Have the Ebionites vanished from Youtube?

I have a link that would lead to the youtube channel of a real life authentic Ebionite - if that account weren't deleted. I was very disappointed to find out that this channel is no more. This user was in the middle of a thriving youtube community of Ebionites, and there were scores of friends and subscribers on his page who identified as non-Christian, Jewish revivalist followers of Yeshua. These weren't your typical seekers attracted by gnosticism, nature-olatry, and vegetarianism (though most of these guys probable were vegetarian). These were all out bearded guys who recite Torah in Hebrew and read reconstructions of the Gospel of the Ebionites. This one user wrote that he celebrates the High Holy Days based on a lunar calendar, rather than the modern solar calendar, because the lunar calendar is more Biblical. He would post videos of himself sitting on his balcony waiting for the sun to set and for Shabbat to begin. He would post videos in which he would claim that Paul was a Hellenizing pagan who led people away from the teachings of Yashua and introduced such idolotrous ideas as the divinity of Christ and salvation through his death.

One of his friends posted a video on his own channel describing what it was like for him to go shopping while wearing a kippah, and encouraging the viewer to try wearing one too. Another guy posted videos about how that the followers of Yeshua are called to be different, that it is worldly to publicly present oneself in clothes that highlite the contours of the body, and thus that shirts should be baggy and untucked, and that the necktie is an article of vanity and a symbol of bourgeois bondage (he called it a noose).

Now that that channel I looked for is gone, I'm having a very hard time finding youtube videos about the Evyonut that are posted by actual Ebionites. Maybe the Ebionite circle is well tucked away, and it just takes a lot more clicking around to find them again. But as of now I can't find them and I am disappointed.

If they have truly vanished from Youtube, then all Ebionite self-definition that I could see occurs through a couple websites that haven't had a new post in a couple years. I may have seen the life and death of a religion in my lifetime.

The Evyonut may classify as an internet religion. Thanks to instant and long-distance ways of communicating - like the internet - people can share whole packages of belief and practice with each other without ever meeting face-to-face.

I used to think that libertarianism and the factions that support Ron Paul were internet religions. That idea was supported by the sobering difference between Ron Paul's sweeping successes in online polls and what happend in the polling booths. The RonPaulians kept winning online because that's the planet they live on. But there is evidence (though yes, it is online evidence) that small-government anti-war folk congregate in real life too.

If a movement were more than an internet religion, then within its online presence there would probably be documentation of groups meeting face-to-face - videos of people celebrating a holiday together, or reading scripture or praying together, or something like that. There are videos online of libertarian and RonPaulian lectures, meetings, and demonstrations. I have not seen a single video of more than one Ebionite in the same room together.

I use "more than an internet religion" reluctantly, because it sounds a bit paternalist in that it implies that internet religion is an inferior way of "doing church". But let's be frank here. If 99% of your interpersonal religious interaction with others who share your beliefs occurs online, then your fellowship is in a very real way relegated to cyberspace. This is a substantial problem for most religions, because religiosity (especially that based on the Hebrew Bible) is very much about day-to-day interactions with others. There is an approved mode of living, which regards many more aspects of you life than your online social media, and which can hardly occur without the cooperation and support of like-minded others. If everyone you know who shares your beliefs lives so far away that you only see them in online videos, then you will have a hard time following the approved mode of living. If your religious identity is to survive as an online religion, then your approved mode of living must be reduced to an atomoton religiosity.

The approved mode of living is so much more than reading this book or that book. It's about how to interact with your neighbors, your employees, and your supervisors; it's about who and when to fuck; it's about what to eat and how to grow or raise it; it's about what to wear and how you'll get it.

Now, since many aspects of the day-to-day Evyonut were borrowed from Orthodox Judaism, it is possible that an Ebionite can live in near-complete conformity with his approved mode of living if he (yes, he) lives around Orthodox Jews. So maybe the Ebionites weren't total atomotons. But then, maybe they were all absorbed into Judaism.

I can only speculate about what happened to the Ebionites. Maybe they still do exist, and I just haven't re-found them yet. Maybe they're meeting together in houses and reading Torah and the prophets, and Matthew and James, and I just haven't seen videos of it yet. Maybe I'm the one who's constraining things to online videos - maybe I should be more willing to go find them with my body. I'd be a lousy sociologist of religion if all the sources I relied on were youtube videos and Wikipedia articles.

I should be confident. I doubt a whole religion can go cold within a matter of months - especially one whose adherents are so spread out. I'll probably find a video of theirs in time. But let this be the lesson for now - if you want to start your own religion, having a number of fellow-believers live in proximity with each other might be nice.

(For the record, I am not an Ebionite. My interest in the Ebionites is purely "academic". I'm intrigued by obscure and reconstructionary religions and other weird things, and Ebionism is obscure, reconstructionary, and weird, and so I like reading about it, just as I like reading about Atenism, Satanism, Jainism, and Anarcho-Nationalism.)