The spirituality of TikTok

Is a new kind of religion forming on the internet? The Tuesday edition of the Goods newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. 🙏 Smells like screen spirit 🔮 “It just doesn’t sit right with me,” begins [a TikTok]( by a user named Evelyn Juarez. It’s a breakdown of the [tragedy at Astroworld](, the Travis Scott concert in early November where eight people died and more than 300 were injured. But the video isn’t about what actually happened there. It’s about the supposed satanic symbolism of the set: “They tryna tell us something, we just keep ignoring all the signs,” reads its caption, followed by the hashtags #wakeup, #witchcraft, and #illuminati. Juarez, a 25-year-old in Dallas, is a typical TikToker, albeit a quite popular one, with 1.4 million followers. Many of her videos reveal an interest in true crime and conspiracy theories — the Gabby Petito case, for instance, or Lil Nas X’s [“devil shoes,”]( or the theory that multiple world governments are [hiding information about Antarctica](. One of [her videos]( from November suggests that a survey sent to Texas residents about the use of electricity for critical health care could signify that “something is coming and [the state government] knows it.” Her beliefs are reminiscent of many others on the internet, people who speak of “bad vibes,” demonic spirits, or a cosmic calamity looming just over the horizon, one that the government may be trying to keep secret. Juarez tells me she was raised Christian, although at age 19 she began to have a more personal relationship with God outside of organized religion. Today, she identifies more as spiritual, as [many more young people do](, many of them working out their ideas in real time online. They may talk about [manifesting their dreams]( and [faceless sex traffickers]( waiting to install tracking devices on women’s parked cars. Some might act almost as prophets or shamans, spreading the good word and guiding prospective believers, while others might just lurk in the comments. They might believe all or only some of these ideas — part of the draw of internet spirituality is that it’s perfectly pick-and-choosable — but more than anything, they believe in the importance of keeping an open mind to whatever else might be out there. I asked Joseph Russo, a professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University, if this loosely related web of beliefs could ever come together to form into its own kind of religion. “I think it already has,” he says. Call it the religion of “just asking questions.” Or the religion of “doing your own research.” It’s still in its infancy, and has evolved in an attempt to correct a societal wrong: that the world is a pretty fucked up place and it doesn’t seem like the current system of dealing with it is really working, so maybe something else is going on, something just out of reason’s reach. The religion of the internet has also already culminated in real-world violence, the most obvious examples being the QAnon-related [coup on January 6]( and the conspiracy theories surrounding [lifesaving vaccines](. Yet its more innocuous effects have been likewise transformative. Consider the widespread mainstreaming of astrology over the past decade, the renewed interest in holistic medicine, or the girlboss optimism of multi-level marketing companies. These are all frameworks of belief that question traditional logic and institutional thought — for instance, that [science-backed medicinal practices]( work better to cure disease than essential oils, that 99 percent of people who sign up for an MLM [end up losing money](, or that the idea that your entire personality can be determined by the positioning of the stars at the time of your birth is [fundamentally false](. These are beliefs that cast oneself as the exception to the normal rules of the universe, that perhaps even if the data says that rates of violent crime have dropped [considerably since the 1990s](, you, personally, are in far graver danger than you were the year before. 2020 was the [first year on record]( that the majority of Americans said they did not belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque; from the 1930s to the turn of the 21st century, around 70 percent of Americans did belong to one. Americans, particularly younger ones, increasingly report that they [have no religious preference](, or as some have put it, it's “the rise of the nones.” But perhaps “none” doesn’t quite tell the whole story. The religion of the internet posits questions like, “what’s the harm in believing?” and “why shouldn’t I be prepared for the worst?” The deeper you go, the harder those questions are to answer. [Continue reading »](  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Clickbait 👀 - Speaking of conspiracy theories, birds are, in fact, real, and the whole “birds aren’t real” thing is a parody [poking fun at misinformation](. - Why so many [people (wrongly) believe]( there is a massive child sex trafficking epidemic. - Fortune magazine [lays out a future]( in which everyone is accompanied by their own personal AI bot who “gently nudge[s] you towards what you want to accomplish.” Cool cool, no notes! - Young women are [forming Facebook groups]( to make friends. - How to lose [half a billion dollars in bitcoin](. - The [deep dive on catboys]( we all needed. - I enjoyed the [SNL TikTok sketch](! One Last Thing 👋 [This one]( goes out to my fellow heroes with significant others who are always suggesting you play a board game.  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=goods). 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