Saturday Side Quest - Engaging VS Engaged

Where has faith and fandom intersected this week?

As a digital native, I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship. It’s been confusing, manipulative, and misleading, and everyone has a different opinion on improving this relationship. I’ve broken things off and picked them back up—sometimes on the same day. Sometimes, I’ll return to the relationship and find that things completely changed—like I never knew anything about it in the first place

Before I confused my wife and family… I’m talking about my relationship with the mythical algorithm.

For any tried-and-true content creator, the algorithm is the white whale we all despise as much as we respect. For the uninitiated, the algorithm is a series of rules and code that arranges the sending and receiving of content on any given platform.

Ex. how you got served a specific YouTube video when you typed in, “how to fix toilet FAST”

As long as I’ve been online, I’ve heard of the evolving nature of this beast. I can recall rules that have varied from promoting gaming content to squashing animated content shorter than one minute to conspiracies about how many seconds you needed to let pass before swearing on YouTube.

Some social media companies will share their policies (it’s one of the few generous moves by Meta via Instagram). In contrast, others will force creators to put things together piecemeal and hope things perform well. YouTube has always been one of the most egregious offenders—I can’t tell you how many different think-pieces I’ve read on how to ‘get discovered’ on YouTube.

I’ve had a few moments where I’ve struck gold and found a niche moment and experienced the brief thrill of virality. Even still, I can’t say that I have anything particularly figured out that won’t have the potential to change with the weather.

Well, save for one thing. Relationships still rule.

Life got busy planting a church, and I stopped taking seriously my social media relationships. And I think most of my feeds suffered from it. I decided to nip that in the bud with the current Christian season of Lent, where one traditionally gives something up as a practice of contemplation.

Here’s my plan.