Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Extremely Online

The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet, revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off—"terrific," as the New York Times calls it, "Lorenz...is a knowledgeable, opinionated guide to the ways internet fame has become fame, full stop."
For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.

By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms' power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. In this "deeply reported, behind-the-scenes chronicle of how everyday people built careers and empires from their sheer talent and algorithmic luck" (Sarah Frier, author of No Filter), Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It's the real social history of the internet.

Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century.

"Extremely Online aims to tell a sociological story, not a psychological one, and in its breadth it demonstrates a new cultural logic emerging out of 21st-century media chaos" (The New York Times). Lorenz reveals the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 21, 2023
      This astute debut from Lorenz, a Washington Post technology columnist, traces the tumultuous history of social media from the early 2000s to the present. She describes how such platforms as Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter evolved from the humblest of beginnings, noting that YouTube launched as a dating site in 2005 before broadening its focus. The internet, she explains, afforded new modes of audience interaction and forced legacy outlets to “rewrite” their playbooks, with blogs enabling “real-time interaction between writers and readers through comments sections” and sparking national publications to hire popular bloggers and buy their sites. Lorenz also covers how technological advancements drove new social media platforms; for instance, the advent of cellphones capable of recording video led to the rise of Snapchat, Vine, and Musical.ly, now known as TikTok. Lorenz accomplishes the difficult feat of wrangling a cogent narrative out of the unruliness of social media, while offering smart insight into how platforms affect their users. For instance, she suggests that the “pursuit of shareable content often seems more urgent than the desire to actually do the thing that will be recorded and shared,” observing that some January 6 insurrectionists appeared “more interested in documenting their violent ransacking of the Capitol than they did in overthrowing American democracy.” It’s a powerful assessment of how logging on has changed the world.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading