The New Gods: How Your Smartphone Became Your Altar

Listen up, you screen-sucking, thumb-scrolling drones: I was neck-deep in a digital shitstorm on X the other day, watching idiots scream past each other about God. You know, the Big Daddy, the cosmic sky daddy, the eternal bogeyman the powerful have been dangling over your heads for millennia to keep you in line. Eternal torment for the naughty, eternal joy for the good little sheep. Every religion’s got a version—same tired script: love thy neighbour, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t be a complete twat. Simple, right? Except you lot can’t even manage that without a holy book or a trending hashtag to tell you how.

But religion? It’s dying, and good fucking riddance. Look at you—glassy-eyed, drooling over your screens, addicted to the dopamine hit of a notification. You’re not praying to some bearded ghost anymore. Your new holy trinity? Influence. Power. Wealth. The social media influencer—those preening, ring-lit demigods—is your new vicar, sermonizing from their pastel-coloured lofts about what to buy, what to think, how to live. And you’re lapping it up, you miserable bastards, retweeting and sharing their gospel like the brain-dead choir of a megachurch on bath salts.

Here’s the kicker: this new “faith” has one massive leg up on the old ones. It’s real. Your influencer gods aren’t invisible. They’re not fairy tales whispered in dusty cathedrals. They’re flesh and blood, strutting across your feed, begging for your likes. You can see them, hear them, DM them, maybe even touch them if you’re pathetic enough to stalk their meet-and-greets. No blind faith required—just a Wi-Fi signal and a fully charged battery. They’re accessible 24/7, from Bumfuck, Nowhere to the neon gutters of Tokyo, as long as you’ve got that little black brick in your pocket. And you do. You all do. Nobody dares go ten seconds without their smartphone, terrified of being disconnected from the great digital hive mind.

Churches? Relics. Crumbling stone and empty pews, with a handful of sad sods pretending they still believe while sneaking glances at their X notifications during the sermon. The new temples are your phones, your laptops, your smart TVs—omnipresent, glowing, demanding your worship. You carry your altar everywhere, clutched like a rosary for the terminally online.

So, was Nietzsche right? “God is dead”? I used to think so, back when I had more hair and less scar tissue. But now? Nah. God’s not dead—he’s evolved. He’s traded the harp and halo for a verified checkmark and a brand deal. The old definition of God—some intangible, all-knowing spook? That’s dead as disco. Today’s God is power, fame, fortune. Measurable. Tangible. Count the followers, tally the bank account, check the engagement metrics. That’s divinity in 2025, baby.

And don’t give me that “I’m still religious” bullshit. Popping into church once a week—if you’re not too hungover or binge-watching some crap on your smart TV—doesn’t make you a believer. It makes you a tourist. Old-style religion’s got no place in this world, not when you’re all too busy worshipping at the altar of clout. Even the Bible’s “false idols” warning is a joke now. False? These idols are as real as the microplastics in your bloodstream, and you’re all on your knees for them. Even in church, you’re doomscrolling, checking X, chasing that next hit of validation while the preacher drones on to a sea of empty seats.

Wake up, you sorry lot. Your gods are dead, and you’ve replaced them with something worse—something that doesn’t even pretend to care about your soul. Keep worshipping your influencers, your metrics, your little black bricks. Just don’t cry to me when you realize your new religion’s nothing but a slot machine, and you’re all out of coins.

Now get out of my sight. I’ve got a city to scream at.

Spider Thompson, signing off, probably to go puke in an alley.