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An extremely online (often capitalized[1]), terminally online[2] or chronically online,[3] individual is someone who is closely engaged with Internet culture.[1] People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important.[4][5] Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online;[4] while often used as a descriptive term, the phenomenon of extreme online usage has been described as "both a reformation of the delivery of ideas – shared through words and videos and memes and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves".[5] Here, "online" is used to describe "a way of doing things, not [simply] the place they are done".[4]

While the term was in use as early as 2014, it gained use over the latter half of the 2010s in conjunction with the increasing prevalence and notability of Internet phenomena in all areas of life.[1] Extremely online people, according to The Daily Dot, are interested in topics "no normal, healthy person could possibly care about",[1] and have been analogized to "pop culture fandoms, just without the pop".[1] Extremely online phenomena such as fan culture and reaction GIFs have been described as "swallowing democracy" by journalists such as Amanda Hess in The New York Times;[6] who claimed that a "great convergence between politics and culture, values and aesthetics, citizenship and commercialism" had become "a dominant mode of experiencing politics".[6] Vulture – formerly the pop culture section of New York magazine, now a stand-alone website – has a section for articles tagged "extremely online".[7]

Historical background

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While computer networks existed in the 1980s, they were largely seen at the time as something whose only formal or culturally significant use was for research and business purposes; entertainment and snark on bulletin board systems and Usenet was viewed as small time geek culture.

In the 2010s, many categories and labels came into wide use from media outlets to describe Internet-mediated cultural trends, such as the alt-right, the dirtbag left, and doomerism.[8] These ideological categories are often defined by their close association with online discourse. For example, the term "alt-right" was added to the Associated Press' stylebook in 2016 to describe the "digital presence" of far-right ideologies,[9] the dirtbag left refers to a group of "underemployed and overly online millennials" who "have no time for the pieties of traditional political discourse",[10] and the doomer's "blackpilled[11] despair"[8] is combined with spending "too much time on message boards in high school"[8] to produce an eclectic "anti-socialism".[8]

Fans of the podcast Chapo Trap House have been described as extremely online.

Extreme onlineness transcends ideological boundaries. For example, right-wing figures like Alex Jones[12] and Laura Loomer[12] have been described as "extremely online", but so have those on the left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez[13] and fans of the Chapo Trap House podcast.[14][15] Extremely online phenomena can range from acts of offline violence (such as the 2019 Christchurch shootings[16]) to "[going] on NPR to explain the anti-capitalist irony inherent in kids eating Tide Pods".[1]

Former United States President Donald Trump's posts on social media have been frequently cited as extremely online,[5] during both his presidency[17] and his 2020 presidential campaign; Vox claimed his approach to re-election veered into being "Too Online",[5] and Reason questioned whether the final presidential debate was "incomprehensible to normies".[18] While individual people are often given the description, being extremely online has also been posited as an overall cultural phenomenon, applying to trends like lifestyle movements suffixed with "-wave" and "-core" based heavily on Internet media,[4] as well as an increasing expectation for digital social researchers to have an "online presence" to advance in their careers.[19]

Participants and media coverage

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Avatar of wint
Avatar of wint
 wint
@dril
 Twitter logo, a stylized blue bird

who the fuck is scraeming 'LOG OFF' at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off

September 15, 2012[20]

One example of a phenomenon considered to be extremely online[1] is the "wife guy" (a guy who posts about his wife);[21] despite being a "stupid online thing"[22] which spent several years as a piece of Internet slang, in 2019 it became the subject of five articles in leading U.S. media outlets.[22]

Like many extremely online phrases and phenomena, the "wife guy" has been attributed in part to the in-character Twitter account @dril.[23] The account frequently parodies how people behave on the Internet, and has been widely cited as influential on online culture.[24][25] In one tweet, his character refuses to stop using the Internet, even when someone shouts outside his house that he should log off.[26]

Many of dril's other coinages have become ubiquitous parts of Internet slang.[24] Throughout the 2010s, posters such as dril inspired commonly used terms like "corncobbing" (referring to someone losing an argument and failing to admit it);[27][28][29] while originally a piece of obscure Internet slang used on sites like Twitter, use of the term (and controversy over its misinterpretation) became a subject of reporting from traditional publications, with some noting[30] that keeping up with the rapid turnover of inside jokes, memes, and quotes online required daily attention to avoid embarrassment.[30][31]

