Author’s Note: This article isn’t a critique of technology but a mirror of our participation in it. Algorithms are not separate from us; they’re extensions of what we choose to reward. This is written to reveal the pattern, not to offer steps.
We once worshipped gold. Now we worship code. The altars changed but the reflex stayed the same. In the past, people trusted money as the ultimate oracle, believing it could deliver safety, status, and certainty. Today, we hand our attention and agency to algorithms, believing they can deliver truth, relevance, and belonging. On TikTok alone, over 34 billion videos are fed into its recommendation engine each month. Every scroll is a prayer to a machine that decides which reality we are permitted to see.
Every age creates its own priesthood. Medieval Europe had clergy who decided what was sacred and what was heresy. The modern world built markets and banks to decide what was valuable and what was worthless. Now we have feeds, metrics, and machine-curated timelines to decide what is meaningful and what disappears.
This is not just about technology. It is about power. Algorithms are not passive math problems. They are systems of ordination, quietly ranking what we should see, what we should desire, and what we should ignore. Like priests, they interpret the hidden texts of our data, our behavior, and our patterns, then deliver their verdicts as if from a higher plane.
The danger is subtle. When we outsource meaning to a machine, we let it determine the sacred and the profane. We stop asking what deserves our devotion and start waiting to be told. We become congregants, waiting for the next notification, the next trend, the next algorithmic blessing.
The Rise of the Algorithmic Priesthood
There was a time when the internet felt like a public square. Chronological feeds showed everything in order, messy but transparent, like a bulletin board everyone could walk past. Then came personalization. Machine learning began sorting posts, guessing our preferences, and curating reality into private confessionals. Today, recommendation engines are no longer just helpers but theologians, deciding what is sacred, what is profane, and what should vanish. Code has become clergy.
This shift was subtle but total. We once scrolled by choice. Now we are guided by invisible liturgy. Our feeds do not simply show us the world. They tell us what the world is. Every flick of the finger and every second of dwell time becomes a prayer offered to the algorithmic priesthood. In return it offers us revelation in the form of the next post, the next suggestion, the next rabbit hole.
The power transfer is complete. We moved from open square to invisible sanctuary, from seeing everything to seeing what is deemed acceptable for us to see. Platforms present this as utility but it is authority. It is the difference between a library you browse and a clergy member handing you a single approved book.
Algorithms no longer just recommend. They ordain. What rises to the top of the feed becomes gospel. What sinks becomes heresy. Even those who design the systems admit they do not fully understand the inner workings, just as medieval parishioners could not read the Latin texts but trusted the priest to interpret them. In this way, the digital age has built a priesthood of code that shapes collective belief without ever standing on a pulpit.
This matters because the power of this new priesthood does not rest on laws or guns but on attention. What you see becomes what you think, and what you think becomes what you believe. These invisible clerics are not only deciding what trends and what dies online, they are deciding what ideas are allowed to survive in the collective imagination. Understanding that shift is the first step toward reclaiming your own authorship.
Doctrine and Dogma
Every religion has its canon, and the algorithmic priesthood is no different. Its doctrines are not written in scripture but in ranking systems and black-box models. These rules decide what rises to the top of your feed, what remains buried, and what is quietly erased. In effect, they define orthodoxy without ever declaring it.
Consider how medieval churches used gatekeeping to decide which texts were holy and which were heretical. Today, a platform’s content policy, ranking criteria, and engagement thresholds do the same work. Tweets, videos, posts, and even entire accounts are surfaced or hidden based on a logic most users never see. As with any priesthood, the laity is expected to accept the mystery and trust the interpreters.
This is not simply about censorship or moderation. It is about shaping reality itself. If the only ideas you ever see are the ones an algorithm has blessed with visibility, then your sense of what exists shrinks to fit its theology. A video about long-term thinking may disappear while a five-second clip of outrage explodes. In this economy, heresy is not what is false, it is what does not perform.
Like all religions, this system enforces its dogma through ritualized reward and punishment. Accounts that conform to its hidden norms are rewarded with reach and virality. Accounts that drift outside those norms are excommunicated through shadowbans, throttling, or invisibility. The algorithm’s theology may be unspoken, but it is no less powerful for being invisible.
The effect is not neutral. It creates a canon of acceptable topics and tones that favors outrage over nuance, speed over reflection, spectacle over depth. It slowly rewires the collective nervous system toward reaction rather than contemplation. As Neil Postman warned decades ago, “What we need to consider about the computer is not only what it does, but what it undoes.” In our case, it undoes the possibility of a shared reality chosen by citizens rather than curated by code.
Recognizing this doctrine is the first act of rebellion. You cannot opt out of its influence if you do not first see the rules you have been living under. Once you see them, the illusion of neutrality dissolves. You begin to notice the hidden theology behind your feed, the way it shepherds your attention like a congregation. This awareness becomes the doorway to sovereignty.
