Quakers have a practice of writing questions (called queries) designed to prompt self-reflection. Since I have been reflecting on my own attempts to publicize a book using social networking (and have been getting annoyed with other people’s attempts to publicize their stuff on these same networks), I offer these 10 queries to all of us. I look forward to hearing your thoughts as well as any questions you want to add. Feel free to link to this post—especially if you think your Facebook and Twitter friends need to ask themselves these questions, too:
- Is it appropriate to invite someone to an event that is more than 100 miles from where they live?
- If you have three events in the same region within a month, should you invite everyone you know in the region to each event, so they can choose which is most convenient, or will people start de-friending you for clogging up their email?
- When someone never comes to any of your events, should you continue inviting them, on the assumption that none of your events have been convenient so far and this friend has been hoping for an event s/he can actually make, or should you assume they are not interested and just leave them alone in future?
- If someone keeps inviting you to events that you can never attend, how many times should you RSVP with a nice comment on their wall before you can totally ignore their invitations with impunity?
- Is it appropriate to ask someone to donate to your favorite cause for your birthday if you don’t know this person well enough to have ever given them an actual birthday gift? (Does it matter if you have a really, really good cause?)
- If you only post something once on Twitter, will anyone see it?
- How many times can you post something on Twitter without being obnoxious?
- Are the rules different for Facebook (where I actually know and like the great majority of my friends), as opposed to Twitter, where I don’t know most of the people who follow me?
- If I am friends with someone on Facebook and following them on Twitter, is it over the top to connect on LinkedIn and Goodreads, too?
- If you can’t remember meeting someone, but you have 23 friends in common, should you go ahead and accept their friend request on the theory that you probably have met them and just can’t remember because your brain is so overloaded with social media passwords?
My overall answer to your questions would be that an invitation should be appropriate to the condition of the individual being invited; the sort of invitation that is appropriate for one person might be inappropriate, even to the point of causing offense, in another case.
Bulk invitations (the “everybody come” type) should be used sparingly, phrased in a way that is not presumptuous, and delivered in a way that shows consideration.
If one doesn’t know a person well enough to know what’s appropriate, one might perhaps consider how much that person’s friendship matters. If one wouldn’t mind offending them unintentionally, then by all means, one can send them bulk invitations whenever one pleases. The more one would be sorry to lose that person, though, the more it becomes a good idea to sound that person out individually and learn what’s appropriate for her or him.
I don’t know if that answer is helpful or not. But honestly, I cannot offer an answer more tailored to the specific questions you ask — i.e., is 100 miles an appropriate limit for everybody, or is some other limit a better choice; is three events per month the right threshold for everybody, or should it be three events per year or per week — because I don’t know the people involved.
I can tell you that for me, personally, any travel at all, and any attendance at events at all, is difficult. All invitations except the most personal and significant get ignored. But that’s just me. A person with discretionary money and a more open schedule would surely have a different attitude.
One other small point. It might be noted — in fairness — that while liberal Quakers use queries “to prompt self-reflection”, Conservative meetings use them very differently.
Conservative Friends have each monthly meeting answer each query as a group, once a year. That means every member of the meeting gets to hear every other member’s spoken response. The monthly meeting writes down a summary of its members’ responses to each query, and the summaries are forwarded to the yearly meeting for review at the annual sessions.
This practice enables the monthly and yearly meeting to get a sense of their members’ conditions — what they are doing well at, what they are struggling with, what they are tender about — and that, in turn, helps the monthly and yearly meetings to assist their members in the practice of Quakerism.
Thank you, Marshall, for your thoughtful response. I totally agree that answers will be individual, both for the sender and receiver of an invitation. For example, there are some friends who offer events infrequently, so I am happy to hear about them, even if there is no chance I can attend. On the other hand, I don’t feel I need an invitation to every event offered by those friends who offer workshops regularly all over the country. Knowing the preferences of all 317 of my Facebook friends is a little trickier, which is part of why I wanted to start this conversation.
As for queries, I am always happy to hear how my generalizations about Quakerism are inaccurate because it helps me to learn about our breadth and depth. At a minimum, I should have said that we use queries for individual and group reflection since our liberal/unprogrammed meetings also use them in meeting for worship for the conduct of business to foster communal reflection. Glad to learn about the practice of Conservative Friends.
These queries were helpful to me. I’ve been waiting in search of guidance about my own blog (Twitter, etc.) work. Though over the summer I felt enthusiastic about blogging, more recently I’ve been hesitant to enter my work into the sheer glut of information that rides the waves of the Internet because I’m not confident of my ability to make it serve in such conditions. …
As you ask, If you only post something once on Twitter, will anyone see it? The corollary, for me, is, if not, then how does posting multiple times affect our ability to let go of control and accept life on life’s terms? … Is part of life’s terms the fact that, if one engages in Tweeting, then one must post information multiple times? (for a Quaker, offering witness over and over runs counter to our practice of speaking once and allowing our ministry to enter the world without additional "propulsion")
1, 2, 3 & 4: I don’t mind being invited to events that are far from me. I get invited to events overseas. I like to know what’s happening with my "friends." … If I were publicizing a series of events in the same region, however, I might group them into a single invitation so that people can choose. … I quite often don’t go to events that I’m invited to, and I don’t RSVP to every invitation. The invitations keep coming. Which goes to say that I believe that, if my work is good, and Spirit wants me to get it out there so others can benefit, then let me not assume anything about anyone… Let me give them the dignity of their choice. If you were to invite me to your events [which I’m surprised you haven’t 🙂 ], I’d be glad to know what you’re up to, and it would give me the opportunity to send support your way (be it "only" spiritual), though I can’t travel the 300 miles to be with you.
5: I never ask anyone to donate to anything for my birthday. Just me.
6 & 7 I think I have addressed above… I’m still not very familiar with Twitter though.
8 & 9: I should think the "rules" for FB and Twitter are different. Twitter is much more "faceless," as it were. I think Linkedin is more business-oriented, sheer professional networking discourse. Much less personal. If I wanted to do business (even if it were just professional networking) with someone, I’d hook up on LinkedIn. … Not sure about Goodreads.
10: This happened to me this morning. Someone friended me on FB, and I saw that he and I had seriously 22 friends in common–and not just from college or the writing or art worlds, but from lots of places. I was like, ??? who is this guy?
I confirmed the friend request. This might sound funny, but I think FB was given to me by God to get me out of my shell… A year ago I had 3 friends on FB; today I have 160 or something… Part of my spiritual growth this year has been to accept the gift of the presence of others in my life without quite knowing what they mean to me or what they may bring–or what I might bring them. I take the opportunity; the outcome is up to Spirit.
Thanks for your thoughts, Jen. I have seen several "miracles" happen through the Internet. I would encourage you to make your work available and then see what happens. God can’t work as easily through your blog if you don’t post it.