not quite random curiosity

[ratcreature]

The object of today's curiosity is signatures added to blog and journal posts. In particular the practice I've encountered in some blogs (mostly non-fandom) to include random religious scripture excerpts at the bottom of every post, even if the blog itself has no obvious religious content or otherwise preachy slant or anything like that. I tend to find this vaguely annoying, and usually won't subscribe then, even if I otherwise might have. Case in point, just now I came across one of those "a painting a day" blogs, and the art looked nice enough, but I find signature quotes that are unrelated to the content of the post annoying more often than not in general (especially the picture sigs on some message boards, I'd actually take preachy ones over those), but these seem even more obnoxious to me.

I understand that for some faiths there exists some sort of obligation to spread their words or something like that -- I vaguely remember that from confirmation classes at least -- but does it have to be in your art blog posts? It's not like I'm about to be converted by these. So now I'm curious: Do others like/dislike this kind of thing? Are indifferent? Maybe you overlook them, like with ad-blindness? Thus a poll:

Poll #2288 religious signatures?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40

View Respondents

What is your reaction to religious quotes as blog signatures?

View Answers

I like them.
0 (0.0%)

I like them only if they are from my religion.
0 (0.0%)

I don't mind them/just overlook them.
10 (25.0%)

I dislike them.
28 (70.0%)

Your radio buttons are oppressing me.
2 (5.0%)

Comments

Go you!

[sherrold]

Alaska Airlines is the biggest local airline, but I try to fly anyone else, just because they put cheesy religious cards in with the airplace food. I shouldn't care, but it annoys me. Yes, Christianity includes a command to 'spread the word', but that doesn't mean I can't find it completely aggravating.

Re: Go you!

[ratcreature]

Yeah. There used to be a really nice vegetarian restaurant I frequented, but it was operated by some kind of new age religious group, and while they didn't actually try to convert you, there were quotes in the menu and posters and such.

After I posted it occurred to me that maybe I should have made a distinction of being annoyed by such quotes from the mainstream religion in your area or minority religions, because obviously there are power differences and such, but I have to admit that all kinds of random religious/spiritual and even inspirational quotes annoy me, if they are slapped onto something else, where they don't actually belong.

[sherrold]

yeah, majortarian religious stuff bugs me *more*, but they all bug me. Maybe partly because I'm a pretty quiet atheist, and I feel like if I can keep quiet, so the heck should y'all...

[ratcreature]

Yeah. Up to a certain point I can understand why messianic religions are louder, after all many of them genuinely believe something awful will happen to everyone who does not believe the same, so from that perspective it would be a shitty thing to do not to try to convince others at all, but there is something to be said for appropriate and frankly also for effective places and means to do that.

I mean, I tend to think of it like my views on vegetarianism. I genuinely believe that we all would be better off ecologically, nutritionally (when considered world wide food production/distribution, obviously as omnivore an individual human with enough money can eat very healthy with meat), and ethically if everybody ate vegetarian, with the possible exception of traditional cultures in places where plants just don't grow well enough, and every vegetable has unreasonable energy/transportation cost compared to say the local caribou or whatever, but I mean in general and in particular in industrialized countries.

And when I first became vegetarian with 16 I actually pointed out my arguments at every opportunity. I pretty much drove my classmates crazy, because I called their cold cut sandwiches cadavers, and lectured about animal rights (sometimes with pictures of industrial farming and its animal torture) and ecological costs of the industrial meat production etc. constantly. But I don't think I convinced a single person, and was totally obnoxious. So once I was past the teenage ardor, I revised my strategy. I still argue in favor of my believes if opportunity arises, but not in every conversation and not with people where I have no chance at all to change their mind just then. Like I don't include a picture of a suffering turkey with every fanfic recs post or something like that.

[caiusmajor]

I don't like sigfiles in blogposts period; there's always a moment of confusion where I'm like, "Wait, is this part of the post? What's it doing here?"

Nor do I like having people's religion in my face. So double dislike here, and I'm glad I'm not tempted to subscribe to these blogs!

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I share this sentiment. I don't mind people being very forward about their religion much mentioning it often in the context of their lives, as long as it is not too preachy, but seriously why paste a random psalm at the bottom of your landscapes and bird paintings?

[astridv]

I would pick "I dislike them/just overlook them". I really can't see them as an effective means to spread the word. Come to think of it, it's like another kind of spam, for me as an atheist. I respect other people's religious beliefs, but I also think religion should be a private matter. Still, quotes like that won't keep me from reading a blog, I just ignore them.

