Modern Gods

Some people say that we live in an age of reason, in a world that no longer has room for religion. However, many of these people find themselves imploring some unspecified power when they are rushing to catch the bus, or trying to find their keys.

Is it a coincidence when these things work out? Nay nay, I say! We need our gods and their divine intervention, whether they created us, or we created them. Like the Greek gods of old, here are a few of the gods who serve us in our modern world.

An illustration of a modern god who looks a little ancient greek. He holds a cat and demands likes and shares.

Pray!

Viralicus (pictured above) is the god of sharing things on Facebook. Good or bad, true or not, all shares are tributes to him. You’ve seen images of desperately ill babies in hospitals, pleading for you to share because Facebook or Bill Gates will donate 5 cents for each like toward its medical treatment? And it seems kind of twisted and cruel that the doctors and donors would just let a sick baby languish until they see the photo reach enough shares? Well, these are invocations to Viralicus, a needed sacrifice to ensure a steady stream of cat videos and ranting political pundits.

Worship!

A drawing of a modern god in the style of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. This is a smug duck with 4 arms, and each hand is a glowing screen.

We live in the age of the “selfie,” where people take photos of themselves and post them to the internet, just in case their friends forgot what they look like while they were also taking photos of themselves. A recent trend in selfies is to press one’s lips together and stick them out in a manner reminiscent of a duck-bill. A curious habit that comes into focus when one realizes that the god of selfies is also the god of ducks, Quanitadae. This god is jealous and insecure, and compels tribute by causing the selfie-taker to imitate his divine countenance.

Kneel!

A drawing of a modern god of the Hindu variety, this purple goddess has multiple arms and is tiny, dancing on a classic phone receiver. She also has a tiny boombox.

One of the most prevalent, and therefore most sacred, aspects of western culture is the call center, the most prestigious career option available to a Millennial.  But no matter how many art history majors Comcast hires, there just aren’t enough of the sensitive souls to explain to every customer why they are being billed seven hundred dollars for a cable box they returned in 2009, or why the service tech they waited a week for accomplished nothing but clogging their toilet. This calls for the intervention of Dronon, the goddess of hold music. Her ability to play the same three bland bars of music over and over fills the spaces between recorded messages reassuring you about how important your call is, and clouds the mind with too much rage to contemplate how one has little choice in a so-called free market.

Pay Tribute!

A drawing of a modern god who in fact looks quite ancient and primitive. He looks like a squat carving of a guy with lightning bolts on his head and arrows in his hands. He has a little sign on his belly that plainly says "click! credit score."

The ability to search for any and all information is probably one of the most revolutionary things to arise from the internet, just after the free unlimited porn and browser toolbars. But we all know the frustration of performing an internet search and getting results that look promising, only to click through to find something like recruitment materials for a real estate pyramid scheme. This is because you are not paying tribute to Booleus, the mighty god of internet search results. Booleus can be angered by things like ad-blockers, or using Yahoo. He is one of the easier to please gods, though, and clicking on a sponsored link every once in a while is usually enough to appease him.

Tremble!

A drawing of another modern goddess who seems to be indonesian, if not Indian. Dark blue skin, white eyes, an extension cord hat... She holds up a large battery.

Smartphones are a miracle of modern technology, allowing us exciting new ways to distract ourselves from the dull and mundane world around us. Tragically, batteries cannot keep up with their energy demands, though, exhausting themselves after a mere six hundred selfies or text messages. But those numbers can vary, and that is due to the influence of Cromongulaheela, the god of smartphone batteries. Need to make a call after a long day of scrolling past duck lips on Facebook? If you’ve pleased this god, she’ll make sure you have 10% charge left, just enough to assure the student loan people that you’re about to mail the check. Cromongulaheela demands tribute in the form of portable chargers and USB ports on anything that holds power.

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