Beatrice Marovich
@beamarovich.bsky.social
I’m a professor in religious studies, theology & the environmental humanities. I write about death, the underworld, and the things that take root there.
website: www.beatricemarovich.com
substack: https://beatricemarovich.substack.com
website: www.beatricemarovich.com
substack: https://beatricemarovich.substack.com
There are so many reasons for people to be suspicious of one another right now. It’s tiring. I think we are all weary.
September 4, 2025 at 2:52 PM
There are so many reasons for people to be suspicious of one another right now. It’s tiring. I think we are all weary.
Yes, I wrote something about brainrot. Yes, I know you may find this cringe. But I wrote a whole dissertation about the way animals shape culture. I see it happening now, with AI & can’t help worrying that our attachments to nature might be used make us more comfortable with the new unrealities.
The Cuteness Trap: Do Animals Make AI Disarming?
I FOUND ITALIAN BRAINROT not because it emerged magically in my TikTok feed, as many strange things do, but because I went looking for it.
open.substack.com
September 3, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Yes, I wrote something about brainrot. Yes, I know you may find this cringe. But I wrote a whole dissertation about the way animals shape culture. I see it happening now, with AI & can’t help worrying that our attachments to nature might be used make us more comfortable with the new unrealities.
We’re back to using paper again on campus, and the debates are heating up in the faculty copy room.
August 25, 2025 at 2:48 PM
We’re back to using paper again on campus, and the debates are heating up in the faculty copy room.
Maybe you’ve seen those viral TikTok bunnies, on trampolines? If you have, don’t judge me, but I was briefly fooled by them.
I wrote about thieves of joy, and how those unknowing bunnies are a little icon of this moment: one where our sense of reality is starting to glitch.
I wrote about thieves of joy, and how those unknowing bunnies are a little icon of this moment: one where our sense of reality is starting to glitch.
Unknowing is a Technology for the Digital World
Surviving the new unrealities
open.substack.com
August 20, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Maybe you’ve seen those viral TikTok bunnies, on trampolines? If you have, don’t judge me, but I was briefly fooled by them.
I wrote about thieves of joy, and how those unknowing bunnies are a little icon of this moment: one where our sense of reality is starting to glitch.
I wrote about thieves of joy, and how those unknowing bunnies are a little icon of this moment: one where our sense of reality is starting to glitch.
Professors are being encouraged to assign less reading material, because the kids can’t process it. But I am genuinely concerned about kids losing the ability to effectively skim: a crucial navigation skill.
Preference-based scrolling through slip doesn’t teach this.
Preference-based scrolling through slip doesn’t teach this.
August 18, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Professors are being encouraged to assign less reading material, because the kids can’t process it. But I am genuinely concerned about kids losing the ability to effectively skim: a crucial navigation skill.
Preference-based scrolling through slip doesn’t teach this.
Preference-based scrolling through slip doesn’t teach this.
I’ve started to feel like friction (something I’ve never particularly liked) has become a weird attractor for me. It’s like some mineral that I’m missing from my diet, and I have to eat bitter things in order to get it.
Friction is Therapeutic
Against easiness
open.substack.com
August 6, 2025 at 2:31 PM
I’ve started to feel like friction (something I’ve never particularly liked) has become a weird attractor for me. It’s like some mineral that I’m missing from my diet, and I have to eat bitter things in order to get it.
Reposted by Beatrice Marovich
Trailer is out! This summer we're releasing a seven episode limited series podcast on AI in schools called The Homework Machine. Its based on over 100 interviews with teachers and students, and the student interviews especially are funny, gut-wrenching, real talk from the youth.
Coming Soon: The Homework Machine
Most education technologies are invited in by schools. But generative AI crashed the party.
www.teachlabpodcast.com
July 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Trailer is out! This summer we're releasing a seven episode limited series podcast on AI in schools called The Homework Machine. Its based on over 100 interviews with teachers and students, and the student interviews especially are funny, gut-wrenching, real talk from the youth.
If I could like this ten times, I would. Reading it felt like a big, long, yes. Thinking about having my students read it in the fall.
compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting
why the death of nuance should scare you -your fav gen z philosopher xx
open.substack.com
July 24, 2025 at 4:18 PM
If I could like this ten times, I would. Reading it felt like a big, long, yes. Thinking about having my students read it in the fall.