[ratcreature]

I think my problem is that I've tried to develop the sort of selective blindness for sigs that I have for banner ads that sometimes slip through my adblock, but I can't quite manage, and these aren't even funny or clever. So yeah, spam sums it up.

[parhelion]

I mildly dislike them since they seem to combine the tiny annoyance of spam with the slight irritation of complete ineffectualness.

Still, I try to put up with them in practice since I had my couple of years of trying religion to solve my ethical quandaries when I was young, and I figure I racked up some tolerance-of-belief debts back then.

[ratcreature]

I would actually mind it less if someone had say a painting blog, and every now and then felt compelled to share how their religion inspired them or is important to them something like that. I don't mind that blogs are not always strictly "on topic" even if I don't care for that content.

What gets to me and prevents me from subscribing to these, even though I might for the "main content" part is that it is this random piece of stuff that does not fit, and with every post. Like spam, as you say. And with some other sigs, like say someone picks funny quotes, that's still jarring because there is the main part and the sig part, but at least that is content that I might read on its own, so two bits mixed together that don't fit, but neither annoys me as such.

[glockgal]

LOL word semantics: I can't say I actively dislike them, because live and let live, since it's not harming me*. But as your first commenter says: if they have the right to post quotes, I too have the right to find the quotes trite and simplistic.




*then again, it may not harm me; but perhaps it may harm others? In which case, maybe I do have more of a problem with it than I originally thought?

[ratcreature]

Yeah, after I posted it occurred to me that I maybe should have differentiated between the dominant/majority religions and minority religions, because there is power difference between these and their public presence, their preaching, history of oppression of others and such, but I admit that that hadn't really occurred to me, mostly because as an atheist with protestant cultural background I'm pretty much the mainstream where I live.

Personally I'm mostly bothered by the "spam aspects", i.e. that with every blog posts there is some part that does not belong to the topic of the blog/entry, and that the content of that tacked on part is not something I'd be reading on its own (like funny quotes or the like), so they seem more annoying that the usual sigs even. And I'm not that thrilled with those in blogs either.

[glockgal]

Good points!

:D Yeah, I don't really feel discomfited by seeing religious quotes; but not being religious (in a community sense), I admit I tend to make judgments/assumptions on the people who so fastidiously use them, heh.

Now the spam aspects, I totally get - for me, any unwieldy sig (religious or non-religious) that can sometimes get larger/more obnoxious than the post itself is just really annoyingly spammy. I feel the same way about tedious sig lines in emails as well!

[cereta]

Honestly, it depends on the quote itself. It's not so much "is it my religion" as "is it a religious principle I find irritating?" I mean, "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light," I might roll my eyes, but hey, they have as much right to proclaim their faith as I have to use my turtle icons. Something to the effect of "only through Jesus will you be saved," I find a little more annoying. Anything promising damnation gets my hackles up.

[ratcreature]

Well, in the particular blog in question that inspired this they seemed completely random. Not annoyingly long, or about salvation or something, and Jesus didn't stand out, but stuff like *goes to look again* "Psalm 17:8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings" and "Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.".

[sholio]

I'm pretty much with cereta that it depends (for me) on what is being said, and how in-your-face and chest-beating it is. I'm a fairly staunch atheist, but also a very live-and-let-live atheist, so if it makes people happy to have a cheerful little bible quote on their menus or blog or whatnot, it doesn't bother me. (There's someone on my flist, for example, who posts bible passages each Sunday -- it's not my thing, so I just scroll past, but it's not alienating to me as long as *they're* cool with me being my atheist self over here.) sherrold mentioned Alaska Airlines above -- that's a good example of the sort of thing that I, personally, don't mind at all; I actually feel like those little quotes on the placemats give the airline a bit of personality. But quotes about damnation, or if someone felt compelled to quote Rush Limbaugh at me on their blog all the time -- things I find personally offensive or politically repellent ... yeah, that's going to make me flee for greener Internet pastures very quickly. And the weay that I feel about it also depends hugely on how pushy they are about it -- someone posting a bible passage on Sunday, say, would be on the innocuous end of the spectrum to me, but the example you gave (someone who includes a bible quote with every piece of art) is leaning in the "evangelizing and annoying" direction, IMHO.

