Human Conversion in The Digital Age

Orthobros & Discord Bringing Us Together | Pt. IV

All these young men on the internet are really upsetting

This is the final post in this four part series. You can read Pt. I, Pt. II, and Pt. III by clicking the links.

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Bro, really?

By now you’ll have noticed that the word bro carries certain negative connotations in the broader culture. To be a bro implies immaturity, self-satisfaction, and, worst of all, an unapologetic embrace of machismo.

To be a bro also implies other bros. Saddest of all is the lonely bro. Whether it’s gym bros, stoner bros, preppy bros, skater bros, or bro bros, few happenings raise the ire of today’s strutting moralist more than a feral pack of bros occupying space, laughing, grinning, shouting, trying out wrestling moves. Bros love their bros. This is toxic. This is unacceptable.

Bros can be, granted, a giant pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, bros have migrated mainly to the world wide web. Jordan Peterson, for instance, much maligned for having the gall to encourage young men to “get their acts together,” equates the habitual online use of the word “bro” with “derisive, narcissistic Machiavellian, sadistic trolls.” While this is something of an overstatement, it speaks to a reality, particularly when a digital swarm latches onto the perceived hypocrisy of a high-ranking internet knight/creator.

The online orthobro is, you guessed it, an Orthodox bro. He is typically a younger convert and often anonymous. As a general rule, they are openly unsympathetic to The West as it stands and often cite Western theological developments as responsible for our current civilizational malaise. What “The West” is precisely is rarely defined, but it’s common to find a strong critique of the rebellious founding of The United States in particular as emblematic of global ills. Orthobros advocate monarchy.

In online discourse, the Trad Caths and some magisterial Protestants strike a similar tenor, but they will tend to see western converts to Orthodoxy as traitors of a sort, rejecting their God-given heritage. They are partially right. Although the profound failure of the older generations to actually pass on this Western heritage is sometimes acknowledged, the conversion of these native sons to Eastern Orthodoxy is an outright rejection of what many see as the pernicious Faustian spirit animating The West.

Of course, the allure of the East has been with us for over half a century now. In the mid-20th century, perhaps partially bored with the consciously non-sectarian, staid “Judeo-Christian” establishment ushered in by FDR, many Americans turned to the more exotic eastern religions in the ’60s after a decade of the highest church attendance in the country’s history. These imports came rushing in as Vatican II was in the process of dismantling the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical grandeur.

Augustinian Church in Würzburg, Germany. Comparison of the Church Interior as it was prior to the Second World War, in the 1970s, and in the 2010s. Photo by Valepio

In tandem with this influx from the East was the rise of psychedelics, The Beatles and their LSD-infused stylings at the vanguard. The charismatic and sociopathic Timothy Leary, who held the same position as Peterson at Harvard, said, “‘I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.”

As George Harrison could attest, Buddhism and Hinduism had all the weird yet enticing trappings of pre-modern religion, now showcased for the first time in technicolor: dragon statues, mandalas, saris, elephant gods, and an endless supply of gurus and wispy bearded wise men who descended from airplane boarding stairs to peddle their own brand of pure, uncut spiritual transformation, no civilizational association required. Perhaps most importantly, for a world still reeling from World War II, you didn’t have to actually believe in any of this stuff. A neat, psychologized version of the above was commonly adopted.

A neat, psychologized version of religion may have done the job, or seemed to, fifty years ago, but the cultural landscape has not so much shifted under our feet but suffered a series of level ten earthquakes since the 60s.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his aptly named Substack After Babel is putting forth a case that many have intuited for years now—the children raised on digital technology, now coming of age, are profoundly unwell. Haidt conclusively refutes the criticism that all this talk of a mental health epidemic is just another classic case of “these kids these days” rhetoric; dramatic increases in teen self-harm, attempted suicide, and successful suicides since 2012, five years after the release of the first iPhone, say otherwise.

Sure, techno-optimism is a comfy pair of shoes for a well-to-do Gen Xer. But bro, have you been on TikTok lately?

I have heard it framed as a criticism that those inquiring into Orthodoxy are merely searching for something unchanging and solid in a time of significant societal flux. Well, is this not an imminently reasonable reaction? Chaotic times may account for why some look into more traditional faith communities, but in the final analysis, it doesn’t account for why they are signing up for such unfashionable programs.

Certainly part of why young men in particular have been drawn to Orthodoxy at a time when the broader society is calling them problematic pieces of crap is that masculinity is still overtly encouraged in the ancient Church.

