Burned Haystack® Quick Start Guide and FAQs about the Facebook Group
FAQs About the Burned Haystack Facebook Group:
Q: Why can’t I post or comment?
A: Because of the size of the group, I limit posting to 24 hours between Sunday morning and Monday morning (U.S. time) each week. Unlimited posts in a group of this size would dominate everyone’s Facebook feed and result in a degree of repetition and irrelevance that people would find annoying and burdensome.
Also important and relevant: Burned Haystack® is a public scholarship project, and the group was convened as a teaching site, so it’s not moderated like other social media groups.
The goal of the project is to teach women how to use applied rhetoric (specifically a method called critical discourse analysis) in ways that protect time, sanity, and wellbeing on the dating apps. It is freely accessible to everyone.
The teaching in this project involves discussion, just like most lecture courses involve discussion. Also like most lecture courses, the discussion must inform the content and move the collective knowledge forward, which means it doesn’t go on forever unfettered on any given topic; instead, each question or topic is granted an adequate and appropriate amount of discussion space and then the group moves forward to the next topic; this is how we create a productive learning community, build upon prior content, and engage nuance and new applications of the content.
Q: But can you explain exactly why you limit posting and commenting?
A: Yes, and I’ll answer that in a second, but here’s the important point:
If you can’t post or comment, that means NO ONE can post or comment.
These settings are universal to the group, not individual to each member. I’ve gotten a lot of communications recently where people seem to believe I have singled them out for some reason and that they personally are being prevented from posting and commenting. That is never the case.
I addressed posting above. These are the reasons I disable commenting:To prevent fighting. In-group fighting is one of the number one reasons Facebook groups are shut down, so I disable commenting on posts that are generating fights (or that I know from experience are going to generate fights) in order to protect the group.
Groups of this size are frequently targeted by scams. Scammers are most likely to exploit high-volume commenting on posts because they want the visibility. Disabling commenting prior to when scammers hit posts is protective of the group.
There’s a point of diminishing returns with commenting. If a group member shares a question about her experience, maybe 200 responses is enough. 200 responses is usually *more* than enough, actually. There just aren’t generally thousands of different things to say about any particular issue, and excessively large numbers of people offering feedback all at once can feel overwhelming and oppressive.
Q: What’s B2B mean?
A: It means “Block to Burn,” and it’s an important rhetorical move in Burned Haystack.® You’re going to learn all about rhetoric in this group, and you’re going to love it because it’s a superpower ✊🔥
Q: Is it a violation of my freedom of speech if Jennie turns off commenting on a post in her Facebook group? (Believe it or not, this has been said to me. Many times.)
A: No. Freedom of speech refers to the rights of citizens to express themselves without censorship or fear of retribution from the government. Burned Haystack Dating Method is unaffiliated with The Government.
Q: Am I “being silenced” if Jennie limits posting and comments in her Facebook group? (Another accusation frequently leveraged against me.)
A: No. “Being silenced” refers to the use of force or threat to prevent someone from speaking. A private individual with no legal or governmental authority who limits commenting in her Facebook group is not “silencing” anyone. It is actually a very privileged thing to even claim, given the number of people across the world who are actually being silenced.
Now that all that is out of the way, here are a bunch of resources to help you get started using Burned Haystack Dating Method:
Pre-order Burn the Haystack (the comprehensive book on Burned Haystack Dating Method, forthcoming from HarperCollins) here: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/burn-the-haystack-jennie-young?variant=43947396399138
My professional website here:
https://www.burnthehaystack.com/
Follow on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/word_case_scenario/
A couple more important notes:
This project and this group are politically liberal in orientation. It is founded upon feminist principles.
The group is non-monetized, and I am not compensated for my work or intellectual labor in creating or moderating the group. I am not a “dating coach,” and I do not take on individual clients. Burned Haystack® is a grass-roots, community-supported endeavor.
After a year or so, I've noticed you've settled into the sweet spot re: number of comments (i.e., before repetition fatigues and the bots and scams and fights make for a free-for-all), and I am so grateful for your stewardship and its protection. It also has me reading ALL the comments (and they're so incredibly insightful. 450 comments would be too overwhelming to even begin reading). When comments are closed, I go looking for the one I would have made; I always find it and my reaction is almost always, "They said it better." Thank you, Jennie, for the thoroughly delightful, curated user experience!
Even though I think you should not have had to take on the additional labor of writing this up again because people can’t be bothered to read what you’ve written, and they want to claim oppression when they don’t get exactly what they want exactly when they want it, great work as always.