“Yeah, that’s so true,” means nothing to me. I have no idea what you’re responding to. You could be reacting to any of the 8.4 tweets I post in an average day. Or you could be responding to something I said three days ago. How am I supposed to know?

It’s especially awkward when someone challenges or insults me. Sorry man, but I don’t know what you’re getting offended about unless you give me a little context. And I can’t give you a source on “that” unless you tell me what “that” is.

This lack of context for conversations is probably one of the biggest downsides to Twitter’s setup (which is saying a lot—this is a minor complaint) and it’s a definite area where Facebook is far superior.

(This is a fine example of when a 140-character limit would have produced a better result.)

Update: A few folks have pointed out that the thread of an @reply conversation is something Twitter is set up to follow. It’s just not immediately obvious. On the Twitter site, the tiny, grayed out text below an @reply will include a link back to the relevant tweet, assuming someone clicked on the ‘reply’ button in the first place. Most Twitter apps pick up on this and deploy the feature in some manner (though again, it’s not always obvious).

Good info to know, making me look kind of dumb.

Of course it still helps to give context in your response. Without context you have to assume someone knows about these features and assume that they used the ‘reply’ button. Sometimes just appending your “LOL” with a “Funky Chicken:” makes all the difference.

Those are just two quick examples of current network cancellations, though the airwaves are littered with shows cut down before they could tell their stories.

In this DVR, DVD, on-demand age I wonder if networks are only hurting themselves. Many viewers are getting to a point where they won’t commit to these long story-arc shows until they know it’s going to last. Why get wrapped up in a story line if it could potentially be canceled? Some people are opting to wait for a show to run its course before checking it out on DVD. It would help if networks could pick a show and stick with it. But maybe fans need to start demanding it. Maybe we should refuse to watch a show unless it has a two-season commitment. It’s not how Hollywood works, but maybe show creators should refuse to do a show unless they can get a multi-season commitment.

It’s unheard of, but it sure beats unrealized story arcs and half-revealed plots.

Here’s what 10-year-old “Sam” said when she asked him what he thought it meant to be adopted:

“Well, being adopted is when the kids that nobody wants are put into an orphanage and then if the kid is really good, someone rich will pick them and buy them to have in their family.”

Ouch.

She writes about five themes that continually come up about adopted children:

1. Adopted children are unwanted.
2. Adopted children can become more desirable when they exhibit good behavior, i.e. being the perfect child.
3. Adopted children are thought of as a commodity; they are a good that is exchanged in a transaction typically received by someone considered rich or well-to-do.
4. Adopted children are disposable; their permanence in their adoptive family is always conditional.
5. Adopted children deserve pity, because they are the kids who no one wants.

That’s even more heart-breaking. Help me in overcoming, shattering and in any way possible breaking these myths about adopted children. Kids (and all of us) need to hear the truth.

1. Adopted children are wanted, loved and needed. There’s a myth that birth mothers place their children for adoption because they don’t want the child. That’s just not true. In many cases they want to keep the child more than anything, but circumstances have conspired against them and made it difficult or impossible to make that choice. In many cases it is for the deep love of their child that they place them for adoption, knowing that an adoptive family can care for them better. That’s a horrible position for birth parents to be in.

But kids placed for adoption are not unwanted. Their families are unable to care for them. It has nothing to do with the value of the child. It has everything to do with the circumstances.

This is where we need to be careful with the very language we used to talk about adoption. Standard and insensitive language would say that a birth mother ‘gives up’ her child for adoption. That implies a birth mother has given up on her child and they are indeed unwanted. Language is pretty powerful. That’s why the proper language is that a birth mother ‘chooses adoption’ or ‘makes an adoption plan’. A child ‘is adopted’. That’s also why we use terms like ‘birth parents’ instead of ‘natural parents’ or ‘real parents’. (Note: It’s hard to keep up with the language. I originally wrote that a child is ‘placed for adoption’ as the proper language, but my wife corrected me. Thankfully, grace and forgiveness is common.)

2. The worth and value of an adopted child (or any child) has nothing to do with behavior. Children are inherently valuable. People are inherently valuable. “Good” children are no more deserving of loving parents than “bad” children. The idea that a child is adopted through good behavior—and conversely not adopted because of bad behavior—is gut-wrenching. Kids are adopted because they need families, not because they somehow earned a spot through good behavior.

