[A] terrific history ... Lorenz...is a knowledgeable, opinionated guide to the ways internet fame has become fame, full stop. She zooms by people and places widely covered by the mainstream press...but slows down for people...whose popularity was driven by internet-native media ... Lorenz has a beat reporter’s eye for detail, which can occasionally be overwhelming ... 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.
She takes a reporter’s approach to cultural history, interviewing many of the most famous (or at least influential) users of various sites and apps. Along the way, she provides a thoroughgoing account of the modern internet, from the perspective of those who have, at one time or another, found ways to mine it for opportunities ... Tapping her deep expertise in the subject, Lorenz makes a strong case that creators — not the tech platforms — truly shaped internet culture ... Infectious in celebrating the tsunami of creative youth culture ... Lorenz gives us a clear and compelling history of how the money came to flow into amateur-made short video content. But the book can’t quite prove that we’ve lived through a true revolution.
That this state of things might actually be horrible, a kind of monkey’s-paw curse delivered upon these online savants, is not a possibility that Lorenz brooks. What matters is only whether they can monetize that fame ... I don’t mean that I wish Lorenz was passing negative judgment on such behavior. It’s not exactly that I think Lorenz should...add parentheticals to each paragraph reading...though I confess it might ease my mind if she did it just once ... Bland ... We are not reading Taylor Lorenz for her analysis of early-2000s TV! We are reading her because she has a preternatural talent for informing nonteenagers about people whom millions of teenagers love passionately. Unfortunately, for the most part Extremely Online fails to make use of its author’s superpower ... What’s odd about this is that the book could have been, should have been, Lorenz’s chance to break out of the constraints that have notably chafed her while writing for mainstream outlets.
If you happen to have followed the stories on child predators on Instagram, young men radicalized on YouTube, young women driven to suicide by TikTok or the unabashed racists and antisemites running rampant on Twitter...you will marvel, as I did, that a journalist whose beat is the internet...could insist on such a strangely sunny take of the digital existence ... Revisiting some of her pre-pandemic work, I encountered a talented and ambitious journalist. There were few of the omissions and misjudgments, little of the clumsiness and misdirection, that plague Extremely Online ... Crammed with people but devoid of life, especially as the social media revolution accelerates and influencers spring up like mushrooms after spring rains ... The conspicuous lack of original insight made me think Lorenz wasn’t especially thrilled by her own premise.
Readers will learn valuable lessons about the math and science behind what goes viral and are sure to be blown away when they see the dollar amounts moving through the industry. This socioeconomics docudrama is both fun and terrifying . . . just like the internet.
The most surprising aspect of the book: It seems dated and dull. The author’s online followers might like it, but other people will probably be unimpressed ... If only the text reflected the gravitas of that disruption. A capable piece of historical research that breaks little new ground.
