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Kristen tidning: ”Buddhistisk influencer balanserar mellan engagemang och attachment”

"Kan sociala medier influera en hel generations tro? Sotce och andra onlineinfluencers väcker frågor om tro."

Growing up in Philadelphia in a typical American family, “I just really wasn’t from a place that prioritized introspection and nor did I,” said Amelia, who, posting as “sotce,” has become a social media guru offering Buddhist meditation and philosophy through artistic, oddly, or perhaps spiritually, aloof videos and memes.
Amelia, 23, conceals her last name because she says she doesn’t want to distract her audience from her message. “Sort of like a deity,” she said.
In 2021, while studying at a Buddhist monastery in India, Amelia posted her first video on the social media app TikTok. The clip showed a black cat walking along a path in front of a church with natural sound, and overnight it received more than 3 million views.
She continued to post videos demonstrating hand positions, or “mudras,” the Sanskrit word for the gestures that serve in Buddhist art as symbols representing sentiments, such as the expulsion of negativity or the evocation of pure intention. Like clockwork, after posting each clip, Amelia would wake up to millions of views.
Her audience, as she tells it, fell into her lap. “The algorithm chose me,” she said. “I felt as if the algorithm had selected me to be the one to go viral. Then, I went about it in a way that I thought would bring purification to myself and others.”
After a year in India, Amelia returned to Pennsylvania and launched an account on Patreon, a subscription-based online platform where artists, podcasters, writers and other internet personalities share their work for a monthly fee.
Under the title “the sotce method,” she publishes her writing, answers people’s questions and posts guided meditations. Her accounts on Patreon and Substack, a blogging site, have collectively attracted more than 20,000 paying subscribers. She charges according to a three-tier payment system, with the lowest subscription costing $3 per month and the highest $15. On TikTok, she currently has 424,400 followers, and on Instagram she has nearly 100,000.
The success of her online content has made it possible for Amelia to move into a studio apartment in Manhattan. “I don’t feel worthy of it,” Amelia said. “But no one else is coming. I think my role is necessary. No one else is coming to help.”
By help, she seems to mean the wisdom she dispenses in response to the hundreds of questions she gets sent every day, mostly to women in their late teens and twenties. Her audience asks about topics such as loneliness, how to find happiness and whether they’re too attached to their boyfriend. Some divulge their secrets.
When asked about how to cope with a deep desire for romantic connection, sotce wrote: “We seek our attachments to avoid the present, which would require us to face the groundless meaningless void that is our lives. It’s tragic and also funny … try not to be too hard on yourself.”