3. Adopted children are not bought, the process is not a transaction, and adoptive parents are not all rich. The tremendous cost of adoption fuels this perception and it’s just a difficult one to get away from. Adoption requires a lot of red tape (for good reason), and that makes it an expensive process. Most of the people I know who have adopted are far from rich. Yes, as Americans we are certainly wealthy in comparison to the rest of the world. But we’re not six-figure families with four-car garages living in gated communities. Almost everyone I know who has adopted has relied on friends, family and strangers to help them raise the needed money. I don’t know anyone who just wrote a check for their adoption and paid for it in full.

4. Adopted children are in their adoptive families forever. Let me be clear on this—there is nothing temporary or conditional about the place of an adopted child in a family. Lexi and Milo are different in many ways: Lexi is a girl, Milo is a boy. Lexi is white, Milo is black. Lexi never crawled, Milo crawls over things. Lexi is loud, Milo is—wait, they’re both loud. Lexi is biological, Milo is adopted. But for all their differences, they have many similarities. They are both loved deeply. They are both amazing kids. They are both going to be embarrassed of their geeky dad. Milo has the same chance of being removed from our family as Lexi does: None. Nothing Milo or Lexi can do will cause us to love them less or to lose their place in our family. They can do many things that will cause us to lose our sanity, our patience or what have you, but those behavior choices are day to day things that will change. Our love for our children does nothing but grow and stretch and deepen over time. That’s as true for adopted children as it is for biological children. Children are children.

5. Adopted children deserve no more pity than other children. Pity is a strange thing. At times it seems natural, but other times it seems condescending and patronizing. I can say with certainty that children don’t want to be patronized. Children in need should be helped because it’s the right thing to do, not because they’re cute or sad or pitiful. But for all the negative reactions to pity, I am reminded of Gandalf’s comment to Frodo in the Lord of the Rings that pity is what stayed Bilbo’s hand and kept him from killing Gollum. Gandalf rightly sensed that Gollum still had a part to play in the final outcome. In that sense pity has value. But that’s also a pretty clear example of the negative connotation of pity—adopted children should not be pitied like Gollum.

We’re All Adopted
Adoption is a beautiful and powerful thing. Let’s shatter these misconceptions that somehow adopted children are unwanted or they are loved conditionally.

It bothered me that some kids have these ideas about adoption, so I asked Lexi what she thought adoption meant. She didn’t know. We talked a little about adoption. We talked about Milo being in Ethiopia and the nannies who took care of him.

“What’s a nanny?” Lexi asked.

“You know that picture of the woman holding Milo as a baby?”

“Yeah?”

“She was Milo’s nanny. She took care of him until we came to Ethiopia to get him.”

Lexi nodded: “She’s my sister.”

I smiled. “She is?” Lexi nodded and I couldn’t disagree with her. In a way, she’s right.

Then she told me we’re all adopted: “Momma’s adopted. Daddy’s adopted. Milo’s adopted. Lexi’s adopted.”

“We are?”

“Yep.”

She’s right. We are all adopted.

The front covers the basic Monkey Outta Nowhere info and the red monkey will actually be applied by hand with a rubber stamp. The back will cover three major side projects I’m involved with, the church communications blog Church Marketing Sucks, the public art site Start Seeing Art and this here personal blog.

After the UnSummit I complained about the difficulty of handing out separate cards for my various endeavors. Somebody suggested I go with a combined card and my designer friend Michael Buckingham of Holy Cow Creative came up with the idea of putting the side projects on the back of my Monkey Outta Nowhere card. It’s an ideal solution since Monkey Outta Nowhere is tied to all three and is really the over-arching brand. It allows me to focus on my main company while still mentioning the assorted side projects. It also means no more juggling multiple cards.

Michael updated my old card and worked within my limitations (don’t touch the logo, don’t touch the monkey) to come up with this new take. It’s very much in the same vein as my old card (same logo, same monkey, same colors), but it’s a major boost in quality. I know how important designers are and how much they can bring to the table, but it’s cool to see it firsthand. I ordered the cards from Uprinting.com today and I’m excited to get them in my hands and see if they’re as cool in reality as they are on screen (that step is always a little scary).