Twitch has been described as "talk radio for the extremely online".[32] Another example of an event cited as extremely online is No Nut November.[33] Increasingly, researchers are expected to have more of an online presence, to advance in their careers, as networking and portfolios continue to transition to the digital world.[19]

In November 2020, an article in The Washington Post criticized the filter bubble theory of online discourse on the basis that it "overgeneralized" based on a "small subset of extremely online people".[34]

The 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was described as extremely online, with "pro-Trump internet personalities", such as Baked Alaska,[35] and fans livestreaming and taking selfies.[36][37] People who have been described as extremely online include Chrissy Teigen,[38] Jon Ossoff,[39] and Andrew Yang.[40] In contrast, Joe Biden has been cited as the antithesis of extremely online—The New York Times wrote in 2019 that he had "zero meme energy".[41][42][43]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Hathaway, Jay (August 20, 2020). "What does it mean to be Extremely Online?". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  2. ^ Hawes, William (June 27, 2021). "The Rise of the Terminally Online: Digital Subjectivity and Simulation of the Social". Medium. Archived from the original on February 7, 2022. Retrieved February 7, 2022.
  3. ^ Al-Heeti, Abrar. "'Chronically online': What the phrase means, and some examples". CNET. Archived from the original on April 5, 2022. Retrieved April 5, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d "Extremely Online: The internet is not a place but a genre". Real Life. January 16, 2018. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c d Coaston, Jane (October 22, 2020). "Trump's presidential campaign is Too Online". Vox. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Hess, Amanda (September 11, 2019). "How Fan Culture Is Swallowing Democracy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  7. ^ "Extremely Online". Vulture. November 13, 2020. Archived from the original on November 3, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  8. ^ a b c d Read, Max (August 1, 2019). "Is Andrew Yang the Doomer Candidate?". Intelligencer. New York. Archived from the original on August 1, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  9. ^ Montgomery, Sarah Jasmine (August 16, 2017). "Associated Press just laid down the law on why 'alt-right' is a bad term". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved March 7, 2020.
  10. ^ Koshy, Yohann (June 3, 2019). "'The Voice of the Dirtbag Left': Socialist US comics Chapo Trap House". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved December 3, 2020. the Dirtbag Left, a coterie of underemployed and overly online millennials who were radicalised by the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis, have no time for the pieties of traditional political discourse, and place cautious hope in the movement to put the socialist senator Bernie Sanders in the White House.
  11. ^ Reiss, Jonathan (September 30, 2020). "In Defending Hunter, Biden Showed Us His Potential". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on March 20, 2021. Retrieved March 20, 2020. 'Black Pill' is internet slang that has gained prominence in 2020. It's an alternative to the Matrix's red/blue pill binary, and, as opposed to 'opening your mind,' it refers to something that makes you look to the future with harsh and utter pessimism.
  12. ^ a b Gramenz, Jack (November 16, 2020). "Conservatives flee to Parler after Facebook's US election crackdown". News.com.au. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  13. ^ Walsh, Meghan. "Invasion of the Extremely Online". Korn Ferry Insights. Archived from the original on December 6, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  14. ^ Conway, Louie (September 10, 2018). "Chapo Trap House: Socialism for the Extremely Online". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  15. ^ Jones, Sarah (Fall 2018). "The Dirtbag Manifesto". Dissent. 65 (4): 11–15. doi:10.1353/dss.2018.0069. S2CID 149572587. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved December 6, 2020 – via Project MUSE.
  16. ^ Sixsmith, Ben (March 15, 2019). "The dark extremism of the 'extremely online'". The Spectator. Archived from the original on August 19, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  17. ^ Rivero, Nicolás (November 12, 2020). "Trump is about to lose his special privileges on Twitter". Quartz. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  18. ^ Brown, Elizabeth Nolan (October 23, 2020). "Was the Final Presidential Debate Incomprehensible to Normies?". Reason. Archived from the original on November 5, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  19. ^ a b Abidin, Crystal (2019). "Tacit Labours of Digital Social Research as an Early Career Researcher". Journal of Digital Social Research. 1 (1): 31–34. doi:10.33621/jdsr.v1i1.10.
  20. ^ wint [@dril] (September 15, 2012). "who the fuck is scraeming 'LOG OFF' at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  21. ^ Hess, Amanda (June 5, 2019). "The Age of the Internet 'Wife Guy'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2019. Retrieved June 11, 2019.
  22. ^ a b Schwedel, Heather (June 10, 2019). "What Is the 'Wife Guy'? At Least Five New Articles Have Answers for You!". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on June 11, 2019. Retrieved June 11, 2019. You're telling me a stupid online thing can reflect "a deeply ambivalent state of heterosexual coupling' (The New York Times) or that 'commitment [is] barely necessary at this point in the Western history of sexual romance' (Mel)? That's every culture writer's dream.
  23. ^ Whyman, Tom (May 14, 2019). "Anatomy of the Wife Guy". The Outline. Archived from the original on June 11, 2019. Retrieved June 11, 2019.
  24. ^ a b Dunigan, Maeve (November 29, 2017). "The disappearing anonymity of Wint (@dril)". The Diamondback. Archived from the original on November 29, 2017. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
  25. ^ Jackson, Gita (June 9, 2017). "How to Use Twitter in 2017, Maybe". Kotaku. Archived from the original on August 19, 2017. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  26. ^ Bellin, Roger (October 6, 2017). "October 6, 2017 by Roger". The Sometime Daily. Archived from the original on October 19, 2019. Retrieved January 8, 2020.
  27. ^ Singal, Jesse (August 3, 2017). "Why Is Everyone on Twitter Suddenly Talking About Corncobs?". New York. Archived from the original on September 11, 2017. Retrieved August 24, 2017.
  28. ^ Tait, Amelia (September 4, 2017). "The internet dictionary: What does it mean to be corncobbed?". New Statesman. Archived from the original on September 7, 2017. Retrieved September 6, 2017.
  29. ^ Knibbs, Kate (August 28, 2017). "Welcome to Corn Cob Season". The Ringer. Archived from the original on September 1, 2017. Retrieved August 29, 2017.
  30. ^ a b Kelly, Tiffany (August 3, 2017). "How a Kamala Harris meme turned into a fight over corncobs". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on August 26, 2017. Retrieved August 24, 2017. To navigate Twitter in 2017, you need to keep up with many inside jokes, memes, and quotes that change on a daily basis. It's easy to become confused about why something is trending. But doing research before tweeting about it usually pays off. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a roast. ... The lesson here is clear. Always check for @dril references before you send that tweet.
  31. ^ Peyser, Eve (August 22, 2017). "Corncob? Donut? Binch? A Guide to Weird Leftist Internet Slang". Vice. Vice Media. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved August 24, 2017.
  32. ^ Corrall, Cody (November 18, 2020). "The Museum of Home Video Is One of Twitch's Best-kept, Weirdo Pop-culture Secrets". Thrillist. Archived from the original on November 27, 2020. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  33. ^ Adams, David (November 18, 2020). "Why It's Time for the Anti-wanking Challenge 'No Nut November' to Jack Off Forever". Pedestrian.tv. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved December 3, 2020.
  34. ^ Nyhan, Brendan (November 6, 2020). "Five myths about misinformation". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020. The bubble theory overgeneralizes from a small subset of extremely online people who have skewed information diets and consume a tremendous amount of news. One study finds, for example, that approximately 25 percent of all online political news traffic from Republicans comes from the 8 percent of people with the most conservative news diets.
  35. ^ Romano, Aja (January 17, 2021). "Baked Alaska's clout-chasing spiral into white supremacy is an internet morality tale". Vox. Archived from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
  36. ^ Stelter, Brian (January 9, 2021). "CNN's Elle Reeve: 'Donald Trump Plus the Internet Brings Extremism to the Masses'". WENY News. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2021.
  37. ^ Penzenstadler, Nick (January 14, 2021). "Internet detectives swarmed the effort to ID Capitol riot mob, with mixed results". USA Today. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
  38. ^ Vanderberg, Madison (January 19, 2021). "Chrissy Teigen Accidentally Blew the John Legend Inauguration Surprise". Yahoo! Life. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  39. ^ Robertson, Derek (January 10, 2021). "An Annotated Guide to Jon Ossoff's Extremely Online Twitter Feed". Politico. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2021.
  40. ^ Freedlander, David (January 21, 2021). "'It's Everyone Against Andrew Yang'". Intelligencer. New York. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  41. ^ Hess, Amanda (September 11, 2019). "How Fan Culture Is Swallowing Democracy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
  42. ^ Lizza, Ryan (September 11, 2019). "Biden camp thinks the media just doesn't get it". POLITICO. Archived from the original on August 17, 2022. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
  43. ^ Hounshell, Blake (August 17, 2022). "'Dark Brandon' Rises, and Buoys Biden's Beleaguered Faithful". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 6, 2022.
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