As a pastor, I’m interested in discipleship. Christians are called to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship has everything to do with the disciplines we walk by in our lives. Things like Bible reading, prayer, and fasting are hallmarks of standard Christian discipleship. The basic thrust is that these disciplines help the Christian to follow Christ more faithfully.

I am not the first pastor to be concerned with the other forms of discipleship that the members of the congregation are engaged in. There’s a popular adage among those who carry the conviction that Christian children should have a Christian education: if you send your kids to Caesar (government schools), don’t be surprised that they end up as Romans. This adage is all about discipleship. If your kids are being “discipled” in government schools for 30 to 40 hours a week, that will have an impact.

Over the last 15 years, a new form of competing discipleship has emerged that I believe many Christians are heavily involved in but minimally aware of. It is the discipleship of our digital lives. Our “digital discipleship.”

While this digital discipleship impacts men and women alike, an area of particular concern for me is the way many young men who are “very online” are being shaped by this digital discipleship. This is because the digital lives of many young men in our churches takes place on “The Internet of Beefs”.

In January of 2020, the website known as Ribbonfarm published an article by Venkatesh Rao entitled “The Internet of Beefs”. In the article, Venkatesh Rao describes what the “Internet of Beefs” is, how it works, and who its main participants are.

For me, the article worked something like the end of an M. Night Shyamalan movie where you need to reframe how you understand the whole movie based on what has been revealed. “The Internet of Beefs” article reveals how a very large corner of Social Media operates (specifically the corner many young men inhabit online). It has shown me how the digital discipleship of many young men inhibits their ability to engage in the real life discipleship of the Church.

In the remainder of this article I will show how several aspects of Rao’s article provide a framework for understanding how social media works. Having done that, I will attempt to present some practical ideas for ministering to the “very online” young men in our midst.

What is “the Internet of Beefs”?

Let’s start by defining the term “Internet of Beefs,” (hereafter IoB).

Unfortunately, Rao does not provide a cut and dry definition of the term, but I’ll summarize his points by defining it thus:

The IoB is an ecosystem of perpetual online conflicts where polarized factions, represented by highly visible individuals and their supporters, engage in continuous, performative battles over ideologies, opinions, or controversies. These conflicts, often fueled by social media algorithms, thrive on outrage and attention-seeking behaviors, with little intention of resolution or constructive dialogue. The primary aim is not to resolve issues but to assert dominance in an endless cycle of virtual skirmishes.

If you spend any time at all on social media, it is hard to argue that this doesn’t precisely describe the majority of online conflict. If you’ve ever tried to engage in any level of “good faith” dialogue on X you may have found yourself in a conflict that you didn’t anticipate.

One reason why nothing gets resolved on Social Media is because the IoB has a vested interest in making sure things don’t get resolved. The algorithms that feed us the IoB thrive off of conflict and seek to create an endless cycle of skirmishes.

X (and other social media platforms) can give the impression that they exist to be a platform for dialogue. But the reality can often be quite different.

I’ll try to illustrate by drawing a comparison to the fight against abortion. I’m sure many of you have been frustrated by the fact that it seems like some of the big organizations that exist to end abortion don’t really seem to want abortion to go away. I’m by no means the first to point out that if abortion was ended once and for all, these big anti-abortion organizations would cease to be necessary.

The IoB operates in a similar way.

The reason why you can’t really have a conversation with a “beef-only thinker” is because, as Rao says, “Anything that is not an expression of pure, unqualified support for whatever they are doing or saying is received as a mark of disrespect, and a provocation to conflict.”

“A provocation to conflict” is what the IoB is. It is an algorithmically induced digital gang war. But who are the gang members?

Mooks and Knights

While defining the IoB is helpful, there is a particular aspect of the IoB that I found particularly helpful to understand what is occurring online, especially on X.

Rao explains that, at its core, the IoB is something of a feudal structure where participants seek honor and recognition more than they pursue a grand strategy.

Accordingly, it is a deep mistake to think that those who are participants in the IoB are interested in having a constructive conversation. The reason this is the case is based on where a majority of the fuel for the IoB comes from.

I just mentioned that Rao claims the IoB has a “feudal” structure, and he means this quite literally. According to Rao, the IoB is literally populated by two groups of people: “Knights” and “Mooks”.

Rao states that,

The semantic structure of the Internet of Beefs is shaped by high-profile beefs between charismatic celebrity knights loosely affiliated with various citadel-like strongholds peopled by opt-in armies of mooks. The vast majority of the energy of the conflict lies in interchangeable mooks facing off against each other, loosely along lines indicated by the knights they follow, in innumerable battles that play out every minute across the IoB.

