In real life, Rainn Wilson is none of these things. Well, maybe he shares Dwight's nerd-love of technology, but that's about it.
This shared nerd-love inspired Wilson to develop a website called Soul Pancake that seeks to curate conversations about life's bigger questions and to "de-lamify spirituality."
Wilson's background as a practicing member of the Baha'i faith and love of philosophy led him to the new venture. At a session at SXSW in Austin this weekend, he said he sees it as way to use the web to connect with other people in a spiritual way that doesn't come with sticky religious issues. He wants to create a forum where anyone can share content they've created. He sees sharing one's art as sharing a piece of oneself.
"Sharing photos and art is the future of the web, not stuff that wants to enslave us and just drive page views and clicks," he predicted.
During the brainstorming proccess for creating Soul Pancake, Wilson informed the crowd, he took a page out of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons's playbook. He began writing down things that were awesome and the idea began to shape.
Now came the fun part. As a way to interact with the audience using Twitter, Wilson asked everyone in the room to tweet their five ingredients of awesome and use the hashtag "Soul Pancake." A winner, Kelsey Jones, was selected at random to come on stage with Wilson for an "awesome prize." As Jones came onstage, she was rightfully a little skeptical about what the prize was.
But her eyes got really big when one of Wilson's colleagues handed her a guitar and he told her that they were going to smash them on stage together.
Wilson's effort to bring altruism to the web and allow spiritual conversations to flourish is certainly a noble one. Who knows if he'll be able to wade through the rising tide of targeted ad placements and gamification of our everyday activities.
But at least he's trying. And we think that's pretty awesome.
Check out the gallery and let us know if you think there's a need for spiritual connections like Soul Pancake on the web.