Talk:Extremely online

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 21:13, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that both right-wing and left-wing posters have been considered Extremely Online? Source: "A variety of people and subjects have been described as being either Extremely Online themselves, or central to the Extremely Online experience. It is not limited by political or ideological affiliation. While right-wing and far-right users such as Alex Jones,[8] Laura Loomer[8] and the 2019 Christchurch shooter[9] have been described as "extremely online", so have leftists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[10] Chapo Trap House[11][12] and "[going] on NPR to explain the anti-capitalist irony inherent in kids eating Tide Pods"" [1], [2]
  • ALT1:... that Alex Jones, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and academic research have all been described as Extremely Online? Source: Same as above, plus "Increasingly, researchers are expected to have more of an online presence, in order to advance in their careers, as networking and portfolios continue to transition to the digital world" [3]

• Reviewed: Bureau of Medical Services

Created/expanded by JPxG (talk). Self-nominated at 02:51, 23 November 2020 (UTC).

• Article is big enough and new enough. Correct person credited. All paragraphs referenced. Does not sound POV pushing. Copyright check is OK. No image, QPQ performed. Both hooks are short enough. Original hook is covered in the article and supported and confirmed by references. With hook alt1, "academic research" fails, but could be substituted by "academic researchers". But even so here the supporting reference qualifies that with "young". Good to go with original hook. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:18, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Glad to see this article and keen to have it on the main page. OK with concept and sourcing, but "posters" might need explanation to a non-Online audience. Maybe "social media users"? If alt2 was chosen, I'm myself not entirely convinced that Jones is super-Online himself (although people who laugh at him are), so I could suggest replacing him with Trump's 2020 campaign, which sources credibly describe as being very online. Blythwood (talk) 21:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be fine with replacing Alex Jones with Donald Trump. The general sentiment of the hook remains the same. jp×g 02:19, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Flavor quote at top of page

@Headbomb:: When I wrote the article, I included a dril quote at the top (in lieu of an image illustration) since dril's mentioned by a lot of the sources as being a quintessential example of the phenomenon. If you'd like, I can add some more references/content to support that; but I think it should stay for now. I am working on finding an appropriate image illustration, and then I'd be fine with moving it down to the sections where it talks about him specifically. jp×g 04:17, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

dril tweet

I think it's funny but it's really not that relevant to the lead. DemonDays64 (talk) 07:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a better idea? Dril is emblematic of being Extremely Online. For example, [4]: "Dril’s persona, to the extent he has one, is an extremely online", "Dril’s work is commonplace among the young and extremely online". Benjamin (talk) 07:55, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that it should not be in the article. There is no critical commentary that discusses the tweet. 2601:192:8800:6F60:31DD:4DEA:E7D8:71AF (talk) 12:15, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

There is no requirement that specific illustrations be mentioned as topical by sources, so long as they are reliably illustrations of the thing being depicted. How would articles be illustrated at all if that were the case? As an example, look at the images on Frustration: are there individual citations verifying that these specific people were frustrated at the time of the photos being taken? There are multiple references in the article that dril is an example of this phenomenon, which is why a post from him is included in it. If you've got a better one, go ahead and replace it, but it makes no sense to say that it "doesn't belong" unless there is a reason what I've said here is wrong. jp×g 07:47, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't like the photo of the man. Nothing about it indicates that he's not merely normally online. Benjamin (talk) 06:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Extremely Online/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Editoneer (talk · contribs) 10:41, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Lead section

• Events and phenomena can themselves be Extremely Online;, I thought you already said so by saying above a person or subject.

• Y Fixed. jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• latter half of the 2010s (...) increasing prevalence and notability of Internet phenomena in all areas of life. What made it so relevant now and not pre-latter-half?

•   Most instances of the phrase appear specifically in reference to Twitter, which only reached ubiquity in the 2010s, and sources are in consensus on it having emerged around 2014 or so. Most if not all of the phenomena referred to in the article (constituting basically all use of the phrase in news media) took place in the late 2010; I can find a more solid citation for this if you want. jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• Extremely Online people are interested in topics "no normal, healthy person could possibly care about",, did you forget a "that"? And I'll personally object to that, because I believe I'm Extremely Online but I'm not interested in dubious topics. You also didn't use "are described as", and you stated it as a fact.

