Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet
Taylor Lorenz
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. 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. more
384 pages, Hardcover
First published Simon & Schuster
3.66
Rating
1800
Ratings
341
Reviews
Taylor Lorenz
1 books 82 followers
Taylor Lorenz is a technology columnist for The Washington Post's business section covering online culture and the content creator industry. She was previously a technology reporter for The New York Times business section, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast. Her writing has appeared in New York magazine, Rolling Stone, Outside magazine, BuzzFeed, and more. She frequently appears on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and the BBC. She was a 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is a former affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.Lorenz has appeared in documentaries on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO including Netflix's Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga, HBO's 'Fake Famous', HBO's and Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia. In 2020 she helped adapt a feature she wrote for The New York Times into the documentary Who Gets To Be An Influencer?, which ran on FX and Hulu.
Lorenz was named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list of leaders in Media and Entertainment in 2020. Adweek included her in their Young Influentials Who Are Shaping Media, Marketing and Tech listing, stating that Lorenz “contextualizes the internet as we live it.” In 2022, Town & Country magazine named her to their New Creative Vanguards list of a rising generation of creatives, calling her “The Bob Woodward of the TikTok generation.” In 2023, Lorenz was named tech and media influencer of the year by the World Influencers & Bloggers Association.
Community reviews
The subtitle of this book (“The Untold Story of…”) is hilarious. I hope it goes without saying that any story about the rise of social media and influencer culture is already extremely, exhaustingly told. That aside, I don’t really know what need this book is trying to fill. People will buy it because Taylor Lorenz is a journalist with a large online following who has built a career around knowing what’s happening on the Internet, but in terms of its actual informational utility…it doesn’t really have any. The first several chapters are basically like “here’s how Facebook started, here’s how Youtube started,” etcetc, all of which has been told with more depth and detail in 1000 other places. more
This was undeniably well researched and written, however, it just did not hold my attention. The subject matter is interesting and relevant, so I was surprised that it didn't really hook me. Maybe it's a matter of it being the wrong book for the current time. I am so consumed with anxiety and sadness over the Israel-Hamas war that I cannot concentrate on reading anything beyond the news and what I would affectionately call, "literary fluff". All in all, I would say, don't be put off by my three stars, as it is not a bad book, but it felt too long and maybe too in depth in certain areas that just weren't that engaging for me. more
As another Taylor once said, "it was rare, I was there. I remember it all too well. "It didn't take long for me to figure out that millenials that grew up online (with Taylor Lorenz) were not the audience for this. Extremely Online is a well researched, but surface level, history of online social platforms and creators. My main gripe is that this was not the 'untold story' as the subtitle asserts. more
I'm an old person. I remember dial up internet. I remember AOL Instant Messaging. I remember MySpace and Friendster. I'm your grandmother kids. more
I really liked this book as a mini-history on the early days of influencer culture and how we got here. The first 60% if fantastic, the book fizzles a bit on the way out. I wish the author talked more about why some of this stuff is important and news worthy and what it means for us moving forward. I wish she spent more time on the disparities within influencer culture as well since that is so well documented and impacts the entire culture. Overall really good. more
THIS SOUNDS AMAZIIIING. more
In “Extremely Online,” Taylor Lorenz traces the creation and influence of internet celebrity from the beginning of the online age until now and shows how online creators have been “defining the dynamics” of social media in real time. This book reads like a vindication of the rights of creators; it shows how ordinary people circumvented traditional gatekeepers to create a new class of celebrity & how industries have had to adapt. The book also reminded me that the internet today would be nothing without the work of creators who are women, nonwhite and queer. I loved this book, and not just because this is a subject I care deeply about and I look back with fondness on many of the online periods discussed. Lorenz meticulously pinpoints watershed moments and creators in internet history, (some of which I had never heard of. more
Highly recommend reading for those wanting to understand the rise of social media through the lens of the creators and power users of these platforms rather than through a corporate narrative. I particularly enjoyed the early chapters about the rise of mommy bloggers and Julia Allison who were blue prints for the modern creator economy . more
not even out yet and already hypocritical afhttps://twitter. com/JSto/status/15655. what a shame: and I do mean shame2022—-[edit/update: the author removed her original tweet that was embedded in the link I posted above during the pre-order period (which is fine: people on Twitter can and should of course do with their posts as they wish). But let’s be clear about my comment, which is meant to be highly critical and is absolutely about experience and expertise. Contextually, her post was an attempt to promote her book by pivoting off of the heinous way Tucker Carlson has harassed her, which would be admirable if her book wasn’t an S&S published book —so let’s be clear here:- S&S also cutting deals with and distributing J6 figures - S&S has an official Tucker Carlson page- S&S made him an American bestselleri. more
As an elderly Millennial, I’m not this book’s target audience, but I guess it’s okay. Lorenz really digs into creator/influencer culture and not much else in the book. Personally, I’d like to read more about Amazon’s reach and other more everyday online shifts. YouTubers, TikTokkers, and all that jazz are fine. I just have very little sympathy for those who cannot make a living off spoof videos and sponsorships. more
A stunning lack of critical commentary on any of the events recounted. Reads like a breathlessly enthusiastic press release for the importance of platforms and “creators” with zero examples of value either have added to the actual world. . more
I wish I could have liked this book more, but it came off more like Wikipedia articles of social media platforms than having anything truly meaningful to say about social media. As a fan of Taylor Lorenz’s social media accounts, I found it so interesting that she could be outspoken and dynamic online, yet have almost no voice here in this book. I wish she could tie the stories with a stronger theme, sort of through line, or even explain what her aim for this book was. I’m choosing to not give a star review out of respect for Ms Lorenz. I continue to be a fan and will read her next book, but I do hope she chooses to actually say something next time. more
