Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates gathered for the second Agora presentation of the spring semester, featuring Department Chair and Associate Professor Dr. Calum Matheson. The monthly Agora series invites speakers to share current communication research, and this installment drew one of the semester’s largest crowds.
Dr. Matheson’s talk centered on his newly published book, Post-Weird: Fragmentation, Community, and the Decline of the Mainstream, a study of rhetoric, belief, and community formation in contemporary American culture. The lecture offered attendees an in-depth look at the book’s core arguments and case studies.
Dr. Matheson opened by reflecting on the intellectual origins of Post-Weird, which grew from a realization he encountered years earlier: that social life is fundamentally composed of arguments. As traditional sources of authority and shared meaning have weakened, he argued, people increasingly form communities around rigid, unchallengeable interpretations of symbols, texts, and media. These communities often see themselves as holders of hidden truths, revealed through signs that must be accepted rather than debated.
The book examines a range of fringe and splinter groups that have moved beyond the cultural mainstream, including Appalachian serpent handlers, Sandy Hook deniers, pro-anorexia bloggers, incels, and other communities shaped by absolutist belief systems. During the lecture, Dr. Matheson focused primarily on two case studies that exemplify the stakes of post-mainstream rhetoric: Pentecostal serpent handlers and conspiracy theorists surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted in West Virginia—the only Appalachian state where serpent handling is not illegal—Dr. Matheson described the practice as an underground ritual rooted in a literal interpretation of scripture. Members handle venomous snakes as a demonstration of faith, risking severe injury or death. He emphasized that serpent handling illustrates the extreme consequences that can arise when belief is treated as unquestionable truth rather than rhetorical interpretation. In this context, sacrifice becomes not symbolic, but physical and final.
Turning to the Sandy Hook conspiracy movement, Dr. Matheson discussed the influence of public figures such as radio host Alex Jones and philosopher James Fetzer, whose writings and broadcasts promoted the false claim that the 2012 school shooting never occurred. This case, he noted, demonstrates how individuals in positions of authority can amplify damaging rhetoric, transforming speculative claims into shared convictions with real-world consequences for victims’ families and communities.
Across these examples, Dr. Matheson identified what he calls “post-truth people”—individuals who are “dangerously nostalgic for a harmony that never existed.” In a fragmented media environment, he argued, communities cohere not through dialogue but through certainty, rejecting ambiguity and interpretation in favor of totalizing explanations.
Dr. Matheson concluded the lecture by returning to the central claim of Post-Weird: that rhetoric remains essential in an era defined by fragmentation. Rather than retreating into absolutism or despair, he called on audiences to “live rhetorically”—to engage with language, disagreement, and interpretation as necessary tools for navigating a fractured world. In doing so, he suggested, we may begin to rebuild forms of community that do not depend on exclusion or harm.