Major thanks goes to Michael Buckingham for the design (I should also give a tip of the hat to Matthew Taylor who gave me advice on the original design five years ago and helped me solidify the logo and the monkey), Jeffrey Martin for the Start Seeing Art logo (we’ll be rolling that out to the Start Seeing Art site soon) and Gabe Taviano for mentioning Uprinting.com as a good (and cheap) source for business card printing.

Unlike Taviano, I managed to order my new cards just in time to miss the only major out of town conference I’ve attended in five years. Oops. On the plus side, they’ll arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.

And the best part? No more using a sharpie to cross out the three-year-old mailing address.

They even threw in a dozen fresh eggs from the free range chickens that were wandering the yard. Oddly enough it was a pretty swank neighborhood for free range chickens.

If I have to buy firewood I’d rather help a couple kids help people in need.

In and of itself, that’s funny. I’ll let you revel in it.

Now go look at the site. It’s down right now because of a massive attack (screenshot). Must be the persecution of the last days.

No seriously. That’s what founder James L. Paris blamed the attack on. That’s funny.

The mustachioed Paris has a Twitter account. And a financial advice site called Christian Money.

That’s funny, too.

Then there’s Christian author and humorist Matthew Paul Turner who discovered Christian Chirp and went from incredulous to curious to #1 chirper to deleted in less than 24 hours.

That’s funny. If you like Turner’s irreverent take on faith, you’ll love his skewering of Joel Osteen.

Then Michael Hyatt, CEO of the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson made a comment about Chirper being a Christian ghetto, prompting multiple responses from Paris.

Christian media “mogul” cat fight. That’s kind of funny.

Paris’ best insult? Pointing out Hyatt’s publishing history, which includes a trio of Y2K survival books (one is a novel!).

OK, no disrespect to Hyatt, but that’s hilarious.

When it gets less funny is this blog post, the Truth about James L. Paris and Christian Chirp, alleging that he lied about being banned from Twitter (part of the ethos of Christian Chirp), that he censors Chirp content and that he was indicted for securities fraud. The comments get even uglier as Paris himself shows up to argue the charges.

Oh, Christians. And we wonder why people think we’re so weird (I mean persecuted). Musician and rabble-rouser Justin McRoberts has a good take on Christian Chirp. It’s not ha-ha funny, but it’s good.

As great a techno wonder as Craigslist is, I hate using it. Why? It’s nothing wrong with the site, it’s the people. Sadly people are often the downfall to many of technology’s innovations. Every time I post something on Craigslist I get countless e-mails with stupid questions, drawn out conversations that don’t go anywhere and time and time again I’m left hanging.

So here’s a tip to improve your Craigslist experience: Be helpful.

Responding to a Craigslist Ad
If you’re responding to something posted on Craigslist, be helpful:

• Read the listing thoroughly and make sure you’re not asking something that’s answered in the listing.
• If you’re looking at a widely available retail product, don’t ask the poster inane questions about it. They’re not a salesperson. Look it up online. Do your own research.
• Don’t contact the person unless you’re ready to buy. It’s OK to contact the seller and ask a few questions, but Craigslist isn’t for window shoppers.
• When you’re ready to contact the seller and buy, get to the point. So many people ask if the item is still available. Assume it is and skip straight to the terms. Don’t prolong the purchase with needless back and forth.
• Don’t leave a seller hanging. If you’re interested in the item, follow through. Overly polite sellers might give you first dibs and lose sales waiting on you. Other sellers will skip to the next interested buyer and you’ll be out of luck.

Posting a Craigslist Ad
If you’re posting something on Craigslist, be helpful:

• Include a picture of your actual item. It may seem like a pain, especially if you’re selling a widely available retail product, but it gives you credability. Here’s the actual product, I’m not making this up.
• Pack your posting full of details. Anticipate questions and include everything you can think of, whether or not it may be relevant. It should go without saying, but be honest.
• Be very specific about your terms. Cash or trade? Pick up or drop off? If you don’t specify you leave the door open to all sorts of wacky ideas.
• As people ask questions, update your listing with the answers. More than likely other people have the same questions.
• Delete your post when the item sells and contact any remaining inquirers to let them know the item sold. A quick one-sentence e-mail blind-copied to everyone will do. No one wants to be left hanging.

Not all my experiences on Craigslist are that painful. But I’ve had enough awkward and pointless interactions to know better. Simply being helpful would have made all the difference.

It’s also worth repeating the standard web advice: be careful.

