Unposted Post 2--Google Thinks I'm Gay
.This is an unposted post I wrote reflecting on the Virginia Tech shooting.
Google thinks I'm gay...
As an experiment for a play I was working on I set up google ads on my site. I was curious to see how it worked. Bizarelly, google thinks I'm gay. It has for some time.
Above my posts there's a little ad. Mostly for church stuff, once for simulated cat pee (?) and recently for gay related items. This would make sense to me tomorrow, when the google crawlers will have found the word gay within the copy, but I don't know what other sign I'm giving off that makes google think I'm gay. That's now what I'm writing about...just curious. Is it the hair?
The other thing...
Some time ago I was involved in what CNN called a tragedy. They pointed cameras at me and my friends. The facts of the story were pretty simple--unpredictable, senseless, crappy thing (in this case a Tornado that killed people in Cincy). The story was a big deal because it was a slow news day. It became a story about hope because we made that happen...we deliberately and methodically stayed "on message" because if people are going to point a camera at you it makes sense to leverage the redemptive potential. It became a story of hope...but it wasn't one.
Sad things, particularly ugly, violent, senseless sad things like shootings or storms become something of a national rorschach onto which we can project our own hopes or fears. This is why the VT shooting was about community, or unity, or courage, or hope, or madness, or gun control, or liberalism, or faith, or the goodness of God, or the absence of God, or existential despair, or Korean americans, depending on where we're standing.
What I struggle with is that none of this is REAL. A wack job went crazy and the walls were ripped away from our hearts. This is fine and natural, but it becomes dangerous when we project MEANING onto something senseless. Some thing's just suck and saying otherwise is reckless.
I suppose this is kind of a question about theology (in the sense that if you believe in an active God then everything is kind of about theology) but I think some times in the church we try to answer questions before spending time to shut up and live in pain for a little while.
Google thinks I'm gay...
As an experiment for a play I was working on I set up google ads on my site. I was curious to see how it worked. Bizarelly, google thinks I'm gay. It has for some time.
Above my posts there's a little ad. Mostly for church stuff, once for simulated cat pee (?) and recently for gay related items. This would make sense to me tomorrow, when the google crawlers will have found the word gay within the copy, but I don't know what other sign I'm giving off that makes google think I'm gay. That's now what I'm writing about...just curious. Is it the hair?
The other thing...
Some time ago I was involved in what CNN called a tragedy. They pointed cameras at me and my friends. The facts of the story were pretty simple--unpredictable, senseless, crappy thing (in this case a Tornado that killed people in Cincy). The story was a big deal because it was a slow news day. It became a story about hope because we made that happen...we deliberately and methodically stayed "on message" because if people are going to point a camera at you it makes sense to leverage the redemptive potential. It became a story of hope...but it wasn't one.
Sad things, particularly ugly, violent, senseless sad things like shootings or storms become something of a national rorschach onto which we can project our own hopes or fears. This is why the VT shooting was about community, or unity, or courage, or hope, or madness, or gun control, or liberalism, or faith, or the goodness of God, or the absence of God, or existential despair, or Korean americans, depending on where we're standing.
What I struggle with is that none of this is REAL. A wack job went crazy and the walls were ripped away from our hearts. This is fine and natural, but it becomes dangerous when we project MEANING onto something senseless. Some thing's just suck and saying otherwise is reckless.
I suppose this is kind of a question about theology (in the sense that if you believe in an active God then everything is kind of about theology) but I think some times in the church we try to answer questions before spending time to shut up and live in pain for a little while.
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