[ratcreature]

It's different if it is separate posts, those I can scroll past much more easily, and of course quotes on the side or stuff in the LJ design you don't see at all when reading via RSS, so those I wouldn't mind. It's that is a sig on a blog post that is crucial for my annoyance, not so much that it is religious. For me to be not annoyed at someone adding sigs, they need to be more or less consistently entertaining for me on their own, and even then I'm not thrilled.

But then I in 95% of the cases I skip past random inexplicable quotes some authors feel the need to put above each chapter of a novel and the like as well. I have never understood the urge to put pieces of text with another text that have either no or only some sort of arcane connection you can't discern at once as a reader. I find it annoying even if I recognize the quoted text. For me that does not enrich anthing or whatever this practice is trying to accomplish. IIRC I actually had to reread parts of Byatt's Possession (a book I really quite enjoyed) because it took me quite a while to realize the poem bits, that at first looked like the random quoted text lint I ignore at the begin of chapter, were a part of the narrative, and significant to the plot.

[goss]

Normally, I'd say I find it a little annoying, honestly.

But then, HAHA, the last post I made is basically one big old quote from a Hindu text. OH, THE IRONY. *facepalm* LOL. I have to ask you though, did you find the content of my post any bit annoying/offensive/weird? Just curious.

Or my default icon, for that matter? I never even thought it might make anyone uncomfortable, seriously. But now I'm thinking about like if someone on my fannish flist were to have a default completely ironic-free Jesus icon, what it would be like. Weird, I guess? I don't know... Would love to get your thoughts on that.

[ratcreature]

Separate posts don't bother me at all. With your post I pretty much scrolled past it like I do with most secular poems (I am rarely interested in poetry). If someone posted posted a lot of these kinds of quotes in relation to other content I probably would not subscribe, especially if they were uncut.

Sometimes I read religion-themed posts, sometimes not, that depends on how interesting I find the specific topic and in mixed journals I generally don't mind religion in an everyday context (people talking about their holidays on the cheerier end, or say about their faith helping them with a difficult situation or stuff like that), but what bothered me about the signature files with scripture quotes in the painting blog was that they had no connection to the main post, on top of being something I'm not interested in reading.

So when pondering whether to subscribe, I weighed that the thing I'd frequently enjoy, i.e. the daily painting (I didn't like all of these either, but plenty looked quite nice), there would be always some psalm attached, that being just a short quote, I would scan and read, and not care for. It kind of would be like getting a google text ad slapped onto every post or something, or the advertising signatures some free email providers add that you have to skip past.

Icons are a bit different, because they are on a different track, so they don't trigger my intolerance for random text bits. Though actually sometimes icons with texts that are unrelated to the content of the post bother me, so I guess in your example with the Jesus icon I would see it as decorative without text, but if there was some preachy text on it I'd parse it differently. I mean, for the longest time I had a reproduction of a medieval altar image on my desk, simply because I thought he art was pretty.

I dislike kitschy religious art (especially when done badly and really serious), but that's more an aesthetic objection. Which for me can be cause to find an icon annoying enough (even if it is not offensive in some way) that I will avoid seeing that icon and thus avoid reading the poster and even their comments. I can actually think of one icon that squicks me, and I can still not really explain why I dislike it so much. So my icon reactions are somewhat idiosyncratic.

[goss]

Ah, quite insightful! That's exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. Thanks for taking the time to indulge my curiousity. (also, HEE! appropriate icon.)

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Can't vote since the poll's on dw, but I usually overlook them. If it's just a quote at the end of the content and not a constant theme in the content itself. In fact, I just posted about buying the Tae Bo Inspirational workout exercise tape at a library sale, and there's a five minute speech about how the instructor found God before the exercise starts, and I just fast forward through it.

For some people, their religion is a big part of their lives. A scripture quote on an art blog...well, it's not that much different to me, than having a fannish icon on a RL post, something important to them that they automatically add.

[ratcreature]

Sorry about the poll, I've decided to consolidate polls there, rather than to repost the code anew, which is a pain with editing the crosspost. You can respond to polls with Open ID too, so no need for a DW account, though I admit that logging in if you don't usually use a site is a bit more effort.

I dislike sigs on blog post in general because I find them jarring no matter the content, and I somehow can't develop the equivalent to ad blindness to them, and the scripture parts are not even entertaining or funny like a clever quote might be. I dislike "inspirational" quotes that are not technically religious as well. I have actually not subscribed to some LJs because I disliked their icons too much. I vaguely remember that some years ago I even killfiled someone because I did not want to see their icon when they were posting to a community that was on my flist, so that their posts would be selectively removed.