Are fandoms religion substitutes?

[Alben Barkley]

I'm not trying to generalize at all, but a lot of the more vocal atheists and agnostics I see online, especially on places like Reddit

This is an observation about Reddit users as much as one about atheists and agnostics, and my suspicion is that it holds true for people of any creed who choose to be active on that platform. I don't think that religious people are any less likely to be interested in fandom culture once you account for age and a couple of other confounders.

The interesting variation might be in which fandoms tend to attract different religious backgrounds. I thought it would be interesting to see which brands and "franchises" were most disproportionately followed by users of religious subreddits, so I checked. I'm sure that I missed a bunch  that I didn't recognize, and I'm not exactly sure which of these are the type to generate "fandoms" but here is what I found:

r/atheism: The Walking Dead, Dr. Who, Rick and Morty, The Expanse, Stargate, Star Trek, Subaru

r/christianity: A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, Grey's Anatomy, The Office, The Elder Scrolls, The Sims

r/truechristian: Spiderman, Diablo, The Office, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer

r/catholicism: Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Star Wars, The Sopranos

r/islam: The Elder Scrolls, Spiderman, Tesla, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Naruto


Quick post-script, as long as I'm writing this. The related subreddits for r/Christianity reveal a base of users who - in addition to religion - are more likely to be interested in topics such as:

• Conspiracy theories
• Jordan Peterson
• Right-wing and moderate politics
• Compulsive masturbation
• Mental health
• Music
• Marriage and dating

The list for r/atheism includes the follow topics:

• Left-wing politics
• Dislike of children
• Sexual identity and fetishes
• Dislike of law enforcement
• Guns
• Gaming
• Sam Harris

Didn't bother with the others but I'll note that "r/anime_titties" ranked highly for disproportionate overlap with both r/islam and r/catholicism.[/list]

SO MANY STEREOTYPES confirmed. Especially for the atheists but damn.