• Y I was conflicted about this while writing. There are only so many times that "described as" can be in a paragraph before it starts to get unwieldly, and this is something that sources aren't in disagreement on. I have added inline attribution, but it seems very awkward. jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Background

• [9], the information about the dirtbag left doesn't quite fit with the article on the wikipedia, surely the show didn't have a different meaning?

•   I'm not sure what action is recommended here. The Guardian article I'm quoting from says "the Dirtbag Left, a coterie of underemployed and overly online millennials who were radicalised by the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis, have no time for the pieties of traditional political discourse"; our article on them talks about their "left-wing politics that eschews civility in order to convey a left-wing populist message". These seem to be in general agreement: is there a disconnect between them, and if so, what would be a better thing to say? jp×g 18:44, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
• It seems I misread, I apologise.

• What blackpilled means?

• Y This seems more in scope for Doomer, which at a glance could definitely do with expansion. In the meantime I can add some explanation in this article. Explanatory reference added, with relevant quote. jp×g 23:46, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• and the doomer's "blackpilled despair" combines with spending "too much (...)", combined?

•   This is deliberate: it combines, in present tense, since doomers continue to exist (as does the dirtbag left and alt-right). jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• The problem is that I don't feel "combines" is grammatically correct here. I feel it should be is combined. Editoneer (talk) 06:58, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

• Y Okay, I have changed it.

• eclectic, what is ecletic?

• Y Linked to Wiktionary entry. jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

People and phenomena

• What is Wint

• Y Don't know why that was there, fixed. jp×g 23:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• In the shown example, pointing directions at the audience isn't encyclopedic.

• Y Fixed. jp×g 23:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• have described as Extremely Online, have been?

• Y Fixed. jp×g 23:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

See also

• Most of those are related to Extremely Online people?

• Y Yes. jp×g 23:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

You can argue the changes at any time, good luck. Editoneer (talk) 17:52, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'll do my best. jp×g 23:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I've made some edits. @Editoneer: thoughts? jp×g 23:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm honestly surprised this article is passing, it covers all the basics of the GA standard despite being some internet slang and also that you were really quick to correct the issues. But you missed one thing above. After that I'm going to put it on 2ndopinion. See ya. Editoneer (talk) 06:58, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Editoneer: How does it look now? jp×g 18:44, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Well... and 2020 campaign, I don't feel is grammatically correct without some "the". But I consider this can be hotfixed, so all the progress is done, I'm putting it in second opinion. Editoneer (talk) 14:01, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I reworderd to read better and hopefully address Editoneer's concerns. (t · c) buidhe 18:43, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Greetings, I wanted a second opinion to see if another person agrees on it passing, @Buidhe: Do you believe the article is worth passing? Editoneer (talk) 12:50, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Capitalization

Generally an article's capitalization style should be reviewed with respect to WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. Since sources don't usually cap "extremely online" (when they use it in a sentence in the sense meant by this article), we should be using lowercase in Wikipedia. I realize JPxG disagrees, but the open RM suggests that this should have been fixed before this could be a Good Article (caps for emphasis). But Editoneer already flipped that bit, it appears, so we're addressing it in arrears. Dicklyon (talk) 23:29, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Rando Comment

I saw this in the GA listings and I thought it was a really interesting concept, but I think the article is weak because it relies on describing the concept mainly through examples. That makes it hard to really grasp why this is something beyond just "folks who use the internet too much" or "internet celebrities", and probably even harder for folks outside of the online-culture interest to understand.

Are there any journals that do a more broad over-view of this topic? Like the cause... or maybe how it fits into the 2010+ zeitgeist? Are there more statistics? Are there any quotable expert opinions on Extremely Online-ness? Are there any attempts to standardize the definition, like hours of engagement or number of posts? It is totally controlled (like some of the political examples) or is it a compulsive, additive facet of internet use? Is it explicitly an active descriptor? Like, content-creators, bloggers, taste-makers, activists etc.?

