Jesus: Twitter Is a Waste of Time

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Annoyed by non-believers micro-blogging their hourly moods, eating, and exercise habits?

Thank God, Gospelr just solved that messy societal problem for you. And what do you know, Christians are just as boring as everyone else.

A quick scan of Tweets on Gospelr, the Christian Twitter knockoff, reveals such minutiae as:

Adrian:

 

“I had an awesome night at the KPC men’s group here in Rogers.”

 

 

and

Jesustxtswithu:

 

“Checking out Gospelr, I must say glad to finally be able to “follow” people who Follow Him. Greetings <3.”

 

 

Jesustxtswithu’s sentiment is, of course, the ostensible reason for the site to exist. But the thing about following people who follow Jesus is that, much like people who don’t, they mostly post things like:

 

 

“I have a newly opened bag of coffee on my bookshelf at work. The aroma of the ground coffee is tempting me to brew another pot.”

 

 

Christians have always promoted sites dedicated to Christians and the “Christian lifestyle.” Faith-based Internet users can search and edit Christian Wikipedia, the Christian version of Wikipedia. There’s even Xianz, “the Faith Based MySpace.”

There’s an obvious reason for this. It actually makes a good deal of sense for Christian singles, for instance, wary of the pre-marital, homosexual, or just casual sex endorsed by many secular dating sites, to attempt to guide their dating life using Christian alternatives like ChristianCafe or ChristianMingle.

But does Twitter really need a Christian alternative? YouTube (hence ChristianTube)—makes more sense. But until BangR really does exist or boring Tweets become a sin, Christians are safe with secular Twitter.
—Daniel Luzer

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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