The Platform Imaginaries of Atheist Social Media Influencers: Meaning, Community, and Money

Celebrity atheists are usually represented by the “four horsemen” who emerged in the new atheism movement. Atheist social media influencers, however, may challenge the simplified understandings of celebrity atheists. Drawing on fifty-four interviews with atheist, agnostic, and secular humanist SMIs on YouTube and TikTok, we have identified three platform imaginaries adopted by atheist SMIs. First, rather than thinking of a concrete audience, some atheist SMIs perceive social media platform as a space for self-expression. Second, perceiving their deconversions as lonely, some atheist SMIs sought to create space for others to know they were not alone. Finally, SMIs often eschewed the idea of creating content to make money and sometimes disagreed with the label SMI itself because of its association with selling products. We argue that atheist SMIs’ platform imaginary needs to be understood in the context of secularization and stigmatization, commodification and consumerism, and the debates over religious authority.