tweet your own horn

Update March 21, 2014:  Recently, the situation described below took a turn for the better in one of the most encouraging changes of heart I have witnessed since I began this blog.  Vincent Horn apologized.  You can read my full response here.

I’ve just had a crash course in how networking and self-promotion function in the online Buddhist world. It’s rather simple: tweet your own horn, link to your own work, hook up with friends who flatter you and censor those who don’t.  Above all: control communication, create an image and maintain it diligently.

This may be old hat for people in corporate marketing, but when the product is emptiness and compassion, the result is a new brand of hypocrisy.

On March 4, Ken McLeod retweeted a quote posted by Hokai Sobol on Twitter:

Connecting w/o contact, sharing w/o cost, and participating w/o liability, is not the future of tech, of identity, of culture.

I appreciate Hokai and Ken feeling the need to tweet their concern for human connection, sharing and participation in the online age, but apparently the contact, cost and liability are too much for them at times: Hokai and Ken, and a few other cronies from Western Buddhism Incorporated, have de-authorized me.

It started on January 23 with the following dialogue on Twitter between me and Vincent Horn, host of Buddhist Geeks:  

Vincent Horn:  Working on letting negative comparisons drop. The work I'm involved in is not made any better by disparaging others. :) 
Me:  Does your work spare critical thinking? Please do not disparage that! 
Vincent Horn:  Do you see dropping public negative comparisons as the same as dropping critical thinking? I don't. :) 
Me:  No, only if you critically examine a public figure and find him/her wanting then censor your views.

The last half of our exchange was not published and, in spite of the smiley faces, I was suddenly unable to tweet with Mr. Horn. Apparently he sensed a painful public comparison and is now doing his critical thinking with the less disparaging in private.

Sometime later I tried to expand a tweet on Ken’s page and discovered that I was “not authorized to look up related results for that tweet.”  Just for fun, I went to Hokai Sobol’s page. Sure enough, I was “not authorized” there too. 

Turns out I am not alone in having been de-authorized from the tweets of Ken McLeod.  Another former student of Ken's contacted me to ask “Did Ken kick you off Twitter?  It happened to me.”

Excluding uncomfortable dialogue seems to be a popular way of handling disagreement in Buddhist corporate culture.

James Shaheen hasn’t responded to my comment posted on Tricycle last month. Stephen Batchelor has not stooped to respond to the critical comments made by me and others on his post Buddhism and Sex: the Bigger Picture. Dennis Hunter, a fan of Ken’s, silently censored my comment on his blog post A Monk No More.  Then there’s The Naked Monk, Stephen Schettini, who contacted me to inquire about my grievance with Ken.  When I responded, and after a pregnant pause in our email correspondence—was he possibly warned of the potential cost and liability of contact?— he decided to solicit me for his spiritual autonomy counseling services at an affordable hourly rate.

Tricycle recently announced that it will now be featuring a Buddhist Geeks page on their website.  Strategic partnerships I think they call it.  Or was it Geeks tweak each other’s deeks.

Those authorized do to so can go take a look.