Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff The Internet Is an Occult Machine (w/ Shira Chess)
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Mar 2, 2026 Shira Chess, a professor of Entertainment and Media Studies and scholar of digital folklore, explores the internet’s hidden spiritual architecture. She traces internet-born cryptids, techno-shamanic 90s roots, reality-shifting rituals, meme magic’s political force, algorithmic conspirituality, and how AI is treated like a spirit. Short takes on reclaiming agency and repurposing corporate platforms appear throughout.
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Slender Man Shows Folklore Can Be Open Sourced
- Slender Man originated on the Something Awful forum as a crowdsourced horror character and rapidly evolved into a shared internet cryptid.
- Shira Chess uses Slender Man as a paragon of how folklore forms instantly online versus centuries of oral transmission.
Folklore Acts As Digital Media Literacy
- Internet folklore functions as a form of media literacy and agency, helping people narrate and resist being reduced to data points.
- Chess argues occult discourse lets users critique and reclaim power within opaque systems.
Tech's Founders Brought Techno Shamanism
- Many early internet creators held nontraditional spiritual beliefs, embedding techno-shamanic ideas into net culture's foundations.
- Chess traces this through ARPANET roots and 80s–90s counterculture like Mondo 2000.
