I’m sure you have found yourself on the other end of an internet conversation with a fanatical Christian… debating abortion, government intervention, homosexuality, and other hot topics. Or, you have tried to convince your friends of their woeful ways over Facebook. Either way, the results are not pretty.
Anyone can fall into the trap of being a jerk on the internet: forcibly offending others, name calling, passive aggressiveness, espousing incorrect statistics from questionable secondary sources, using ALL CAPS, posting embarrassing high school pictures, and just bad behavior. It seems Christians can, at times, be the worst offenders. At some point in our online experience everyone has been a jerk in one way or another.
Recently, Jon Acuff, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author, wrote an article for RELEVANT magazine (apparently deemed a “hipster-Christian” publication) about his experiences with jerkiness:
When RELEVANT asked me to write this article, I originally wanted to title it, “How to Be a Jerk on the Internet.” I felt like that article would be easier for me to write because I’ve got much more experience at being a jerk than I have at not being one—ask people who went to college with me. They’ll tell you. I was a jerk online before online even existed. (That last sentence was like Inception; I was a jerk within a jerk within a jerk.)
Acuff goes on to name five ways people (Christians) can be a jerk on Twitter and pretending . Perhaps my fav is the “Jesus juke”:
Debbie Downer
A Jesus Juke is an idea I came up with to describe the moment when you’re having a normal conversation and someone jukes in some Jesus out of nowhere. For example, I once tweeted that I was at the Conan O’Brien live tour and it was sold out. Someone responded, “If we held a concert for Jesus and gave away free tickets, no one would come.” Sad trumpet, whaaa, waaaa. A Jesus Juke is the Christian version of the Debbie Downer moment.
I’m not sure if the “Jesus juke” qualifies as jerk behavior. That’s called being lame.
Anyway, jerks and Christians jerks take note.
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