{"id":53,"date":"2025-05-09T07:10:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T03:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/why-am-i-internet-stalking-the-pope\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T07:10:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T03:10:37","slug":"why-am-i-internet-stalking-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/why-am-i-internet-stalking-the-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"Why am I internet-stalking the pope?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" data-caption=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/05\/VRG_First_Pope_Digital_Footprint_K_Radtke.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" \/><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/p><\/figure>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">The moment the white smoke appeared above the Sistine Chapel, I immediately turned on my television, because I wanted to see who the new pope would be, and then hopped on social media, because I knew that the internet could tell me more about the new pope faster than television could. That, and the memes would be good. <\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">The memes came first, naturally, flying in harder and faster than they ever did with Pope Francis, because the new pope was American. Not just that &#8211; Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, was from <em>Chicago, <\/em>with a bio full of cultural touchstones that the American meme economy grasped immediately: <em>Did the pope ever drink Malort? Was the pope a Cubs or a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/michaelschwab13\/status\/1920656687045685562\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Sox fan<\/em><\/a><em>? Was God going to intercede on behalf of the Knicks in the NBA playoffs because the pope graduated from Villanova? <\/em>The next wave of information was, I&rsquo;d suspected, going to be news and articles about his upbringing, pastoral history and religious stances &#8211; things that would tell the world what sort of leader this new pope would be. <\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">And then someone I followed posted a screenshot from an X account with the handle @drprevost: three retweets, over the past three months, that linked to articles harshly cri \u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/politics\/663974\/pope-leo-xiv-prevost-social-media-tweets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the full story at The Verge.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The moment the white smoke appeared above the Sistine Chapel, I immediately turned on my television, because I wanted to [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/VRG_First_Pope_Digital_Footprint_K_Radtke-mjFaYs.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}