In other words, the majority of conflicts on social media take place because some high profile figure (a “knight”) begins a skirmish. Then, in response to the skirmish, a whole host of followers (“Mooks”) comes to fight on behalf of their “knight”.

What is so informative in this economy is that the goal of the “mooks” isn’t to win an argument or to convince the other side. Rather, the goal is to be recognized by the knight. The goal of the mook is to be elevated and highlighted for the role they played in the digital skirmish. It’s the digital version of “street cred.” As Rao puts it, “There is no higher honor for a mook than to be noticed by the knights they fight for. As a result, the fealty of the mook is the currency of the manorial economy of the IoB.”

Before moving on to why all this is relevant for pastors, but before doing so I’d like to lay out one more facet of the IoB.

The “Internet of Beefs” as “Throwaway Culture”

In order to establish this last facet, I want to reiterate the conclusion of the last thing I quoted: “the fealty of the mook is the currency of the manorial economy of the IoB.”

At one level, using terms like “currency” and “economy” is simply a matter of speaking. However, it is important to understand that this really is an economy.

I will use X to show this. X makes money by selling advertisements. The more people who use X, the more revenue X can make. But what is X’s product? X’s product is the content of its users that bring people to X. Because of this, X rewards accounts that drive traffic to their platform. Algorithms tend to promote the content that brings the most people to the platform.

Because of this, many X users follow the practice of “Engagement Harvesting”. This is the practice of purposefully producing content that will “harvest” the most “engagement”.

The economy of the IoB is an economy where “Knights” attempt to produce content that will get both their “mooks” and the “mooks” of their enemies to engage with their content. This is something like the phrase, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”. On the IoB, conflict is the name of the game; and there’s no such thing as a bad conflict.

Another way to view all this is to see that the IoB is the online equivalent of a “Throwaway Culture”.

Here’s what I mean. In our consumer-driven culture, the way many companies generate income is by planning for their products to fail. Everyone’s smart phone is designed to last about 4–5 years so that you have to buy a new one. Most people don’t get their phones fixed; they simply “upgrade” to a new phone. This isn’t a “bug”; it’s a “feature.”

The IoB works along the same lines. Again Rao, “The conflict must be as impossible to terminate as the notional utopias being sought are impossible to actually attain. Beefing, in other words, is a lousy way to conduct or resolve an unsustainable conflict, but an excellent way to perpetuate and grow a sustainable one.”

On the IoB, Knights perpetuate a world of conflict because they have an army of mooks who generate prestige for them. Knights are like gang leaders who bring young men into their gang. They offer attention and recognition to these mooks who are starved for such attention. In return, the knights are able to thrive in the “Throwaway Culture” of the IoB.

The IoB isn’t about producing quality. It’s about producing one skirmish after another. It’s a throwaway culture of planned obsolescence. And just like our material consumer culture, the producers of digital consumer products (Knights) often reap financial reward.

Ministering to the Mooks

The main reason these things are worth considering is because I think there are many mooks in our churches.

And I think this is significant for one of the reasons that Rao gives later in his article. Near the end of his article he writes,

“The most dangerous players [in the IoB] are not the most celebrated knights, but the mookiest mooks, animated by a sincere belief that they too, are knights, unable to recognize their own essential inconsequentiality, and mistaking their literacy in a discourse for ironic above-the-ordinary-mook stature.”

I used to teach high school students and coach a high school soccer team. With each year I taught and coached, I became acquainted with the new lingo of that year’s “youth culture.” Each year new and often absurd words and phrases would emerge.

This surprises no one. Adolescents often seek to form a language of their own in order to establish some sort of distance from their elders.

However, one thing that is typically missed by adolescents is that their mastery of the latest lingo is of little to no real consequence in their lives. Being able to pick up on the language of teenagers does not make someone a significant individual. However, if you try to convince a young man of this, you are unlikely to convince them.

This same reality is true of mooks. Mooks are, as the saying goes, “very online.” People who are “very online” (which is an increasing number of young men) become incapable of recognizing the inconsequentiality of their online “accomplishments”. The mook spends a great deal of time online thinking they are fighting battles of significance. However, the reality is they are largely being taken advantage of by knights whose approval and recognition they deeply crave.

While it is easy to look at these mooks and deride or dismiss them, I think we need to take a step back and consider what’s going on here and how we might minister to such mooks in our midst.

