How scrolling becomes a religious act | Hacker News Reader

How scrolling becomes a religious act

etymology.substack.com

79 pointsZeroTalent60 comments

I really dislike these posts that are clearly written by someone unfamiliar with religion as a topic, and just use “worship” or “religion” as synonyms for “being obsessed with something to an irrational degree.” That isn’t an accurate description of the concept of religion, nor is it a synonym of irrational. Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas of study today.

Phones are no more worshipped in a religious sense than printed Bibles were worshipped in Gutenberg’s era. They are technological vectors for idea transfer that facilitate ideologies/worldviews/religions, not those things themselves. Being distracted by your phone doesn’t come with an entire metaphysical picture about the nature of life and death, proper social roles, or most of the other things religious systems typically come with.

Also - Durkheim is name dropped here, with the incorrect tense (he doesn’t argue, he argued, as he’s been dead for a long time.)

You are trying to fight how people use words and you won’t be successful. Phrases like “religious fervor” and “religiously <did some activity>” etc. are in common usage and refer to things outside of religion.

Phones are worshipped in the sense that many people are lost or will panic if they had to do without them for an extended period of time. Using worshipped evokes an image that is apt.

I’m just calling out sloppy thinking and sloppy word choice.

And beyond that, the author explicitly made the reference to religion as a concept and to religious sociology by bringing up Durkheim. He made the analogy to actual religion.

Your jihad against how these words are used in common speech will fail.

The meaning of words is central to the meaning of the article. If the meaning of religion is devolved to “very interested in” then the meaning of the article is “people are very interested in their phones” which is a quite boring article.

You can’t rely on the gravity of the word religious while also disregarding it.

This is how people use the word now. He religiously did yoga every day. They religiously attended every game. That book became their bible. The phone is now everyone’s idol.

Again; that would be fine if the post wasn’t explicitly about comparing it to real religion and quoting scholars of religion.

That’s a fair point.

> he doesn’t argue, he argued,

This phrase is so common it's practically correct. Search for "Plato argues" online for example.

Yes you’re right and I hesitated putting that in there, but in the article itself, it’s written in such a way that I found confusing. Especially when the rest of the text doesn’t seem very familiar with the sociology / philosophy of religion.

Probably an unnecessary quibble to have, and I shouldn’t have included it.

I believe it's short for "(in his written works) X argues...". Past tense would indicate that there was a change in his views at some point.

Quibbling is what we humans do. It is both necessary and helpful for fleshing out all kinds of subjects. And I won't mention how fun it is to say. :)

> This phrase is so common it's practically correct.

In fact, that's how language works. Whatever emerges from organic use is correct language. We the people decide what proper English is, collectively, not a prestigious university or renowned scholar or classic textbook.

Bet! I’m vibin’ 100% with your feels, fr fr!

Huh? You woulda said this comment also isn't valid English.

Contractions, exclamations, shortucts of every kind, are legit.

(Though some usuallyo only appear in certain mediums U+1F609.)

This is always used as some kind of gotcha, but it misses the obvious fact that people or institutions or textbooks arguing and implementing standards are themselves a part of that organic process. The organicness is the whole thing.

Sure, I don't disagree. But so is deviating from that standard. I'm just talking about people who are overly restrictive of their own language usage. The best authors broke rules and made up words as needed.

The point is that they're part of the process, not anything definitive

> Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas

Well, yes, and as a religious person, I would suggest that the metaphor is more accurate than you think.

To the pagans, a god is a supernatural force that demands worship, sacrifice, attention, effort, appeasement. To a Christian, a false idol is something that steals from the worship and sacrifice that is due to the One True God.

You can spot a modern American pagan by the deference and attention they give to their false idols. What sort of priority is ceded to our devices that detracts from truly transcendent and holy things in life? When I approach my church I've developed a ritual for taming and shutting down my phone -- yes, a ritual to put it in its place! But most days, the devices and the Internet are taking charge and telling us what we want and what we can do with ourselves.

False worship and pagan gods are slavery and bondage for us. The liberation from Egypt is a parable for today. If we cannot break free from our devices and scrolling the Internet, then Pharaoh will take away the straw and make us forage for ourselves. Our labors and the pains of bondage will increase.

Perhaps irreligious people are sensitive and defensive when others suggest that they may indeed be religious worshippers of false idols. This is an ancient phenomenon that, it is felt by the irreligious, belongs to the realm of anthropology and archaeology. Religious worship of a graven image -- it can't possibly be something done by a guy on his phone on the street corner! But it is. I assure you, it is real.

It is possible to engage the modern world without being trapped in this pagan worship, but it is not necessarily easy.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” — Charles Baudelaire

So you are a pagan knowingly worshipping false idols all day, except you turn it off temporarily while attending church?

