Am I a god?! Why "manifesting" your reality is easier than ever
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. America is a deeply spiritual nation. Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual in some way, but at the same time, we're also getting less religious. When asked to check a box next to their religious affiliation, 28% of Americans check the box labeled none. The nuns, as they're sometimes called, are now the biggest religious group in the United States. And 22% identify as spiritual, but not religious, otherwise known as SBNRs. But for SBNRs, what's replacing organized religion? What do they believe? And where does that belief show up in all our lives? For our final episode of our series, Losing My Religion, we're going to find out. Today, we're getting into manifesting. In case you don't know, manifesting is the idea that if you want something badly enough, it'll come to you. You might know this idea by other names, like the law of attraction or the secret.
But interest in the latest iteration, manifestation, really spiked in 2020, according to Google Trends. And it's still riding that wave. And while manifestation is not always religious, it's often spiritual.
You can make it happen by getting in touch with the inner workings of the universe, the divine energy, the force. There's a lot of different language that people use for it.
That's author and journalist Tara Isabella Burton. I sat down with her and New York Magazine features writer, Rebecca Jennings. Thanks for having us. To talk about the appeal of manifestation, how it's actually built into the internet, and why it might make us less aware of our humanity. And you know what? You're going to love this conversation. I know, because I'm manifesting it. Let's get right into it. What do people get out of manifestation as a spiritual practice?
I mean, I personally saw it pop up on a ton of my feeds, you know, pretty much every time I scrolled really at the beginning of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. And to me, what I saw a lot of was people searching for an element of control over what was going to happen to them when everything felt really chaotic and confusing. And so not only will this good thing happen, but you can also predict the future. Like you can know what your future will be just by manifesting it. And I think, yeah, you can get health or wealth or love or whatever. But you can also get some certainty.
I definitely see why that would be appealing to some people. So what does manifesting content look like online?
I was seeing it largely on TikTok and I see so many manifesting TikToks about like, use this sound and he will text you back in 10 minutes.
He will be mine. He doesn't have a choice.
I've gotten those sometimes. I'm like, will he? He's sitting right next to me.
And the comments are all like, oh my God, it worked. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe. No, I mean, that was a really popular way. It was a lot of, we're going to set a video at a certain frequency. You know, this is the quote unquote love frequency. And if you use this, you're attracting love. Comment, I claim to claim this energy and it will happen for you or save this sound and it will happen. And I think Two or three years later, you saw yet another rebranding of manifesting in the form of what was called lucky girl syndrome.
I get everything I want because that's just the way it is. Things are always working out in my favor. I am so lucky.
And it was basically like, you can use these mantras as well, and therefore you will be a lucky girl too. It is this idea that like through the internet, through what we're posting, we can, you know, have some material effects in the world.
Okay. A lot of the examples that you've given, like use this sound, like on TikTok, repost this so your crush will text you back or whatever. Is that not just engagement farming? Like, is that not just asking people to interact with your posts so that they will become more popular and perhaps, you know, the original poster can make money?
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