My plan at the beginning of the summer was to discuss the practice of anonymity this week. But after writing several drafts and scratching ideas around a piece of paper, I realized anonymity wasn't what I wanted. I don’t want to be anonymous. I want to known and known well by the people around me. I want people to dialogue with and build on my ideas and research. I want to share my writing, and hopefully soon, some sermons. What I’m considering is not being unknown but how I expect to be known and by whom. What I’m trying to practice is cultivating a rich inner life that benefits from privacy. (Of course it’s just as well that I didn’t realize that at the start because “cultivating a rich inner life that benefits from privacy” is much hard to fit on a small line for this week’s topic compared to “practice of anonymity.”)
I’ve always been a private person. You can go down any checklist and I’ll find myself there. I’m an introvert. I’m an enneagram 8 and we are famous for not wanting to be vulnerable. A friend told me once that she didn’t understand how I blogged or used social media until she realized that I only wrote about things that I had already decided were fine to share. At times, this aspect of my personality is a problem. We usually all need some stretching the opposite way of our inclination. But there are also deeper practices found in my desire for privacy.
One thing I’m grappling with this summer is whether or not I can quit Instagram and still do the work that I hope to. In a ministry and church world that doesn’t often scoot over and make abundant space for women, can I do the work I want to without social media? Can I serve faithfully, doing the work I’m aimed at, in a neighborhood and community for the rest of my life without also “growing an audience” on a social media platform? Or will I miss opportunity after opportunity because I wasn’t visible?
I do not want to share all the tiny details of my life in hopes that people will enjoy viewing that on Instagram and then decide to engage with my work too. I want my children to be known by people they know in return. I want the people who see my house to be the people who come and inhabit that space with me. I need abundant space to be quiet and not comment on everything in the whole world. Instagram does not reward those rules of engagement. A lot of people are trained to expect otherwise from people they follow.
Working through this idea of privacy versus anonymity was helpful for me. I’ve been defining privacy in this way as cultivating a rich inner life that I don’t need people to see and validate. This is in direct contradiction to developing a persona that looks good online. I don’t want to buy certain clothes, decorate my house, or decide my hobbies based on what will look good on Instagram. As I consider these differences, I keep circling back to a few questions.
What are we expecting from Instagram? Are we going there to be known? It will never happen. We are designed for small communities. (Google Dunbar’s Number sometime this week if you are looking for a fun exercise.) Maybe you don’t curate content for social media, maybe you just scroll. Why are you going to Instagram when you do? Are you bored with your own life? Are you disassociating from your pain? Are you looking for answers?
What’s our motive for our actions? Does the work count if no one, or only a few, see it and benefit from it? Are we doing things because they are photograph well and make us look awesome? Do things for the glory of God and the good of those around you not because it looks good. Develop good practices of getting to know God, serving your community, loving the people you live with. Start a new hobby that stretches your mind or body. What if instead of pretending to be someone online, we partnered with the Spirit in becoming a different type of person?
Are we filtering through what it’s appropriate for different people to know? The people closest to us should know us best. They know the deepest, truest us and we tell them the truth about our lives. Then there are people we know in certain capacities, maybe work or partnering around shared interests. Then there are people whose work will in some way be known by many people. But knowing their work does not mean that everyone knows them personally. It means many people are familiar with their stories or their ideas or their art or their designs. We should not be sharing our soul with the internet because we are desperate to be known or because it gains followers.
I think it’s time we reevaluate what we are willing to give up on social media. I also think we should reconsider what we are asking other people to do to entertain us online. Perhaps our time would be better spent knowing the people in our communities and supporting people in doing good work, even if that means we find them places besides Instagram. The list of people whose Substack I’m paying for is growing. I want to fuel their work and engage with it without demanding either of us fight an algorithm to do it.
Does this mean I’m quitting Instagram? It might, even though I understand the benefits of it. I haven’t decided for sure. Does this mean I think everyone should quit Instagram. Absolutely not. Everyone finds themselves in different circumstances with different constraints. Some people seem to be using it quite well; my struggle to do so doesn't mean everyone struggles. But I do want us to think well about how social media is discipling us though because it is, in fact, discipling us. Please hit reply and share your thoughts and struggles with social media with me.
Always,
Lisa
Links I Love:
Two weeks ago, I told you this podcast was at the top of my list. I finished and it is an amazing resource.
I do think tech can be a great tool: I’m trying out using google calendar and that’s a big shift from the paper planner I’ve been using for years. So far, it’s been great.
I shared two books I read recently and loved on the blog.
I really am writing on the blog. This post has had me thinking for weeks.
This book of essays is delightful.
This was a great conversation.
I've missed some newsletters in the busy-ness of summer so am reading through past editions here. Really loved this one, especially in light of your decision to move to Substack. It all sort of ties in with some things I've been thinking about in the class I'm taking this summer. How did you finally arrive at the decision, beyond the thoughts in this post? Did you run this by certain people for feedback? Pray? Were there any specific scriptures you relied on in making the decision?
I love the idea of cataloguing the benefits v. cost. Probably a good process to go through with several aspects of life. I'm always inspired by how much you do and get done and these kind of choices no doubt contribute to that. The class is IS500 practices of vocational formation. One week included significant focus on screen time and technology and what it does to our brains. It really underscored some things I was already thinking about social media.