Edgelord
Attention-seeking extremist
Look up edgelord in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
An edgelord is someone, typically on the Internet, who tries to impress or shock by posting exaggerated opinions such as nihilism or extremist views.[1][2][3][4]
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first known usage with this meaning was in 2015.[1] It was added to Webster's in September 2023.[1] Webster gave the following example:
We decided to watch It's A Wonderful Life and my dad said, “Every year I wait for Jimmy Stewart to jump off that bridge but he never does it” - merry Xmas from the original edgelord.[5]
Edgelords were characterised by author Rachel Monroe in her account of criminal behaviour, Savage Appetites:
...internet cynics lumped the online Nazis together with the serial killer fetishists and the dumbest goths and dismissed them all as edgelords: kids who tried to be scary online. I thought of most of these edgelords as basement-dwellers, pale faces lit by the glow of their computer screen, puffing themselves up with nihilism. An edgelord was a scrawny guy with a LARP-y vibe, possibly wearing a cloak, dreaming of omnipotence. Or a girl with excessive eyeliner and lots of Tumblr posts about self-harm. The disturbing content posted by edgelords was undermined by its predictability...[6]
It is frequently associated with the forum site 4chan.[7][8][9] The renegade rhetoric of the edgelord is often intentionally employed by the far right to troll leftist targets.[3]
See also
- Sealioning
- Épater la bourgeoisie
- Schadenfreude
- Shock jock
- Shock site
References
- ^ a b c "Edgelord (noun)". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. September 2023.
- ^ Jeannerod, Marinette (2019), "Les stéréotypes mis à mal sur la Toile", Hermès, la Revue, 83 (83): 212–222, doi:10.3917/herm.083.0212, S2CID 201536274
- ^ a b Nilan, Pam (10 May 2021), Young People and the Far Right, Springer Nature, p. 4, ISBN 978-981-16-1811-6
- ^ Poole, Steven (3 October 2019), "Edgelord", A Word for Every Day of the Year, Quercus, ISBN 978-1-78747-859-6
- ^ "Words We're Watching: Doing the Work of the 'Edgelord'", Merriam-Webster
- ^ Monroe, Rachel (2020). Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession. Scribner. p. 205. ISBN 9781501188893.
- ^ Goldsmith, Kenneth (2019). "Zoë and the trolls". In Colombo, Gary (ed.). Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins Press. p. 293. ISBN 9781319056360.
- ^ Bissell, Tom (5 January 2021). "The Uneasy Afterlife of "A Confederacy of Dunces"". The New Yorker. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
- ^ McHugh, Calder (26 April 2022). "Why progressives hate Elon Musk". Politico. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
