Edgelord
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 the Merriam-Webster.com online dictionary, the first known usage with this meaning was in 2013.[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 and journalist Rachel Monroe in her account of criminal behavior, 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 used by the far right to troll leftist targets.[3]
See also
- Épater la bourgeoisie
- Schadenfreude
- Sealioning
- Shock jock
- Shock site
- Cloud Strife
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Edgelord (noun)". Merriam-Webster. September 2023. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edgelord.
- ↑ Jeannerod, Marinette (2019). "Les stéréotypes mis à mal sur la Toile". Hermès, la Revue 83 (83): 212–222. doi:10.3917/herm.083.0212. https://www.cairn.info/revue-hermes-la-revue-2019-1-page-212.htm.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Nilan, Pam (2021-05-10) (in en). Young People and the Far Right. Springer Nature. p. 4. ISBN 978-981-16-1811-6.
- ↑ Poole, Steven (2019-10-03). "Edgelord" (in en). 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.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-is-an-edgelord-slang-definition-words-were-watching.
- ↑ 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. Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's Press. p. 293. ISBN 9781319056360. https://archive.org/details/rereadingamerica0000unse_o4i6/page/292/mode/2up?q=edgelord.
- ↑ Bissell, Tom (January 5, 2021). "The Uneasy Afterlife of 'A Confederacy of Dunces'". The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-uneasy-afterlife-of-a-confederacy-of-dunces. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
- ↑ McHugh, Calder (April 26, 2022). "Why progressives hate Elon Musk". Politico. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2022/04/26/why-progressives-hate-elon-musk-00027933.
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