Preaching to the online damned
How come there hasn't been a church of the Internet yet? It would seem to be fertile ground for the religously needy. What other medium would give a religion the potential to pump live video and audio into every middle-class house in the world simultaneously, translated realtime into the appropriate language? It doesn't even have to be simple broadcast--the internet allows for interactivity. [Good idea: What about integrating the Nintendo WII system into an interactive religous broadcast so parishoners can sit back and smite animated Satans with the controller as the minister preaches?] And let's not forget the vast potential to solicit donations. Someone could build a site that had a religous preachy video window front and center, a scrolling chat session of realtime hosannas on the left and a click here to donate icon on the right. Once the church got the poor schlub's financial information, it could be set up like Amazon's OneClick (well, not close enough for patent infringement, of course) and spur the parishoner on to click the collection button every time there's an amen or something.
I almost wonder if it's wrong of me to even speculate on this, because someone might do it.
We can laugh about this now, but I have no doubt that the next major religion to come along is going to make Scientology look like Yoga class because it's going to be on the Internet and sticky as hell.
There was one net religion...it was called the Church of the SubGenius and was very tied in a hidden way into pop culture in the 60s and 70s. For more info, here's the Wikipedia article. Their symbol is the picture prefacing this blog entry.
One reason that this may not have happened yet is because the target market--susceptible people who watch evangelist television--are probably just getting on the Internet. So the time is probably right.
Well, if anyone wants to make a lot of money the easy way and get into heaven, drop me a line.
Posted on February 16, 2007
