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Last I checked, the anonymous web was effectively dead. Or do these people not use the internet either?



They do, but most people aren't aware how Internet works. Hell, most people haven't learned the concepts necessary to comprehend what information is (personal or otherwise) and how it behaves - not in terms of technology, but as a fundamental component of reality.

Anyway, the Mark as described in Revelations is pretty... bodily, for lack of better term. It evokes the image of getting a barcode stamped on your arm or your forehead, in exchange for swearing fealty. The Mark feels like a concrete, physical thing. That's why things like "government ID" or "payment chip in your arm" pattern-match to this prophesy for so many people, while things like "mobile phone number" or "e-mail address" don't.

(There's also a factor of scale/graduality. For people alive this century, countries and governments were always a thing. A big thing. Banks too. The governments, the UN, the international financial system - they look big, evil, and pattern-match to the Beast. In contrast, for most people alive today, mobile phones and e-mail addresses were something they've seen introduced gradually, from great many independent vendors. They don't have this obvious Beast-like quality.)

Source: grew up as Jehovah's Witness. While I obviously can't speak for all fundamentalist Christians, and while JW teachings don't consider government IDs to be the Mark[0], I got pretty familiar with the patterns of thinking people show around this topic.

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[0] - They do, however, believe that the Beast described in the Revelations is currently embodied by the United Nations. So if the UN ever proposes a common ID scheme or an electronic payment system, I'm pretty sure plenty of Witnesses will throw a fit.




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