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Description

Swiping Right on God investigates how spirituality mutates in the age of platform capitalism. Through media theory, meme analysis and posthuman philosophy, Sophie Publig traces how angelcore aesthetics and digital mysticism reroute the internet as a sacred infrastructure, giving rise to Network Spirituality. Between post-irony and belief, kawaii semiotics disguise ideology in softness, forming an affective interface between ritualistic devotion and algorithmic governance.

Sophie Publig is an internet archaeologist exploring digital ecosystems and their artefacts. Based at the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, her research and teaching focus on the dynamics of digital cultures through critical post-humanism. She wrote her dissertation on the history of internet memes in 2023 and is currently examining the Girl Online, digital occultism and trajectories of schizoposting.

COLOPHON

Sophie Publig Swiping Right on God

PostScriptUM #54 Series edited by Janez Fakin Janša

Publisher: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana Represented by: Marcela Okretič

Co-publisher: The Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures Represented by: Clemens Apprich

Design: Federico Antonini

Cover image: meme by @user_goes_to_kether, Instagram, January 2024

Release Notes (2)

Earlier version in German

An earlier version of this article was published in German as “Swiping Right On God: Ästhetische Aneignungen als ideologische Strategie in Network Spirituality” (Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, 17(2), pp. 81–94, dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/24192).