A lengthy post on X by Dudley Newright has brought an ancient truth about human nature back into the spotlight: Everyone worships something.
Newright points out that today, this primal need doesn’t always lead us to a higher purpose. Instead, a growing segment of Western society has diverted its energies into a strange secular devotion. Revolving around worshiping youth, this synthetic religion speaks to the same deep-seated need but fails to nourish the soul.
This new fixation is a shared obsession with consumerist and ego-driven pursuits that offer no answers, only a surface-level semblance of identity and belonging.
Regular readers will recognize this phenomenon as the faith substitute I call the Pop Cult. And it’s a close cousin to a broader malaise encapsulated by what Dudley Newright terms Millennial Snot.
Related: A Tale of Two Cults
Together, these ideas describe overlapping aspects of the same cultural impulse, but with different emphases. While the Pop Cult highlights the act of worship directed at consumerism, Millennial Snot examines the social dynamics that enable this worship, focusing on how irony, affectation, and contrarianism create the scaffolding for the Pop Cult’s consumerist edifice.
Newright’s term “Millennial Snot” captures a social posture that’s as ubiquitous as it is destructive. Millennial Snot is an ethos of disdain, an ironic distance from everything sincere and substantive. This sneering posture is inherently protective, insulating people from genuine critique by inoculating them against attachment.
Every bit of media consumed is safe from close scrutiny because it’s enjoyed “ironically.” It’s fandom as an accessory to identity, and it speaks to an attitude of selective seriousness: Everything is worth a laugh, and almost nothing deserves a deep dive. This pose jibes with what author J.D. Cowan has called “irony poisoning.” Instead of a playful gesture; it’s a lifestyle choice affected to mask an aching void where meaning used to be.
But Millennial Snot isn’t limited to individuals. Its social currency is the basis for an entire collective consciousness that binds people into groups in a way that feels comfortable yet undemanding. The result is a spiritual posture that emphasizes shallow knowledge, disposable consumption, and ritualized disdain for anything or anyone with a shred of seriousness.
Whereas Millennial Snot provides spiritually impoverished Millennials and Gen Ys with emotional and social structure, the Pop Cult offers content to worship. We see this effect in superfans who flock to theaters to see franchise films they already expect to dislike, or in those who spend thousands on limited-edition product just to leave it unopened on a shelf. Pop Cultists have cultic familiarity with their endless canon of Marvel movies, multi-decade comic book arcs, and sprawling TV series. But the question remains: What is this religious product consumption ultimately for?
In the Pop Cult, participation is as much about passive conformity as it is about enthusiastic consumption. Because fans’ interests tend to dictate their relationships. And it’s not unknown for cultists to discuss the events of fictional characters’ lives more than their own. The reason is that the Pop Cult doesn’t demand introspection or self-mastery; it only asks that adherents continue to engage and consume. Millennial Snot justifies and protects this behavior, ensuring that fans don’t get too attached to anything except the experience of consooming.
But while Pop Cult behavior outwardly resembles religious ritual, it critically lacks faith and fulfillment. Adherents participate in grand spectacles at conventions, dress in the ceremonial garb of cosplay, and defend or denounce plot twists with a zeal once reserved for theological debates. But unlike traditional religions, which offer explanations, the Pop Cult is pure escapism. There’s no genuine eschatology; no sacred narrative with lessons to be learned. Its canon is designed not for depth but for perpetual novelty, driving fans back for more because contentment is perpetually just out of reach.
Millennial Snot and the Pop Cult combine into a hollow form of worship as a protective mechanism against commitment and integrity. When viewed through a lens of irony, the Pop Cult’s worship isn’t worship at all—it’s merely a recurring pastime, a coping mechanism repackaged as culture. Millennial Snot provides the social and psychological barrier that keeps Pop Cult adherents from asking why they’re worshiping. Instead of elevating their tastes and striving for excellence, the snotty attitude allows them to settle for, and even take pride in, consuming whatever the market churns out.
Both concepts highlight an ongoing trend of substituting deep meaning with shallow alternatives. Millennial Snot and the Pop Cult together amount to a social phenomenon that ultimately conditions people to sneer at purpose and worship novelty, leaving them adrift. One discourages the search for genuine connection, while the other packages escape as a ritual.
The answer to this cultural malaise may lie in questioning the value of this kind of pseudo-worship. Authentic faith is a way of knowing Truth. When worship is directed solely at empty pleasures, it leads not to wisdom but perpetual dissatisfaction.
Dark fantasy minus the grim plus heroes you can relate to battling vs overwhelming odds
It ties in with The Kid Who Reads. They were taught that repeating the right slogans and unquestioningly doing what your masters tell you makes you a Good Person, and that’s where it ends for them.
Fortunately, it’s no longer working. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to lead to a lot of immediate social problems very, very soon.
The Good Person™ delusion is another Modern conceit that can’t die soon enough. It’s the rotten heart of all these socio-spiritual disorders.
“The Good Person™ delusion is another Modern conceit that can’t die soon enough.”
YouTube has channels with people making costumes and vintage clothing. Almost all of these YouTubers are women, almost all childless, and almost all off the charts secularist liberals. I can only assume most conservative sewists don’t have time for either a YouTube channel or the hobby.
