Twitter and the 11th Commandment

I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter, and it’s not just because I’m looking for an easy excuse to blow off real work.

Part of what I do is push Everyday Christian’s content out on Twitter and other social networks to try and expand our readership base. It’s an easy strategy and we’ve picked good responses and new “followers” from it.
If you follow me @pcubsfan or Everyday Christian @EvDayChristian, thank you.

Regular Twitterers are familiar with the Trending Topics bar which runs down the right side of the screen. You also know a lot of times these topics are what the hot story of the minute – never mind the day – are. As a sports fan, it’s neat to see topics ebb and flow when there’s a big game on. If you don’t believe me, check out the traffic during Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night.

Many times the Trending Topics have a few items that are just generic ideas someone came up with that gained people’s attention and took off. Oftentimes these involve a lot of NC-17 rated content and posts with loads of four-letter words and sexual content.

Knowing full well how far into the gutter some of these topics can descend, it still caught my eye when for most of this week #11th commandment was a hot topic (putting a pound sign in front of any topic on Twitter is a common tool to draw attention to it).

I don’t know how adding on another commandment began. As I delved into the posts, I saw a lot of what I expected.

There were plenty of remarks about how another commandment should somehow deal with drinking games, drug use, sex and bodily functions. Repeating them here would be, shall we say, unproductive.

The overwhelming majority were placed by non-Christians, and some of them took on a political bent. For an example of a clean one @jrclifton wrote: “Thou shalt not post the previous 10 in a courtroom or government building.”

By pointing this out, I’m not trying to get on a holier than thou soapbox. For the futility of that and the importance of being honest with yourself in your faith walk, read Paul Prather’s latest blog.

What I would say, however, is that this Trending Topic proves what we all see every day: Most people have enough trouble even coming close to following the 10 we already have.