture of me?