I drew a parallel earlier between the feudal structure of the IoB and street gangs. To carry this forward I want to ask a question. What would drive a young man to enter into a gang? If I’m not mistaken, the overwhelming factor that leads young men to join a gang is fatherlessness.

I believe a similar reality is true for the mooks in our midst.

These young men are flocking to the approval of knights on the IoB looking to fill a void that was left by their own earthly fathers. Fatherlessness is one of the biggest issues, not just in our culture, but also in our churches.

And it’s important that we remember that being reconciled to the heavenly Father doesn’t immediately and miraculously heal all the scars that people have experienced from their earthly fathers. Christians from fatherless and broken homes still deal with many of the same problems as non-Christians from fatherless and broken homes.

As we seek to minister to mooks in our churches, we should bear these things in mind.

Who Wants to be a Mook?

I think one way to minister to these young men is to try and show them some of the realities I’ve presented here in this article. Showing someone their a mook would likely go a long way in helping them to stop being a mook.

If there is a young man in your church who is constantly wanting to talk to you about the latest skirmishes on the IoB, it might be time for you to take him out to lunch and begin asking some probing questions. Perhaps after the initial conversation you ask him to read the Rao article and schedule a follow up meeting to discuss it.

As a pastor (or elder, or mentor, etc.), you could challenge the young man to spend a season away from social media (maybe two weeks), unplugged from the IoB. After that time you could get together again and discuss what his experience has been like.

From Digital Dystopias to Analogue Activity

Our congregants are disciples of a digital dystopia. And their discipleship shapes the way they view themselves, their fellow church members, their pastors, and their churches.

I think another practical avenue of ministry is pastors and churches to encourage their congregants to return to analogue forms of discipleship. We need to seek to move people from the digital to the real—real space, real time, and real people.

We often speak about the internet as digital “space.” But it isn’t “space” at all. Online, there is no space, no time, and no limits. There is a kind of “God complex” that is inherent to some aspects of digital life. Our digital technologies feed off the lie that we can transcend the good limitation that God has placed upon our humanity.

But our human limitations are good. God designed us this way and when we push back against God’s design we are met with despair. It’s no wonder that we are creating the “Anxious Generation”.

While digital technologies exacerbate our humanity in this way, analogue activities affirm the humane limitations God has placed on our being. Encouraging parishioners toward activities, hobbies, and habits that take them offline becomes increasingly necessary in a day when the pull of the digital sphere feels impossible to resist.

It’s worth bringing up at this point something I can only hint at in this article. It is certainly important to ask as pastors, “in what ways are we tempted to add fuel to the IoB in our own digital lives?”

I do think there is something of a responsibility for church leaders to be aware and “present” in the digital public square. But I’m not fully convinced that there is a way to be in the “Internet of Beefs” but not of the “Internet of Beefs”.

Venkatesh Rao opens the article by comparing the IoB to a “Crash-only Program.” This kind of software has no viable shut off mechanism. It can only be stopped by crashing it. Often this means unplugging the computer physically. If the IoB is a “Crash-only Program” is there a way to be in it but not of it? Or is the only real way forward to unplug (at least from X)?

Whether or not someone lands on that conclusion, I do think these questions should guide how we seek to minister to the mooks in our midst. And not just the mooks but likely many of our congregants who are too online (as mooks are to ideological battles on X so the ladies in your church are to a different kind of digital skirmish on Facebook and Instagram).

But there is another (and last) reason why our congregants are in desperate need of digital detox.

Too often mooks and denizens of the digital age think they are engaging with other people online. However, most of the time, they are really interacting with projections of their own imagination. On social media, you present an icon of yourself into the infinite void of the internet. Likewise, you are presented with icons and images of other people. The digital world teaches you to interact with a fashioned image of the “other” not the real thing. As Ransom puts it so poignantly in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength when he describes the marriage practices of modern couples, “each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them”.

The sin of our digital age is the sin of every age—the sin of idolatry. We make subtly crafted images to please ourselves because we are not satisfied by the “real.” But idolatry in all forms is empty, just as the satisfaction we desire from digital space is empty.

So the word to knights, mooks, and all being shaped by digital discipleship is the same, turn away from images crafted by human hands (or keystrokes) to the one true and living God. He is the maker of heaven and earth and he has called us to the real.

Ministering to Mooks on the Internet of Beefs was first published on Michael Hansen’s Substack “Notes From the Blue Room”.