What “weird Catholicism” reveals about the language of the internet In the era of social media no institution, not even those most defiantly removed from the shifting winds of fashion, can entirely avoid getting weird.
By Justin E. H. Smith When the
New York Times Magazine ran its profile of the “Weird Catholic Twitter” (WCT) community in May 2020, extremely-online Catholics and non-Catholics alike came together in one of the internet s periodic gestures of widespread, synchronised eye-rolling. One well-known Twitter personality, Connor Wroe Southard, wrote that this exposé was akin to the same newspaper s description of the alt-right YouTuber Ben Shapiro as “the cool kid s philosopher”. Another familiar voice of Twitter, Liz Franczak, exclaimed in a rawer spirit: “I cannot believe there is a Weird Catholic Twitter piece in nytmag.”