Reposted by Beatrice Marovich
"I am less like a moth, when I read a book, and more like a mammal."
I always love @beamarovich.bsky.social's work, and I can't wait to read more of her reflections on mystery and others' interior lives in the digital age.
I always love @beamarovich.bsky.social's work, and I can't wait to read more of her reflections on mystery and others' interior lives in the digital age.
Watching People Read (Interiority After Mystery I)
A series on inner life and algorithms
beatricemarovich.substack.com
July 23, 2025 at 4:51 PM
"I am less like a moth, when I read a book, and more like a mammal."
I always love @beamarovich.bsky.social's work, and I can't wait to read more of her reflections on mystery and others' interior lives in the digital age.
I always love @beamarovich.bsky.social's work, and I can't wait to read more of her reflections on mystery and others' interior lives in the digital age.
Performative reading is getting dragged online. In part, it’s triggering suspicion: there’s a lot of moral outrage about technology, so it’s a good time to virtue signal with a book.
July 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Performative reading is getting dragged online. In part, it’s triggering suspicion: there’s a lot of moral outrage about technology, so it’s a good time to virtue signal with a book.
Exbodiment: I love that way of putting it. I agree that this is a difficult, and deeply intuitive, practice that’s at risk right now.
Beatrice Marovich on Substack
Exbodiment: I love that way of putting it. I agree that this is a practice that’s at risk right now.
“Language is humanity’s superpower. Without it, culture, cultural evolution, global cooperation, ...
substack.com
July 9, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Exbodiment: I love that way of putting it. I agree that this is a difficult, and deeply intuitive, practice that’s at risk right now.
AI like ChatGPT is trained to follow a protocol when they talk about religion: no bias, no advocacy (essentially no theology). But ChatGPT admits that complete neutrality might be impossible. What happens when a machine built for objectivity starts doing theology anyway?
AI and the Illusion of Religious Neutrality
Even ChatGPT can see its religious bias. Why can't we?
open.substack.com
July 9, 2025 at 3:06 PM
AI like ChatGPT is trained to follow a protocol when they talk about religion: no bias, no advocacy (essentially no theology). But ChatGPT admits that complete neutrality might be impossible. What happens when a machine built for objectivity starts doing theology anyway?
“If the hipster represents cultural taste as sorting algorithm, and the nerd represents cultural taste determined by sorting algorithm, the zombie is the point at which we stop consuming culture-commodities altogether and start directly consuming the sorting algorithm itself.”
In my zombie era
The third stage of culture in the age of infinite information
open.substack.com
July 6, 2025 at 3:57 PM
“If the hipster represents cultural taste as sorting algorithm, and the nerd represents cultural taste determined by sorting algorithm, the zombie is the point at which we stop consuming culture-commodities altogether and start directly consuming the sorting algorithm itself.”
I just picked my 9 year old daughter up from summer camp this weekend, and I can’t look at news about the Texas floods without crying.
July 6, 2025 at 2:29 PM
I just picked my 9 year old daughter up from summer camp this weekend, and I can’t look at news about the Texas floods without crying.
“What people describe as ‘the end of the Internet’ isn’t a real end. We are waking up—the Otherworld’s glamor has faded and we are coming to in the mortal world.”
Loved this; though I’m pretty convinced that otherworlds are a feature of our mortality, not a bug.
Loved this; though I’m pretty convinced that otherworlds are a feature of our mortality, not a bug.
The Internet as the Astral Plane. The Internet as Fairyland
from the Philosophical Research Society panel with Tara Isabella Burton, MemeAnalysis, and Gary Lachman
open.substack.com
July 5, 2025 at 12:57 PM
“What people describe as ‘the end of the Internet’ isn’t a real end. We are waking up—the Otherworld’s glamor has faded and we are coming to in the mortal world.”
Loved this; though I’m pretty convinced that otherworlds are a feature of our mortality, not a bug.
Loved this; though I’m pretty convinced that otherworlds are a feature of our mortality, not a bug.
Sean Illing interviewed The NY Times reporter who wrote that now infamous article about everyone cheating their way through college.
If AI can do your classwork, why go to college?
