The Future of the Church Is Fandom

Choose a Girl

But if the growing backlash of anonymous, disagreeable, reckless, and masculinized discourse continues to swell on the periphery of the internet, I fear the church will be hit by a wave of more metaphysically penetrating, serious, and influential heresiarchs eventually. But I don’t see people talking about how deeply these habits will shape the culture of 21st century church institutions. Will our theological loyalties — whether to Roman Catholicism, or Presbyterianism, or Lutheranism — slowly sink to the level of loyalty that we show a particular fandom? Maybe we hold our entertainment to be as sacred as our church, or more so.

Recent Economic Developments

• They wouldn’t have figured this out on their own.
• There’s beginning to be a glimmer of possibility as boomer leadership slowly fades away, the possibility of institutional revolution, and young people are hungry for influence.
• Along these lines, a Chinese woman of yore who sincerely embraced her role in traditional Confucian society may have come to perceive mutilating her feet with foot-binding as not only socially obligatory but as morally good.
• As such, we naturally become incentivized to display ourselves behaving in a way we know will get either response.
• Perhaps no one exemplifies the trend of the fusion of church and fandom at this present moment more than Richard Ackerman, the Redeemed Zoomer, a Presbyterian YouTuber in his early twenties whose meteoric rise (by the standards of Christian internet figures) this past year has been powered by a strange hybrid of Minecraft videos and viral church history discussions.

The preference for a novelty of sexual partners has also been well documented in animal and human studies and described as the “Coolidge effect” (Fiorino et al., 1997; Wilson, 1997). Some studies suggest that the unbridled access to a large quantity of novel sexual images on the Internet has various effects on neural processing in the mesolimbic reward center, which is similar to some influences of addictive substances (Barrett, 2010; Burtăverde et al., 2021; Mauer-Vakil and Bahji, 2020; Pitchers et al., 2013). Research of addictive behavior related to pornography suggests that approximately 56% of men experience pornography as a form of relaxation decreasing subjective feelings of tension (Cooper et al., 2004; Weiser, 2000). Other findings indicate that a large proportion of individuals involved in online pornography consumption are mainly seeking sexual relaxation and feelings of “satisfaction” related to masturbation (Ross et al., 2012; Mauer-Vakil and Bahji, 2020). Some findings also suggest that the Internet pornography-related addictive behavior might cause subjectively negative sexual experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli and can cause symptoms of craving related to masturbation experiences (Laier et al., 2013) and fetishism (Ross et al., 2012).

Jane Does v. GirlsDoPorn: How 22 millennial women brought down a porn empire

• Internet culture is very decentralized, but it nevertheless has hierarchies.
• The World Bank Group is also focused on sharing country knowledge and operational experience to leverage other development partners’ resources for effective public investment.
• The collective social pressure of thousands of overlapping fandom circuits moderated according to a spectrum of leftist values is what formed the parameters of the average young millennial’s brain, even if they themselves are not deep in the fandom culture themselves.
• On top of that, many instances of their peers’ sexual exploration through sexting had traveled down several slippery slopes, including cases where teens had been criminally charged for sharing x-rated media they took of themselves.
• These women were recruited via Craigslist modeling ads and then directed to fill out contact forms on benign-sounding websites like BeginModeling.com and CaliforniaModeling.com.

They influence how we dress, what work we do, where we are in the group hierarchy, and how we get recognition. They influence what we think is the right thing to do. We are introduced to characters struggling with their mental health and we are shown the consequences for those who depend on them or want to help them. There are moments between Mia and her sort-of-estranged father (Karl Collins) that leave you reeling – and wondering what sorcery got you from laughing at the description of an outdated mobile phone (“not much more than a pigeon and a wish”) to being winded by the brutality of the blows life can deal. At one point, Mia has to pawn her expensive watch (“It is a timepiece,” she says, as if picking the words from between her teeth with a cocktail stick), although she doesn’t want to. “Some people can play an instrument, some people have a degree, some people can speak a second language – I got this.” It is a consummate callback to one of the opening lines of the first episode, when Mia explains that, if you come from nothing, “you have to spend the poverty out of you”.

And three dogs take a road trip—with a human. Mia tries to find modelling work and keep up the illusion that she is still rich and successful. The first gig secured by her agent, Mills (Peep Show’s Matt King, working a gloriously repellent combination of sleaze, incompetence and grim facial hair), is house-sitting for a posh woman called Jemima (Eva Pope); she finds Brixton “so vibrant”, arrives home early to introduce the subject of “gymkhana porn” and eventually pays Mia in cushions. In 2022, Armenia experienced impressive economic growth, emerging as the fastest-growing country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. With a growth rate of 12.6%, this expansion was fueled by the influx of migrants, businesses, and increased capital following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This positive momentum continued into the first half of 2023, with a double-digit GDP growth rate of 10.5% (YoY) in real terms.

One can at least try to express concern about the cultural paideia of the world system, even if one doesn’t always have the time or resources to outmatch it. Compulsive sexual behavior has been treated with antidepressants including SSRIs and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, Naltrexone (a medication used to inhibit reward mechanisms in opiate or alcohol addictions), other mood-stabilizers, and anti-androgens. I never watched the video, only pieces and screenshots people have sent to me to torment me. I flinch whenever someone brings up porn, even if it’s not about me. I get spooked easily because I’m so terrified of men now.

I’m tired of thinking that no one knows what I’m going through, and today I realized there are probably close to three hundred girls that do. I start to wonder if they are all still alive, as morbid as that seems, I know I’ve thought of suicide too many times to count. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Even if I can just save one life, this exposure will all be worth it. Stalkers would post my full name, my phone number, my social media accounts – and even my address, driver’s license number, make/model of my car, and license plate number. I was terrified someone would try and find me.

Operating in an online community, you learn to social signal in a particular way. D’Ambrosio talk about in their recent book You And Your Profile, we use social media profiles as a way to curate our public identity and validate our efforts. Young people express their identity online through signals very different from how previous generations did in primarily physical social spaces. The owners and operators of GirlsDoPorn knew the type of women they wanted to appear in their amateur porn videos—college-age millennials—would not agree to casually participate in the porn industry. After all, these women grew up in the Internet age, where amateur porn has been rampantly available for years.

Missionaries and ministers need to be studying how internet communities actually work and participating in them if they want to find a way to reach the next generation. They’re following shepherds that you can’t see. We need to come to an agreement that public rhetoric and internet ministry is a legitimate calling, even as we debate over the proper methods and how to best represent the Lord in it.