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An extremely online (often capitalized), terminally online, or chronically online person is someone who is closely engaged with Internet culture. People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important. Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online; 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 Internet meme and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves". Here, "online" is used to describe "a way of doing things, not simply the place they are done".
Extreme onlineness transcends ideological boundaries. For example, right-wing figures like Alex Jones and Laura Loomer have been described as "extremely online", but so have those on the left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fans of the Chapo Trap House podcast. Extremely online phenomena can range from acts of offline violence (such as the 2019 Christchurch shootings) to "going on NPR to explain the anti-capitalist irony inherent in kids eating Tide Pods".
United States President Donald Trump's posts on social media have been frequently cited as extremely online, during both his presidency and his 2020 presidential campaign; Vox claimed his approach to re-election veered into being "Too Online", and Reason questioned whether the final presidential debate was "incomprehensible to normies". 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 "Vaporwave" and "Cottagecore" based heavily on Internet media, as well as an increasing expectation for digital social researchers to have an "online presence" to advance in their careers.
Like many extremely online phrases and phenomena, the "wife guy" has been attributed in part to the in-character Twitter account dril. The account frequently parodies how people behave on the Internet, and has been widely cited as influential on online culture. In one tweet, his character refuses to stop using the Internet, even when someone shouts outside his house that he should log off.
Many of dril's other coinages have become ubiquitous parts of Internet slang. Throughout the 2010s, posters such as dril inspired commonly used terms like "corncobbing" (referring to someone losing an argument and failing to admit it); 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 that keeping up with the rapid turnover of inside jokes, memes, and quotes online required daily attention to avoid embarrassment.
Twitch has been described as "talk radio for the extremely online". Another example of an event cited as extremely online is No Nut November. 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.
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".
The 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was described as extremely online, with "pro-Trump internet personalities", such as Baked Alaska, and fans livestreaming and taking selfies. People who have been described as extremely online include Chrissy Teigen, Jon Ossoff, and Andrew Yang. 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".
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