Anyway, for the sake of giving her at least a little privacy, I will not name the sewist YouTuber that your statement reminded me of. For sure, she lets her audience know that she is a Good Person(TM) regularly. She has all the correct liberal views and is inclusive to a fault. She has both the Millennial Snot attitude and a serious pop culture addiction. She does “dabble” around with God, too, but that’s the best I can give it. I get the impression that her church, if she goes to one regularly, will be of the Sparkle Creed variety.
Unfortunately, she is also seriously overweight and apparently has regular therapy sessions. She is at least married with one child and that aspect of her life seems happy/sane at least. It’s more than can be said for many in the same YouTube category.
Anyway, that’s what “Good Person(TM)” looks like, I’m ready to investigate the “Bad Person” category. Not a lot of happiness there, just a lot cope until the next virtue signal.
Call me going out on a limb here but after reading this whole entry, I could only think about how the common attitude of Millennials towards anything is that “The thing you like is racist”. Though in 2024 that’s expanded to sexist, bigoted, homophonic, problematic, etc.
In part why Millennials enjoy anything “ironically” is to save face against their own standards. In part why they try to shut down any criticism serves the same purpose because any criticism they would levy against anything will be 100% labelled as “problematic” in some way.
My whole generation has been raised to be unreasonably over critical of everything. We aren’t allowed to have fun because fun is offensive and might hurt someone’s precious feefees. So instead my generation eats toxic sludge to come off like they’re moral or something. It’s all one big humiliation ritual turned lifestyle.
If it’s any comfort, the Millennial Snot phenomenon afflicts no shortage of Ys. In fact, the latter are even more prone to Pop Cultism due to the “No fun allowed” imperative you brought up not having been forced on them as kids.
The “no fun allowed” attitude is just another feather in the cap of learned helplessness in our society. It’s a terrible existence.
We shouldn’t have to live like this.
I read that piece last week, terrific editorial that connected a lot of dots.
Closely related is how this ties into the “What happened to hipsters?” Question. Well, here’s the answer in part. The irony, the snotty attitude, insincerity, and condescension of the Hipster all got absorbed into the broader urbanite bugman culture as hipsters got older and started working in the media establishment.
Basically, Hipsters never died. They sort of took over, or at least got jobs in public facing roles at Globohomo Inc.
I never thought I’d find it somewhat sad to watch Old YouTube videos and see those excited kids dabbling in this new-to-them medium only to be reminded that it’s not 2006 anymore and this kid is now an adult who wears middle-aged auntie dresses, downs pills like they’re candy, and screams online at anyone who doesn’t use the accepted current year terminology or votes the correct way. How anyone can look at where these people started and then ended up and think this is the right way to go is a mystery to me.
Trend chasing is a horrible addiction.
You see it sometimes in business – mainly marketing/sales/HR. It’s why I can’t stand anyone in that field. Their personal goes where the herd goes, even off a cliff.
Note how it’s always credentialism. “Uh, I have a Ph.D,” “Well I was published in this prestigious journal, where were YOU published,” “Look at all the certificates and awards I have been awarded.” The publishing version is “YOU may be selling enough to support yourself, but I got a Hugo!”
When I first started teaching at college, the students were the tail end of the millennials. Every class had several students who would say “I’ve gotten A’s in all my previous classes, so therefore I understand the material in this course.” Though to be fair there were plenty of those among my Gen Y classmates.
This attitude leads to an inevitable crisis somewhere between 25-40. Eventually you will not be able to ignore the fact that you’ve accomplished nothing, no matter how much you’ve been praised. So do you accept this, and focus on making something worthwhile with the rest of your life, or do you double down on secret king tendencies? People who do the latter are particularly dangerous because their efforts become focused entirely on destroying anyone who could reveal their fraud.
It’s no accident that the proliferation of “imposter syndrome” tracks with Gen Y’s entrance into college.
I wonder what someone would do if they wanted to take the former option.
1.) Identify a skill you would like to have but do not have.
2.) Force yourself to admit that you are a beginner and will have to start from nothing or close to it.
3.) Slowly work to improve in that skill every day.
Could be an academic discipline, like mathematics or science. Could be a skill like programming or auto repair. Could be learning a foreign language, or learning how to play an instrument, or how to write a book.
When you start out the specific skill doesn’t matter that much (though it should be something that you have a strong motivation to learn.) You are teaching yourself that you need to learn and that you can learn. Once this is done with one skill it is much easier to do with others, and once this is done with many skills you will be able to see that there are a great many opportunities available that you had previously dismissed.
Where many from Gen Y and the millennials struggle is admitting that they need to start from scratch and maybe less than (if bad habits need to be unlearned.) It’s really tempting in the early stages to say “eh, I probably know most of this stuff anyway” and then BS your way through the more advanced skills, thereby learning nothing.
The difference comes down to humility. Those who develop some are capable of learning and growing. Those who don’t post on X about how they’re going to get put in camps by the election winner who didn’t even do it four years ago.
This is not a generational thing. Boomers are same but with fooseball and the fiction called WW2.