Idk about them but I've never prayed to my phone. Pray to God everyday for my family and friends and the world. No matter what stock you put in legitimacy of prayer, certianly a phone isnt a device you'd expect to be able to answer prayers at all.

I use my computer not on the internet as my main device so I can't even scroll on there.

That's true of most Christians unfortunately. I've seen monks tell us that just because we go to church on Sunday doesn't make us practicing Christians. Most are living atheistic lifestyles and remember God only Sunday morning. Better than nothing I suppose..

is it? if I'm going to Hell anyway I might as well sleep in on Sundays

If you truly believed you were going to hell I think you'd have the opposite reaction

not if I'm literally damned if I do, and damned if I don't! might as well enjoy what I can while it lasts, in that case.

if I thought going to church would keep me out of Hell I'd have the opposite reaction, but the GP was talking about how most people who go to church are still going to Hell

As another religious person, your comment was as boring and difficult to follow as a typical Sunday homily, and for the same reasons. The world doesn't need even more bone dry exhortations and predictable parables. For God's sake, at least say something new and interesting, like how the Blessed Virgin Mary most likely wrote the Letter to the Hebrews and what that implies for the role of mothers, or how Judas was likely the biological son of St. Peter the Apostle and how this is a warning to children, or how Jesus and Mary being the new Adam and Eve implies that Joseph was the new Abel and how that fact helps fathers to know and live their vocations.

>Mary wrote Hebrews

Got any reading on this? I thought it was 'Paul' as in, most likely him or an associate. But I love alternative theories, esp when they bring some other weight or meaning. Esp when the correct answer almost cannot be known. If u got any links plz share!

Only this modern article[1]. Can't find any scholars or Church Fathers on this. Seems to be an entirely new theory in history, most likely because women were dismissed as possible author since (a) Hebrews 11:32 uses a masculine first person verb, which the article explains as being the Holy Spirit who coauthored the letter, and (b) women were not Apostles or leaders, which the article implies was not actually a hard and fast rule for inclusion in canon, resolves by saying she wrote it in secret.

One additional point this article doesn't mention is that 1 john 1:4 also uses "we" in the same way the article claims Hebrews does. Seeing as St. John the Apostle was clearly united with the Holy Spirit as Revelation shows, and as Mary lived with John, this further strengthens the theory that "we" means "the author and the Holy Spirit who the author was conscious was co-authoring the letter".

[1] https://www.immaculatalibrary.com/articles/2025-03-06-mary-w...

Fascinating, thanks! Will def check it out!

> pagans […] false idols […] pagan gods are slavery and bondage for us

Just want to point out that abuse of other religions, and using “pagans” as a disparaging term, continues to be done casually in the Christian-influenced sphere, basically legitimizing the history of colonialism and the wiping out of other traditions. Keep it to yourself man! In other contexts terms like “casual racism” and “hate speech” would apply. As another religious person, I can assure you that no, the GP is right and the analogy with religion is weak; being obsessed with phones is not in itself like a “pagan” religion either, which too is about the “truly transcendent and holy things in life” (just with less of a binary distinction between the sacred and the mundane, so that one can go about one's daily life while staying in touch with what's truly valuable, which again is the opposite of the stated effect of "scrolling").

> being obsessed with something to an irrational degree

This phrase, nor the key words "obsessed" or "irrational", does not appear in the text.

> Being distracted by your phone doesn’t come with an entire metaphysical picture about the nature of life and death, proper social roles, or most of the other things religious systems typically come with.

I would argue that, for most people under 40 and quite a lot of people over, if they have questions about those things, they're going to mediate them through the phone. Whether that's from philosophy youtubers, social media, or asking chatgpt.

Phone use doesn't feel very spiritual, but what do people do on social media? Moralizing. Preaching. Dogma.

Consider the history of "random+interpretation" fortune telling methods, like Tarot and I Ching. For the sorts of questions you might have asked your fortune, people are now asking LLMs. And treating the answer with the same kind of authoritiveness.

The section about "algorithm" reminds me of Carl Sagan's phrase "the demon-haunted world". Algorithmic social media is extremely important, but it's not understandable by the public (because the workings are confidential!). So superstition creeps in. This is where things like "unalive" come from: people are avoiding saying "death" or related words because "the algorithm" will bring them bad luck (bans or shadow bans).

Another word to bring in: idol. And idolatry.

I think all that only makes phones a communications tool, not religious, nor idolatry.

People have been moralising, preaching, dogmatists in the Letters to the Editor since whenever "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" was coined — I don't think that's enough to have made The Daily Mail or The Sunday Times into an idol, nor the newspaper preference into a denomination (even if there's that quote from Yes Minister).

But we are busy making Golems and Húsvættir, and you are right that superstition still plagues us.

About your last point: it's called the "literary present tense" or "historic present tense". It's related to the present tense used in newspaper headlines.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/510247/use-of-pr...

https://style.mla.org/literary-present-tense/

Though I agree that the jargon use of "religion" here is misleading. It is how a sociologist might understand the term, and drawing the connection can lead to some insight, to to say it is religion outside of that academic context sheds no light. It is absolutely not "literally worship" in the etymological sense of "declaring something to be worthy".

Talking about something being worshiped as a religion but not talking about how it alienates you, then makes me wonder that he does not understand religion as is, and he does not read a lot about religions.

Sometimes, putting long words together doesn't make you right about a topic that you really want to fancy talk about.

Traditional religion tends to not accept how it's viewed from the outside either.

Yes, I'm afraid that some of the techbro's obsessions are indistinguishable from religious worship. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck etc.

> I really dislike these posts that are clearly written by someone unfamiliar with religion as a topic

I wonder how much academic familiarity one really needs to recognise the rather obvious vernacular effects. I've studied religion and mass communication effects somewhat as well as being a practising Christian, and as I see it the word "religion" commonly applies to the orthodoxy and its big, visible impacts that are social and psychological, rather than the personal, spiritual realm of gnostic metaphysical faith.

The OP seems right in the sense that the SV technology cargo cult has all the bad mind-narrowing sides of orthodoxy and none of the good. Observe; suspension of critical thinking, credulity, superstition, arcane symbolism, charismatic leaders, secret knowledge, obsessive rituals and tics, insularity, smug self-righteous and strident proselytising, attacking and denigrating "unbelievers", defensiveness, fear of exclusion, dehumanisation of others, mass hysteria....

Digital tech (smartphones plus corporate social media), as presently configured, presses all the same buttons for psychological and societal harm that cults have for millennia. Moreover, it so pitifully fails to offer any positive social benefits, like a sense of real community, shared values, comfort and stability, or certainty. Instead it overlays a shallow and unreal facsimile of those things. "Idolatry" is probably a great way to frame it.

Like historical religions it spawns a super-wealthy elite who exploit the confused masses. It has a small cadre of extremely vocal "true believers", disciples and acolytes, who cajole and bully along the enormous middle mass who are actually ambivalent "pretenders", technological agnostics who mostly can't be bothered to argue. They go along to get along, to avoid feeling persecuted ("left behind" - the modern equivalent of Hell).

Real religions may span thousands of years and have subtantial continuity, but cult-tech presents a flimsy facade of being "deep, essential, enduring and universal". In reality, any thoughtful computer scientist can tell you, it's a heterogeneous assemblage of the arbitrary or, as Graeber observed, a world we can "remake in any way we choose".

Working in cybersecurity, carefully observing genuine attitudes in peoples' unguarded moments - in contrast to their "official/professional" positions - makes me sure that were the entire telecommunications network of the planet to explode tomorrow, other than for food riots as payment and supply chains adjust, most people would have one bad week, shrug, and get on with the next thing. That's to say "it's all a game" but one that we're all very, very invested in trying to preserve... to the extent we're prepared to terrorise others into sharing our worldview to keep it so. Isn't that a sure hallmark of a religion?

I agree with your take. It does not have to be a good, or long lasting religion, it just has to have the aspects of religion, more so when the practice in general is used for control and dominance over others.

"Each scroll becomes a kind of prayer, submitting to the whims of an omniscient entity for the promise of reward." relates to the link between religion and dopamine/epinephrine.

https://www.wired.com/story/mormons-experience-religion-like...

One can almost link the rise of the internet religion with the demise of the traditional religions.

Relevant Scott Alexander's post : https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/25/is-everything-a-religi...

Anthropic is releasing blog articles where they are discovering how Claude works through experiments and observations. It seems more like science than engineering when even the creators have to run scientific experiments to figure out how what they engineered works.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...

Isn't that more an artifact of the nature of the indeterministic black boxes that llm's are?

anthropic is doing great work, that understanding models blog post was really ground breaking.

The description of how Claude does "arithmetic" was enlightening. Shows how it uses clever pattern matching to fit the data, without ever learning the algorithm, even though the algorithm description was certainly in its training data.

> ...I don’t think religion is an inherently bad thing either.

Agree to disagree. Regardless I don't think their points are about religion. It seems like they're just complaining about memic and ritualistic behavior that happens on phones. Using the religion label feels more meant for click bait than as a fitting metaphor.

People who study religion often call this “folk religion” - ritualistic, and viewing the world as some giant mystery with all kinds of mysterious forces in charge.

Which is how many people approach technology, and virtually all of us approach LLMs.