Started out pretty good, but devolved into the same thing over and over and over again. The author completely misses some huge points, which she could have talked about instead of regurgitating the same points for like 2/3rds of the book. 1. Despite talking multiple times about how changed the world, the book is 100% focused on the US. It never talks about world-wide social media behemoths, especially in Asia. more
Taylor Lorenz has lived on the internet (I first came across her on early Tumblr, 2007 days) and wrote it all down here in this well researched and often firsthand account of what's changed in the last 10-15 years for everyone. If you know it all well, then this book allows you to relive it like a yearbook. If you don't, it's a necessary overview and primer for how we got to here. The barriers and gatekeepers fell away, creators built brands through direct relationships to their audience, and innovated their way to income on ever-changing media properties they didn't own. Taylor brings you along this journey, with mini-profiles of the major and minor characters alongside tech-explainers that show she knows what she's talking about. more
i was very excited to read this. i love the idea of a social history of the internet, and the sneak-peaks of the book's index that lorenz put out on social media were exactly my thing. unfortunately, while Extremely Online covers a lot of ground and sheds light on the origin of several Internet Moments, i'm a little bit disappointed by the execution. the overall book is structured linearly, but the structure within chapters felt a little ambiguous. lorenz mentions something, then moves on, then explains that thing in a later chapter, and this jumping around leads to a slightly confused timeline. more
Equally fun to read as it is compelling, zooming out to show the online influencer economy’s full history, in all its messy, strange, random, unprecedented glory…The cliffhangers will leave you running home to finish and flipping back to earlier pages going WAIT THAT GUY AGAIN. and then WAIT NO THAT IS A BAD DECISION GUYS NOOO and then boom another platform implodes . more
Maybe 3. 5. This was a pretty succinct walk down memory lane regarding internet culture, social media companies that rose and fell, and the rise of the influencer over the past 20 years. Ultimately, this is a very readable account that features the stories and touch points the author wants to focus on. I enjoyed the new-to-me stories, especially about the early days of the internet (blogs, MySpace, the beginning of Facebook) into Tumblr. more
as a person who is already self-diagnosed 'extremely online', this book only sort of ripples at the surface of the cultural impact of the internet in the last two+ decades. the best part (most informative) for me is the early sections on the rise of youtube and the downfall of vine, as my presence on the internet at those times was either minimal (early middle school) or insular to specific communities (trapped in the glee fandom). such a fun listen though. love to read/listen to a book and think "oh, i remember that. " every few minutes. more
I really enjoy a good deep dive into our toxic online culture. It is a topic that truly scratches an itch for me. With that being said, Extremely Online did no scratching for me. I find it a bit funny that the subtitle includes, “the untold story…” when we consider that the content provided by Lorenz, has very much been told. I was really hoping for a more data heavy deep dive into what being “extremely online” truly means. more
this was overwhelmingly positive about its subject matter and barely scratched the surface of how messy and bleak social media is. as a member of gen Z who wasted her adolescence online I expected a lot more critical analysis of what these platforms have done to the world, but taylor lorenz clearly doesn’t share my perspective. the last few chapters really made me think her book was sponsored by tiktok. . more
The author said in his introduction that this is not about the history of the internet. actually it is : there is no psychology, no philosophy, no academic research. just history. more
Three cheers for Taylor Lorenz. While some reviewers said this book had nothing new to offer, I see it quite differently. There are plenty of books talking about the evolution of various social media platforms, yes, but Lorenz chronicles the evolution of these platforms while focusing on the growth of the creator industry and exploring how the internet democratized fame and influencer. It's a fascinating story that will only be more and more relevant in the years to come. A few miscellaneous thoughts:-So many of the older generation/legacy institutions still do not understand online culture or how much power and influence online creators hold, and it's to their own detriment. more
I had listened to Taylor Lorenz as a guest on a couple of podcasts, and her commentary about social media was so insightful that I decided to pick up her book. It was mostly about the history of social media, and how we all became so online. Much of it was not new information as someone who was an adult before the Internet became a thing, has blogged, and been on social media for over a decade. A few things were new to me and fascinating - I believe I missed some age cutoff for the heyday of the MySpace era. And other parts felt mind-numbing - like the endless parade of YouTube influencers I could not keep straight. more
this unintentionally reads like a greek tragedy. the story of the internet is the story of human creativity and passion becoming co-opted by corporate greed at a breakneck pace. it’s really interesting to think about a world where myspace had won out over facebook, something where system flaws that allowed for self expression and unique customization to prevail over sleek, polished surfaces that reflect the ad dollars in their ceo’s eyes. obviously it was always going to turn out this way. capitalism warps any canvas for creativity with the constant intrusion of economic pressures to compete. more
I liked this book. It taught me a lot. So much of what was discussed in this book was before my time and I knew nothing about it. It was interesting to see how social media and influencers became such a big thing. This was the type of non-fiction book that I could just keep reading without stopping. more
I mistakenly thought this would be more about the media, and misjudged my actual interest in modern Internet culture. 😆 Fine enough, I guess, those things notwithstanding. more
A highly informative and very entertaining read. As someone who grew up at the same time as the internet exploded this felt like a tour of the greatest hits. At the same time, I learned a lot of new information which just goes to show how much has changed online in such a relatively short amount of time. As we speak, one of the major social media platforms responsible for online behavior is undergoing massive rebranding that could be a whole other chapter. While it will never end, this book serves as a great beginning and explainer on how we got here. more
Extremely online is a comprehensive history of the creation of a new form of communication -- social media. The book traces the progression of the required hardware and the people who were instrumental in what the author has called a revolution. It certainly has changed society. We have gone from media informing people about social trends because they had the power to publish to the availability of social media that makes anyone an influencer. Everyone has this power and they post whatever they want to say. more