Extremely Online Quotes

“The changing trends reflected evolving user preferences, but they were also a reaction against the burnout-inducing standard of the peak influencer era. “We all know the jig is up,” said Matt Klein, a cultural strategist. “We’ve all participated in those staged photos. We all know the stress and anxiety it takes. And we can see through it. Culture is a pendulum and the pendulum is swaying. That’s not to say everyone is going to stop posting perfect photos. But the energy is shifting.” For the reigning influencers, the shift was disorienting and even catastrophic. “What worked for people before doesn’t work anymore,” said James Nord. In 2018, a creator could post a shot with manicured hands on a coffee cup and rake in the likes. By 2019, people would unfollow. According to Fohr, by the end of that year, 60 percent of influencers in his network with more than 100,000 followers were losing followers month over month. “It’s pretty staggering,” he said.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“The internet has steadily changed everything around us: who we know; how we meet; how we work; how we date; how we play; who gets famous; whom we trust; what we want; and who we want to be.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“People used to call me an attention whore, it’s like, is that what you call authors who try to sell their book? Do you call a movie star that when they walk the red carpet? Would you ever call a man that?’ I was trying to get people to read my columns so I could pay rent on my $2,500 studio apartment. Even that word, ‘whore,’ everyone uses it so much about me. She’s an attention whore.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“The iPhone untethered the internet from the desktop. The energy of the blogosphere was redirected toward faster, mobile mediums. Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram facilitated the transition to mobile. These sites had learned from Facebook’s streamlined profiles and easy feeds. But they diverged from Facebook’s friend-focused model, favoring an open network that allowed users to “follow” anyone they found interesting. This mirrored the subscriber-based model of YouTube as well as the open architecture of the blogosphere. Instead of trying to re-create real-world friend networks online, this new generation of social apps sought to build an audience of friends and strangers alike. At the same time, they took the lessons of the blog era—chiefly, that anyone could build a following online—and expanded upon them.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“Before the blog era, if you wanted to share your ideas with the public, you had to make it past layers upon layers of legacy gatekeepers.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“Blogs could be set up in minutes. Suddenly, anyone with internet access could become a publisher. Media consumers became media producers.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“The blog foreshadowed the rise of social media. Soon, we would all be beholden to public metrics, online rankings, pressures to commoditize ourselves and to build our brands online.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“The business of Big Tech doesn’t hinge on what they’ve invented but on what they’ve channeled.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“Tech founders may control the source code, but users shape the product.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“If you’re not actively creating, or if you’re going on a trip and you haven’t actively created content to publish during said trip, you will go effectively back to the back of the line,”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet