Kajetan Kowalik

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Religious affordance of anonymous internet

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The almost unexplored space of the anonymous internet is the birthplace of many new religious phenomena and movements, the specificity of which stems from the affordances of the anonymous internet and the way in which the so-called dark net is metaphorized and thought about. The same environmental conditions of this online space also influence existing religions, creating new forms of conspirituality based on them, merging with conspiracy theories with religious themes and taking on a more aggressive and extremist tone. The anonymous internet is also a breeding ground for numerous new religions based on literary and cinematic fiction. In my presentation, I would like to share the current state of my doctoral project aimed at creating a theory of religion in the anonymous internet, describing the specificity of this part of the net and the characteristics of the phenomena present in it, and also presenting an explanation of this characteristic. My presentation will present these new religious phenomena emerging in the anonymous net and propose an explanation for their emergence, drawing on James Gibson's theory of direct perception, or affordances, Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, concept of metamodernism, David Voas and Charlotte Ward's category of conspirituality, Wouter Hanegraaff's ideas about rejected knowledge and Marcus Davidsen's category of fiction based religion.