The modern world is invading the Amish countryside.
A former member of the famously plain-living community had the internet in quilt stitches over a story of how the national phone emergency alert on Oct. 4 got his friends back home in major trouble.
Eli Yoder, who is ex-Amish, took to TikTok earlier this week to revealed how the alert — which had all American smartphones buzzing wildly for a moment and came as a shock to the outside world-shunning folk — rather awkwardly outed his pals, who were carrying secret phones in their hand-sewn pockets.
The Amish are forbidden from using most if not all modern technology — anything buzzing and beeping, particularly inside the home, would come as a shock to most.
“Guess what, I just got a couple of my Amish buddies shunned today by the Amish Church,” Yoder said in his now-viral video.
He went on: “Over the few years there’s been quite a few Amish men that reached out and wanted phones, so whenever they request to have a phone I’ll do everything I can to try to get them a phone.”
He continued with his tale, saying that after the revealing incident on Oct. 4. one of his pals had the Amish elders come to the house to talk to him “about something that they heard about him.”
“He might have to get shunned,” Yoder said, using the Amish church term for exclusion, or isolation from community life and activities.
In the comments section of his video, the influencer joked that “from now on, I guess I have to remember to give all my Amish buddies a heads up if there is a planned emergency alert test lol.”
According to a post on a web site dedicated to visiting Ohio’s Amish country, the religious group strongly dislike technology as it “weakens the family structure.”
Conveniences like electricity, television, automobiles and telephones “are considered to be a temptation that could cause vanity, create inequality, or lead the Amish away from their close-knit community.”
There have been other rumblings in Amish society in recent weeks, surrounding a new romance book set within the community.
“Tapestry of Love” by member Linda Byler has caught flack from the community — despite not having any sexual content in it.
“They are very tame books,” Byler, 65, told the Daily Mail last month, also dismissing contrasts to the BDSM-centered “Fifty Shades of Grey” books.
“There’s nothing unclean in them. There is some touching, my publisher said it would have to be discreet, and a little bit of a kiss,” she went on.