I’ve been friended by my mother. Now I know how everyone feels.

Once the initial shock faded I approved that friend request and heartily (and somewhat jokingly) welcomed my mother into the world of Facebook.

The idea of children being embarrassed of their parents online is kind of funny. I get it. I think what’s behind all of it is the false sense of privacy that we have online. We have this sense that somehow certain people aren’t seeing what we’re saying online, that this is our own unique space. The problem with that is that it’s just not true. No matter how protected you think you are, whatever you do or say online is public knowledge. You have no expectation of privacy (or you shouldn’t).

And I get that especially those wild teens want to have their own private space where their parents aren’t eavesdropping. But the problem is that nothing is secret. The whole private/public divide is a mirage. It comes down to what your mother always told you: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Because whoever you’re bad mouthing is likely to come across whatever you said. And that might not be a big deal if you’re talking about random strangers, but it gets ugly (and legal) when you talk about employers or coworkers or friends or relatives. If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, then don’t say it. Or at least be prepared for the consequences.

Because honestly, if your mom getting on Facebook changes your behavior, then you don’t have much integrity to begin with. If that’s the case you’re either lying to your mom or you’re lying to everyone else. Don’t be a liar.

I think part of what’s so difficult about social media is that it’s a new platform to talk about and react and comment on things that don’t frequently come up in every day conversation. So suddenly political ideas or religious views or lewd jokes are seen by people we never expected or intended. Not only is it easy to misunderstand but there’s little or no context. It’s a recipe for division (just look at the Facebook comments during last year’s election).

These kinds of social media interactions allow us to see parts of people we would never see before. That takes some getting used to. I think it also takes some understanding on all sides. Moms need to understand that when they see their kids joking and responding to friends. And likewise kids need to get that when they see their parents being real people.

Remember that the next time you see someone say something you take offense at. A little honesty and a little understanding would go a long way.

Abby alluded to it yesterday and now here’s a bit of the original followed by Lexi’s rendition:

You can snag a copy of “Devil’s Right Hand.” It’s included in the Unearthed box set:

iTunes: Single / Box set

Amazon: Digital Single / Digital Box set / CD box set

But that’s besides the point.

He said that the most important cause for today’s generation is the environment. Easily the number one cause they rally behind. Why? He said because it’s easy. Few will argue about the importance of protecting our planet. It requires little research and little knowledge. You can do simple things to be more eco-friendly and you’ve done your part. Compare that to health care. There’s a cause that’s not simple. It requires loads of research, you’ll face lots of opposition and argument, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a simple way to get involved like recycling paper or turning off a light.

“Social cause used to mean marching and burning bras,” Runge said. “Today it means wearing a bracelet or a T-shirt. Putting a sticker on your laptop. It’s too easy.”

He has a point. We like causes that are easy. It’s easy to slap an anti-abortion sticker on your car. It’s a lot harder to volunteer in a crisis pregnancy center or even support a woman so she can keep her child.

But I think part of it is cutting through crap and making things clear. I like charity: water because they make the case for clean water so simple and compelling. Compare that to the fair trade chocolate campaign. It’s an equally compelling cause, but they haven’t simplified or clarified the cause, the call to action or anything to make it easy enough to get involved. I can still claim confusion and rest in my inaction. I like M&Ms. If you want me to stop eating them you need to make a compelling case. I feel like a bastard saying that, but it’s true.

What I’m saying is that in some ways causes should be easy. It should be easy to understand the issue. It should be easy to take action, whether it’s donating money, spreading the word, changing your behavior or whatever. And the results of your action should be clear.

The cause itself may not be easy. But I should be able to engage with the cause with ease. Invisible Children strikes me as an incredibly complicated cause that they’ve made very easy.

So I think Runge is right—we like easy causes. But I think that’s simplifying it. We like causes where we can make a difference. We like causes where we can see a difference. If you make that part easy, I think people will be willing to do incredibly challenging things. I’ll do the hard work and make the hard choices, but only if you’ve made the decision easy.

I think there are a lot of lessons here for nonprofits and churches. Most organizations want people to go farther than simple bumpersticker support. And I think if you make the path clear, people will follow it, no matter how hard it is. The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama is clear proof of that. Presidential campaigning has never been simple or easy, but the Obama campaign made it clear and compelling and people volunteered and donated like never before.

Make it easy to support a hard cause.