Folk religion has always felt pretty sensible to me—we basically have build-in hardware acceleration to handle social situations, so we anthropomorphize the forces of nature and use that hardware to make predictions about the weather. It is just a heuristic (often wrong) and sometimes it can lead to wasteful actions as a result, like sacrificing a goat before you set out in a journey. But it can be good to start a journey with a meal anyway, if the gods are happy with the hard-to-cook parts this could be a win-win.

We just shouldn’t try to apply these gods outside their wheelhouses.

Tribes - and jockeying for position within them - is as old as humanity itself.

I often wonder whether the earliest religious leaders (think Egyptian pharaoh era), knew what they were doing, and figured that telling people why tombs needed to be built was much better than building them, so they got to the right side of the table.

Today, I wonder if that's what is really going on with business leaders: they know it's all crap, but if they say that, there is a risk they're going back to the open plan office with the rest of the schmucks.

It makes me wonder if we really so different than those who carved metal images to worship thousands of years ago. I made a 30s video exploring this idea here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7RoeHHqnAM

> 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.

Ah; this looks relevant to a topic I met through Kegan's model of adult development. Apparently around 66% [0] of the population doesn't think in a way where "retaining [their] individuality" is even seen as possible, let alone desirable. They'd probably equate it to teenage impulsiveness.

It explains a lot of politics, practical dealings and provides a very neat model for understanding what religions are actually doing. This sort of call to action from the article is fundamentally misguided as general advice because it misses that people are socially designed to just follow that crowd in a way that can be quite astonishing. Their strategy is, nearly explicitly, to be manipulated by whatever actors rise to the top of the heap. Good, bad or other, they won't (in a practical sense can't) judge.

[0] https://brucesreflections.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Keg...

I’m sure this has been studied somewhere, but I bet the prevalence of individualism tracks with the proximity of a frontier to a civilization. Most of the really hyper individualist culture seems to come from frontier-type societies that need self-reliance to survive.

What these studies actually show is that a frontier in this sense is more of a relationship or conflict between civilizations. Scenarios where one single group was moving unimpeded into unoccupied land are very rare (only once per region ever!) and mostly unattested in written historical record so there simply isn't much to say about the actions or attitudes of the individuals within them.

Basically almost always your frontier is also their frontier, the people you are trying to replace. You aren't acting on your own, for example in the US the western expansion depended heavily on connection to sophisticated trade networks, financial technology, and straightforward military support. Individual action is only one small part of what makes this process work, but is the part most highlighted after the fact by the winning side.

How does what you linked support what you said at all? What you're quoting doesn't exist in that PDF.

It is where I got the 66% from - the exact quote to look for is "Socialized mind (58% of the adult population)", add in the 6% Imperial and then round from 64 to 66 because that is much easier to remember.

Ok still sounds like junk to me though. I think stage 5 (1%) is a little too much the "galaxy brain" meme. How does one even achieve level 4 without also accepting the truths of level 5?

I think most people would accept that a majority of people blindly follow rules and accept toxic nonsense (your 2/3rds) while a smaller, but still substantial portion (roughly 1/3?) do what's in the best interest of themselves and the world they live in.

This is so self-evident that I don't think it needs a theory. Those who want this to be a theory are by its own definition "level 3" or something :^)

The 2/3rds don't necessarily believe toxic nonsense. These aren't levels of correctness or even proxies of intelligence. They're focusing on how beliefs are formed.

That's a rather naive and self-serving take on religion.

Just call it a popularization of the esoteric. Like what happens to science, medicine, auto-repair...

A strange subject, dumbed down and framed in metaphor for the uninitiated. Turned unto a big mess. It happens all the time.

If personifying something means we worship it in a religious context then people have been worshipping our mode of transportation since the dawn of time, plus slot machines and a whole host of other things.

I would say people definitely worship cars. Ask the average American to live without a car and see what response you get. Tell them it’s destroying the earth, their community, and their health and see what happens.

Or even just ask them to change “denominations” from an ICE car to an electric car.

I think that's more addiction enabled by infrastructure that supports it and provides little viable alternative (in most places in the U.S.) than it is religion.

That is definitely why it is so prevalent, but people take it a step beyond this. The vehicle becoming part of their personality. Taking offense at the notion of not using a vehicle or not wanting to use a vehicle. Driving trucks around empty, with covered beds all the time. Not wanting electric because they love the concept of the internal combustion engine.

Do we worship air? Water? Food? Just because we need something for a comfortable existence doesn't mean we worship it or are addicted to it.

After, I'm not addicted to my house or my air conditioner, or my refrigerator. But I definitely don't want to live without them

Scrolling is just group gambling. Similar to a gotcha game. You can really see it in the "Legndary Pulls" meme's

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