Autumn afternoon by the river
Taken in November 2015

The brilliance of Socality Barbie

Socality is one of the recent movements within Christianity, heavily leaning on online presence. To be more precise, on a carefully crafted, aestheticised image of urban, hipster millennials in search of authentic Christian spirituality. It first took off on Instagram, where it continues to exist as a stream of landscape photographs, adventure snapshots and upbeat selfies. What initially constituted it as a movement (on the official website it's also described as a platform and a concept) was a large number of people posting selfies with the caption "I am @Socality", thus identifying with the idea behind the project.

The campaign remains about mobilizing Christians active on social media, encouraging them to form networks with the aim of "connecting churches, organizations and businesses to work together for community development." The website doesn't reveal much about the theology behind it: article 6 under Who We Are simply states that "Socality, at its foundation, is about loving God, loving people and committing to the process." It all has an emerging church feel to it. At least the rhetoric is very similar in that there's an attempt to provide space for people who would otherwise not go to church and who don't feel comfortable about the idea of organized religion, while still identifying as Christian.

However, FAQ briefly mentions that Socality leadership team is "in or under leadership in Bible-believing churches." I've found that much more telling, although it's left me wondering why this piece of information has been relegated to the proverbial small print, with no further details available. Technically, a Bible-believing church could be anything from a traditional Quaker community to the LDS Church. The only group of people who wouldn't find this reference vague at all are the evangelicals. I might be wrong, but I've come to the conclusion that Socality is basically a conservative evangelical attempt to woo the otherwise rather liberal millennials. If so, it's a clever ploy, but also very naive.

With only 178.000 followers on Instagram, Socality has been far surpassed by Socality Barbie who, at present, has 1,3 million followers, plus a steady fan base on Twitter. Who on Earth is Socality Barbie? The Guardian recently published an article about this "newest social media sensation", within its Fashion section, describing it as a parody of an impossible lifestyle - the sort of lifestyle reflected by the constant stream of images on Instagram, Tumblr and elsewhere, showing happy, healthy young people (most of them conspicuously white, but that's another subject), living the life of adventure and authenticity. Socality Barbie has been subverting the whole concept by posting the exact same kind of images, only substituting actual people with a Barbie doll and adding witty comments, exposing the largely superficial nature of (self)representation in the social media.

The Guardian article doesn't even mention the original Socality and its evangelical agenda, focusing instead entirely on Instagram as "a world of commodified hipsterdom." It does sound like a fair description of much of the social media landscape, but what does it say of religious efforts to profit from that or conform to it?

P.S. Only several days ago, Darby Cisneros, the person behind the Socality Barbie persona, announced she will be ending her Instagram presence, at the height of its popularity. The Instagram account will stay open for a while.

An old door
August 2015