Last month, I started the Open Group at Bedlam Farm, and it has been an amazingly rich, satisfying and sometimes disturbing experience. I’ve learned to share these kinds of experiences here, work them out, it has worked so well for me in the tumultuous recent years of my life. My idea was to create a creative space within the Bedlam Farm community and the group has far exceeded my expectations – creative sparks igniting all over the place. Great photography, new blogs, beautiful sketches, poignant writing, a Ministry of Encouragement, we call it, creative spirits from all over the country and some of the world challenging each other, igniting each other appreciating one another. I am consider adding other groups over time. I was taken aback by the volume of people seeking admission to the group – I admitted 800 people in the first week, many hundreds more wanted in.
As with other things in my life, I know I want to share the experience with you, it is how I learn, and hopefully, you learn.
Digital communities are complex, I have been writing about them and observing them for decades, very few have survived the Internet plague of conflict, hostility, divisions, politics, anxiety and emotionalizing. This one has been marked by good and bad things from the first, and it is important to write about them for the present and for the future.
The good things: an amazing outpouring of creativity, people grabbing cameras, painting, offering pencil sketches, start up blogs with beautiful writing, a celebration of the love of animals, a safe creative space where people have felt free to experiment, come out of hiding, overcome fears, bring their very best stuff. In many ways, one of the best things I have ever done.
But the Internet is never so simple, and neither am I or the people who cross this new space and join this very radical kind of enterprise. People are political, they have agendas, they cross boundaries. There is a shocking amount of paranoia and suspicion. Too many people were admitted, a sometimes overwhelming amount of content comes pouring over computers (adjustable in settings). And there are continuous battles over content and direction. From the first, I described the site as a creative place, not a place for animal grieving, not a cute animal bulletin board. Some people have accepted that and moved on, some people resist that and choose to leave, usually in a major huff.
Much of the Internet and Facebook has been built on grieving and argument and drama, and many people came to the site to do just that. Or believed they could share their love of animals with other animal lovers.
We are working out these problems. I have been much praised and thanks, and sometimes accused of being a monster, a sexist, of being brutal and frightening, devious and dishonest. One poster insisted I was deleting her messages and blocking her. Another was convinced I was manipulating settings to limit her photos. Another wrote – just before she left – that I had always had it in for her, was always out to get her. “How dare you tell me what do do here,” she fairly raged. Well, I said, it is my site. Another person suggested I was out to get her, no, I said, I just didn’t like her.
When I offered feedback to another member, he, begged me not to toss him out, as if getting feedback was a dire warning. I am a professional writer, I have been getting feedback all of my life, and see it as part of the work, but many people, I see, have never gotten any feedback and consider it a kind of persecution, a form of personal attack. Many people on the Internet have no conception of what editing or editorial direction is, they are so used to simply posting what they feel. There are people who took the opportunity and just took off, and those who simply cannot believe there could be any limits on what they do.
There are numerous technical problems, and I am getting messages day and night about privacy – there is none – and Facebook settings, photo storage and other glitches and issues. I am shocked at the level of fear and anger that breaks out and ignites almost spontaneously when rules are imposed or directions suggested. As always, I have much to learn, and I am working to learn it. But I know that whenever there is conflict, there are usually two sides to it. That is something to figure out.
And so many people joined the group with preconceptions about it. Few read the guidelines or bothered much with them. As often happens with me, people assume I only want to talk about animals, that any site of mine would naturally be focused on cute animal stories, on stories about grief and loss, on struggles stories and the sympathy they evoke. And the problem with the Internet is often that there are humans on it – gossips, people in cliques, alliances and intrigue.
The Open Group is not an animal site, not a place for therapy, not a source of sympathy (as opposed to encouragement and many people struggle with the difference), and as people discover this, conflict erupts. It has surprised me, but it really shouldn’t, what was I thinking? Conflict and hostility are the step-children of the Internet, there is this sense of entitlement, the idea that everything is free and you can say and do anything you won’t without restraint or even much thought.
Some people are quite stunned at the idea that there are rules that have to be followed, they consider it a form of fascism (often, I have been one of those people). So I have become both a creative co-conspirator and Dracula. I get a steady stream of somewhat schizophrenic messages thanking me for the site, and attacking me as an authoritarian monster. I am shocked at the level of paranoia and suspicion that exists all over the Internet, and to a small extent on the group.
Of course it wouldn’t be this easy, nothing worthwhile is. I am sticking to my guns. I am nothing if not willful, and not always a lot more. This is why, I suspect, I am alive.
The site is a jewel in the ether, I am quite proud of it, so much to see and read – Tess Wynn’s wonderful new voice and blog; Faith’s Mayer’s brilliant photostudies of the Dragonfly; Jeff Anderson’s award-winning photographs; Joe Hawthorn’s stylish paintings, Susan Taylor Brown’s striking portraits of her dogs; Karen Jones’s photographic evocations of her native Kentucky, Dana Goedewaagon’s original photos, Tom Atkin’s graceful poetry; Lesleigh Ann Schaeffer’s original photo designs and creations, Leslie Parke’s art and memories and Jennifer Bowman’s poignant and strikingly authentic writing. There are lots more, and I share their work on my Newsfeed every day.
The creative spark is bright on the Open Group, people who just get to work and run with it. But there are daily disagreements when I point out that the site will not be a grieving site, not be a place of arguments, not a cute animal bulletin board, not a dog worshiping site, a place that rewards gossip and paranoia, not another struggle story-I-am-so-sorry site. I call it a place for people to bring their good stuff. Despite these problems and frustrations, it is working and I am committed to it. The content is uniformly wonderful, sometimes brilliant. The good stuff arrives every day.
I admit to some discouragement some days, but mostly, to exhilaration.
And here is what I am learning;
– Be patient, always a problem for me. Be clear. Be consistent. The message will get through.
– Be flexible. No rule is absolute.
– Be organized. I have appointed two very competent fellow co-administrators, one to help with technical issues, the other to help me focus on content and offer constructive feedback. There will be more if necessary.
– Be ruthless. People who don’t want to follow the vision of the site need to go, the sooner the better, if the creative people get to do their work and the site survives. The list of people applying grows every day, and the people posting their creative work are getting stronger and more confident by the day.
– Be firm. I am committed to reducing the number of people on the site, so that we can explain the editorial focus better, know one another better, support one another and read each others work more efficiently. I will immediately remove anyone who disputes the guidelines on the site, refuses to follow them, or argues in a hostile and uncomfortable way. In this way, I am admittedly a digital Mussolini, as someone suggested. As with the blog, I did not create this site to argue about it, and I won’t spend too much of my time doing that.
The next step, is a series of much smaller groups, spawns of the Open Group – 10 to 15 people perhaps – who can really focus on their work, learn from one another, gain confidence and experience. That is a few months away.
For me, the creative digital community has been a dream for half of my life. I love the Open Group, I am committed to it. The group, like the rest of life is a delicious mix of good and bad, exciting and draining, what we want and what we don’t. Life happens, every single day, and the test of the spiritual life is not to live with trouble but the manner in which we learn to live with it.
So that’s my first report on the Open Group, a rich tapestry of the human experience, the nature of my life. I will keep you informed.