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Anatomy of an Edgelord
The trolls of the Internet serve an important function in our society
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
The word edgelord was first added to Urban Dictionary in 2015. An edgelord is “someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy.”
But edgelords have been around a lot longer than 2015. Most of us probably remember the kids in high school that wore all black, used racial slurs, and wrote poems about Hitler. The men at parties that tried to play “devil’s advocate” and bait people into arguments about women’s voting rights or eugenics. The women that worshiped Charles Manson and sent letters to serial killers in prison. That one guy who’d always ask, “Has anyone here not seen Meat Grinder?” The creators of Something Awful. Young men who tried to scare women on dates by putting in a DVD of Antichrist or Salò before snuggling close.
Everywhere you go it seems like there’s a veritable choir of people who sneer, jeer, cough, mock, and jab at genuine emotion. If you get upset around the edgelord, you’ve lost. You’re feeding the vampire. The stereotypical Internet-era…
