you're literally worshipping your phone

how scrolling becomes a religious act

It’s no secret that Silicon Valley thinks of AI as God.

Talk to any San Francisco tech bro at a party, and you’ll hear the same reverential tone. Transhumanists like Google executive Ray Kurzweil have called for “inventing God” since at least the turn of the century, while venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen proselytize an accelerationist attitude toward robotic deliverance. The Robotheism and Way of the Future churches are religious organizations specifically established to worship AI.

These behaviors make a lot of sense when you consider how religion emerged in the first place. Whenever something about the universe is hard to understand, we construct a story to explain it better. It makes more sense for there to be an all-knowing, all-powerful deity than for reality to be as convoluted as it really is. The same is true of artificial intelligence, which is far more complicated than we can possibly imagine.

To be clear, I doubt most people are actually going to buy into the Silicon Valley ethos. It’s off-putting and weird as hell. However, we all regularly engage in less overt, micro-religious attitudes toward modern technology, creating our own explanations that parallel the AI-as-God attitude.

Consider our behavior toward “the algorithm.” Rather than recognizing it for the incredibly complex series of processes it really is, we simplify and personify it, turning its outputs into reductive justifications. When we talk about a “mythical FYP pull” or how the “algorithm really knows” us, that’s the same as saying “the Lord works in mysterious ways” or “this was God’s plan.” The “manifestation” side of TikTok will even tell you that “this video was meant for you,” implying a divine provenance behind each piece of content. These thought-terminating clichés, like religious language, entrench us in our complacency and cut off further inspection.

Beyond mere words, this religious attitude manifests in our actions. By immersing ourselves in the hypnotic comfort of the scroll state, we engage in a ritualistic interaction, embodying a sacred version of the “algorithmized self.” Each scroll becomes a kind of prayer, submitting to the whims of an omniscient entity for the promise of reward.

Nor are influencers exempt: I’ve seen hundreds of videos of artists revealing their works “until it reaches its target audience”—in other words, until God decides to grant me a miracle.

Once we enter our individual rituals, social media further works as a quasi-religion because of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim calls collective effervescence: a heightened emotional state resulting from simultaneous social participation. Just as singing gospel music can bring about a deeper connection to God, so too can participating in a meme or TikTok trend. We’re addicted to feeling like we belong in a group; social media and religious communities both feed into this. They make us feel elated, and we confuse this psychological reward with the object of worship.

Each video is additionally legitimized in its appearance by thousands of likes, shares, and views—proof that everybody else is participating in this ritual with you. The comments section, too, projects the energy of social gathering, dissolving the individuality of your “algorithmized self.”

Durkheim argues that collective effervescence creates “sacred” symbols that are special or different from typical “profane” symbols. Indeed, I constantly hear my friends venerating the sacred symbols of online culture. What do you mean you haven’t seen this meme before? Why don’t you know this song, it’s a TikTok audio!

Inadvertently, the effervescence performs itself into perpetuation, and the ritual is spread to others who now want to be part of the group.

I don’t think this is a bad thing per se, just as I don’t think religion is an inherently bad thing either. Participating in group trends is fun—and essential to being human. It’s just important to remember exactly what we’re doing, and how our need for belonging can be manipulated by bad actors. Only then can we retain our individuality and understanding of what’s happening. The real danger, then, isn’t the ritual itself, but forgetting that it is a ritual in the first place.

---

If you liked this essay, please consider pre-ordering my upcoming book Algospeak!! Pre-orders are the best way to support authors :)