Book Review: Strange Rites

The premise of this book was a little hard to pin down. It was quite clear from the first two chapters that the author wanted to argue that the internet has lead to (another) shift away from organized religion and towards individualizing “hodge-podge” systems where consumers get to pick and chose from what they derive meaning/community/ritual/purpose. However, the latter chapters - which were supposed to be supporting examples of how specific communities (SJW, techno-utopians, potter fans, health & wellness) have taken over the roles of organized religions - were a disorganized mess of rambling blog posts that only served to illuminate 1) the existence of some really weird subcultures, 2) the bizarre people within those subcultures, 3) the history of memes within those subcultures.

This book would have been much better if, throughout the entire book, the author had used the slightly more analytical style employed in first few chapters. As it is, this book was a zoo dressed up as a zoology textbook.

And here, next to the cage of internet trolls, we have a group of people who actually believe they sleep with Severus Snape sometimes!