Ritual and Confession
The new priesthood does not demand pews or altars. It demands data. Every scroll, click, pause, and swipe is an offering placed on its invisible altar. We feed these systems without ceremony, yet the ritual is as exacting as any religion. Our movements are tracked, our preferences tallied, and our attention converted into a sacrament the algorithm can read.
We do not merely consume content. We confess. Every like, share, and dwell-time metric tells the system who we are, what we fear, what we desire. In return we receive indulgences: reach, virality, and the brief rush of dopamine when the feed delivers a perfect hit. When we step out of line, the punishments arrive without explanation. Posts vanish. Visibility collapses. A shadowban is the modern excommunication, a silent removal from the congregation.
This ritual is deeply embodied. The thumb learns to flick, the eyes to dart, the nervous system to crave the next cue. Just as medieval penitents knelt on cold stone, we bow our heads to glowing screens. The act feels private, but it is public to the code. Every movement is recorded, modeled, and fed back to us as doctrine. In this way the ritual doesn’t only gather information, it shapes our future behavior. The more we participate, the more predictable we become, and the deeper our confession runs.
And this is why it matters: these rituals don’t just extract data, they reshape desire. They train us to anticipate what will please the priesthood and suppress what will not. The longer we practice this digital liturgy, the harder it becomes to tell the difference between what we want and what the algorithm has taught us to want. Our inner compass blurs, and meaning becomes something we outsource to code. This is the quiet cost: not only our data but our sovereignty over our own attention.
The Loss of Meaning
What happens when engagement becomes the new sacred? Ideas once valued for depth now live or die by a metric. In 2012, Facebook’s switch from chronological to algorithmic feed cut traffic to independent news sites by more than 50 percent almost overnight. Long essays and nuanced reporting were buried under faster, louder content. On YouTube, recommendation engines drive over 70 percent of viewing time, but those same algorithms are far more likely to amplify sensational clips than slow, careful explanation. This isn’t a conspiracy; it’s the natural outcome of optimizing for attention rather than substance.
The effect is cultural amnesia. Artists and thinkers who don’t produce algorithm-friendly work vanish from public view. Complex ideas are compressed into slogans. Outrage and novelty win because they spike the numbers. We start to believe that only what trends matters and that anything quiet or nuanced is irrelevant. The digital clergy doesn’t burn books, it buries them under noise.
A striking casualty is the slow death of long-form investigative journalism. Once the backbone of public accountability, it now struggles to survive in an environment where a 30-second viral clip can generate more revenue than a six-month investigation. This erodes not just media but the public’s capacity to sustain attention on complexity. Sacred ideas die not because they are false but because they are invisible. The priesthood of code decides what deserves a congregation, and culture begins to worship whatever it blesses.
Stepping Out of the Church
Algorithms can curate but they cannot consecrate. The act of stepping out is not about uninstalling apps or living off-grid. It is about remembering that your attention is not a tithe you owe to a system. It is a living force of authorship. This is not advice; it is a shift in consciousness. The moment you withdraw your devotion, the priesthood loses its power. You do not need to smash the altar. You only need to stop kneeling.
This shift is not passive. It is an active remembering. You are not a congregant waiting for the next revelation. You are the author of your own perception. The feeds can still flow, the code can still run, but it no longer ordains your inner world. When you hold your attention as sacred, the algorithm becomes just another tool, not a theology.
The priesthood of code is not going away. But its power ends where our attention ends. When you stop feeding it your confession, you remember you were always the author, not the acolyte. In that recognition is the quiet return of sovereignty.
The deeper truth is that meaning is never delivered from above. It rises from the living field of consciousness itself. When you remember this, no system, however vast, can stand between you and reality.
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About the Author
Shamananda Lee writes at the intersection of technology, culture, and consciousness. Her work challenges the myths of progress, exposes hidden structures of power, and points readers toward authorship of their own attention. Drawing from two decades of teaching, private practice, and direct inquiry into post-transcendent states, she writes not to comfort but to clarify. Her essays on Substack have built a reputation for surgical insight and fearless originality, offering a rare lens on the forces shaping collective and individual sovereignty.
Read again and again until it sinks in: "The priesthood of code is not going away. But its power ends where our attention ends. When you stop feeding it your confession, you remember you were always the author, not the acolyte. In that recognition is the quiet return of sovereignty [...] The deeper truth is that meaning is never delivered from above. It rises from the living field of consciousness itself. When you remember this, no system, however vast, can stand between you and reality."
Thank you for sharing! What I find is I don’t find many people IRL that have interest or the desire to discuss what I am interested in.
As an artist I don’t really want to use FB, IG, or YouTube because they are run by the corporations that are fucking everything up. But to sell my art it seems that is the “playbook “, so it can get somewhat frustrating and I could go on and on but that’s not where I am going to place my attention.