Podcast Episode · The Gray Area with Sean Illing · 06/30/2025 · 59m
podcasts.apple.com
June 30, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Sean Illing interviewed The NY Times reporter who wrote that now infamous article about everyone cheating their way through college.
For my religious studies & theology friends who have been interested in the spiritual uses of AI:
“Within self-optimisation culture online, where some want a weekly workout routine, others essentially want a personal spiritual trainer.”
“Within self-optimisation culture online, where some want a weekly workout routine, others essentially want a personal spiritual trainer.”
When ChatGPT becomes your spiritual guide
As more people turn to the chatbot for immediate answers about all things metaphysical, are we losing our patience for truly transformative experiences?
www.dazeddigital.com
June 27, 2025 at 12:48 PM
For my religious studies & theology friends who have been interested in the spiritual uses of AI:
“Within self-optimisation culture online, where some want a weekly workout routine, others essentially want a personal spiritual trainer.”
“Within self-optimisation culture online, where some want a weekly workout routine, others essentially want a personal spiritual trainer.”
Forty years ago Donna Haraway proposed the cyborg as an ironic feminist myth of resistance. Today, I feel more like a cyborg than ever & authoritarian-style politics are infused with the destabilizing irony that Haraway used as a tool of critique. I wanted to see how her political myth holds up.
I'd Actually Rather Be a Goddess Than a Cyborg
Craft, Power & the Politics of Myth-Making
open.substack.com
June 25, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Forty years ago Donna Haraway proposed the cyborg as an ironic feminist myth of resistance. Today, I feel more like a cyborg than ever & authoritarian-style politics are infused with the destabilizing irony that Haraway used as a tool of critique. I wanted to see how her political myth holds up.
Reposted by Beatrice Marovich
My prediction for how this will play out: Most colleges will doubledown on AI even as employers realize their graduates know next to nothing. Elite colleges will market themselves as being non-AI. Not using AI will be a bespoke luxury commodity that's highly sought after.
Basically, you're gonna see a lot of companies and institutions pivot to AI, and then a year or so later, they're gonna backtrack.
June 18, 2025 at 2:06 PM
My prediction for how this will play out: Most colleges will doubledown on AI even as employers realize their graduates know next to nothing. Elite colleges will market themselves as being non-AI. Not using AI will be a bespoke luxury commodity that's highly sought after.
For those of you who’ve read that piece in The NY Times on ChatGPT and spiritual psychosis (or that similar Rolling Stone piece), Katherine Dee explains it as just another enchanted response to a new technology (it’s happened before, it will happen again).
Let's Talk About ChatGPT-Induced Spiritual Psychosis
yup, still thinking about it
open.substack.com
June 15, 2025 at 1:47 PM
For those of you who’ve read that piece in The NY Times on ChatGPT and spiritual psychosis (or that similar Rolling Stone piece), Katherine Dee explains it as just another enchanted response to a new technology (it’s happened before, it will happen again).
Reposted by Beatrice Marovich
Is theology dying? Personally, I think it is. @beamarovich.bsky.social interviewed me and many others on this topic and wrote an excellent piece for The Other Journal. I recommend reading it.
theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...
theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...
Is Theology Dying? - The Other Journal
People often assume that theology is only for true believers: those who want to defend the existence of God against the skepticism of secular outsiders. But there’s an old open secret in the field: th...
theotherjournal.com
June 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Is theology dying? Personally, I think it is. @beamarovich.bsky.social interviewed me and many others on this topic and wrote an excellent piece for The Other Journal. I recommend reading it.
theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...
theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...
Like you’ve never dared to do before, lol
June 12, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Like you’ve never dared to do before, lol
Reposted by Beatrice Marovich
A wonderful 'kind of report' on the death, or something, of the academic discipline of #theology, by @beamarovich.bsky.social. #academia theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...
Is Theology Dying? - The Other Journal
People often assume that theology is only for true believers: those who want to defend the existence of God against the skepticism of secular outsiders. But there’s an old open secret in the field: th...
theotherjournal.com
June 12, 2025 at 12:04 PM
A wonderful 'kind of report' on the death, or something, of the academic discipline of #theology, by @beamarovich.bsky.social. #academia theotherjournal.com/2025/06/is-t...