Kajetan Kowalik

Hyakanghen: the demonic digital other in the context of religious phenomena on the anonymous Internet

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In my presentation, I would like to show how the founders and leaders of new religious movements emerging on the anonymous Internet include the division into us and them along with excommunication to their religious doctrines and the religious description of reality established on the metaphorical perception of the Internet medium and the technology used to maintain it. I will focus primarily on three religious phenomena that have been developing since 2017, in which the Internet, specifically servers and websites, and the method of logging in and transferring data between them, were used to present the hidden nature of reality postulated by the creators of these phenomena. Additionally, I will show how non-religious, but Internet-based ways and narratives of excluding and distinguishing one's self and others, created and characteristic of the anonymous Internet, have been adapted to the concepts and mechanisms used by the creators of these new religious groups. I will use cognitive metaphor theory to analyze the use of language describing the Internet to describe the religious world. In addition, I want to show the religious phenomena presented and analyzed by me that emerged on the anonymous Internet, along with their methods of excommunication, as examples taken from groups that have not been previously described by any researcher other than me.