For all the uncool people out there, Discord is a chat app similar to old-school chat rooms but with voice and video capabilities. ROCOR’s (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) Metropolitan Jonah Paffhaussen taught a series of catechetical lectures on Dyer’s Discord server during the COVID "pandemic," focusing on the spirituality of the Orthodoxy. In one of the first lectures, he said something to the effect of “your toxic masculinity is welcome here” with a wry smile. At the same time, this is a man who, in a homily, spoke of “the grave disease of convertitis” that is “absolutely manifest on the internet where you have all these learned arguments by great theologians who still happen to be catechumens,” and “they’re treating people horribly.”

Young men can be a pain in the ass and still have a legitimate need to joust with each other and make mistakes. Those are both true. It is not an excuse for bad behavior. The internet is not an ideal setting but you have to work with what you’ve got. Relatedly, red-blooded young men don’t want to “man up” and get a crummy email job. They want to participate in a great story. You’re just going to have to put up with thousands of online orthobros fantasizing about retaking Constantinople for the foreseeable future. Sorry.

Over at PVK’s Youtube channel comments section you can behold one of the marvels of the internet, something that could serve as an aspiration for online bro culture. Videos of under 2K views consistently have hundreds of comments, many of them arguing with one another, and yet the vast majority of participants are cordial even as it gets spicy. Some years ago an atheist from PVK’s in-person meet-up group who watches his videos decided to set up a Discord server, Bridges of Meaning, which soon took on a life of its own. Anonymity was accepted though using real names and photos was encouraged. Side projects, a growing network of in-person meet-ups, discussion groups, art collectives, and even marriages have come out of the server. A sizeable subsection of the server, myself included, converted to Orthodoxy. I met my wife there.

For all the warranted criticism of online communities, they afford the possibility of real connections being made. They can provide an on-ramp to on-the-ground faith community.

And contrary to popular memes, even orthobros are stepping away from their screens and going to Liturgy. As my good friend, a cradle Orthodox, has remarked on more than one occasion, “converts are insufferable, but at least they come to the services.”

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In Conclusion, & Memory

In the Spring of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 hysteria, a video montage of various Hollywood celebrities singing John Lennon’s ode to atheism, “Imagine,” was making the rounds. The top comment on Youtube put it best: The only inspiring thing here is how the internet came together to say “no.”

It would be hard to give a better illustration of the usurpation of the old media by the new. The out-of-touch electric-age pantheon of gods (celebrities) had toppled themselves by doing what they have always done: attract attention. Regrettably for them, the public didn’t particularly want to imagine there was no heaven, or countries, or possessions. In fact, from the enforced comfort of their own homes they remembered their loved ones who had passed, they remembered life in their countries as they once were, they remembered firing up their oversized grills and having a beer with friends. They remembered. This imagining crap? It’s all so tiresome.

Like my fellow parishioners, I was unable to attend the Pascha service in 2020 due to the lockdowns, lockdowns that would not have been possible without the ubiquity of new media. Each year the Church sings in the Paschal stichera "Let God arise let his enemies be scattered!" participating in Christ victory over the dark spiritual forces, the enemies of God, through his death, burial, harrowing of hell, and resurrection. That Pascha I felt totally defeated. I wanted to smash all the wifi towers in the western hemisphere.

But soon after we were permitted to return to worship and I was baptized and chrismated on Pentecost. On that day it was not the world but my soul I wanted saved. It's not a day I will ever forget.

In Scripture, memory plays a crucial role. After the name of God is spoken to Moses in the book of Exodus He says to him “this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” God remembers Noah after the flood and the wind passes over the earth. Christ says “do this in rememberance of me.” Within the Orthodox Church we pray for the departed, “may their memory be eternal.”

Memory holds together each of our own individual stories, filled with all our friends, families, enemies, and sorrows, each a tiny symbolic microcosm of God’s divine memory which sustains all of existence.

To return to my father’s favorite book, in The Brothers Karamazov the elder Fr. Zosima says:

From my parental home I brought only precious memories, for no memories are more precious to a man than those of his earliest childhood in his parental home, and that is almost always so, as long as there is even a little bit of love and unity in the family. But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one’s soul knows how to seek out what is precious.

As the disruptions and distractions of daily life ratchet up many more lost souls will be searching for a spiritual home. What is precious, what is to be remembered, is for the human family to decide and to pass on to our sons and daughters.

I can personally attest that, yes, much of what is precious we can find online, and even the debates and the hard lines that we draw can help in this. But that's not enough. We need to sit down at a table with friends and those who may one day become our friends to talk, to eat, to laugh. We need to be able to say, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”