I don't need answers obviously- but that's the direction I'd take for an encyclopedic article. Cheers, Estheim (talk) 14:18, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Not that I've seen, although that will likely change. Disturbingly (although unsurprisingly), newspapers seem to have started using the term more often since I wrote this article. Coincidence? Who knows! My opinion is that they should hire me to write newspapers. Another thing they should hire me to be is a college professor. Alternatively, they could hire me to teach journalists and college professors about making posts online. Anyway, I think that in the next few years we'll either be eating mushrooms we grew on the wall of the fallout shelter or looking at a vastly expanded version of this article. jp×g 10:57, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Capitalization

Is there a reason that the article uses “Extremely Online” rather than “extremely online”? It seems like we treat the article’s subject as a proper noun, even though we sometimes use it as an adjective. I feel inclined to make changes to the capitalization that we are using in the article, though I wanted to put this on the talk page before moving forward to see if anybody else has thoughts. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 07:04, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

It's possible to find it used both ways, but most sources tend to agree on capitalizing it, which does convey semantic content (for example, calling something a bad idea is different from calling it a Bad Idea). jp×g 10:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I stumbled upon this article and I WP:BOLDly lowercased it even before having checked the talk page. Sorry for jumping the gun, but I found the title case version very painful to read and borderline pretentious. Per MOS:EMPHCAPS, This includes over-capitalization for signification, i.e. to try to impress upon the reader the importance or specialness of something in a particular context. It's obvious that the term "extremely online" is used in its special meaning throughout the article, so there's no need to provide semantic distinction. No such user (talk) 13:26, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@No such user: Wikipedia articles are not titled based on what one editor thinks is the least "borderline pretentious", they are titled based on what the name of something is given as by significant coverage in reliable sources. This is true even for weird shit like "That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is", "Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" or "Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles". To demonstrate this, I will go through and check all 38 sources. Not all of them are being used to source the term itself, so not all of them mention it explicitly with either capitalization. The Outline mentions the "Extremely Mad and Litigious Guy"; Vanity Fair and Vulture are using it in actual titles, so while it's capitalized there, it doesn't imply anything either way.

But the sources which explicitly say "Extremely Online", with that exact capitalization, are The Daily Dot (Hathaway), Vox, Korn Ferry, Reason, the Journal of Digital Social Research, Vox (Romano), WENY, and Politico; for the most part, these are not passing mentions of the phrase, they are the main references which support the body of the article. Specifically, the first reference is WP:SIGCOV from a WP:RS which gives a clear definition of the term and goes out of its way to say "Extremely Online" multiple times. I am not quite sure why you chose to change the title of a GA without checking the talk page, but I have requested a reversion at WP:RM/TR and advise you to actually open a move request if you think it should be titled differently. jp×g 18:45, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@JPxG: Fair enough. I would have reverted myself on your request, but I was Offline (pun intended) already. I opened a RM below. No such user (talk) 08:26, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 27 April 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, the term would need to be consistently capitalized in reliable sources and opposers note the evidence does not support that. (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 04:59, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

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Extremely Online → Extremely online – The first sentence in MOS:CAPS specifies that Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization and advises to capitalize only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of [...] sources. While some sources used in the article do capitalize the term "Extremely Online", it is far from universal practice: lowercase is used in the dedicated piece by RealLife magazine, and then by HuffPost, WaPo, Newyorker, Vice, NyMag, NyMag, Pitchfork... As a matter of fact, I checked first few pages of a news search for "extremely online" (with quotes) and the majority of articles uses lowercase.
Besides, I find the capitalized phrase as currently used in the article Extremely Jarring: per MOS:EMPHCAPS, over-capitalization for signification, i.e. to try to impress upon the reader the importance or specialness of something in a particular context. No such user (talk) 08:06, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support, and capitalization should be fixed in rest of article if this gets moved.--Ortizesp (talk) 14:28, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support - a clear example of unnecessary capitalization. Primergrey (talk) 18:12, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. This might seem like a stupid distinction to split hairs over, but I promise you that it matters. There is a difference between a simple conjunction of two words and a coherent concept being referred to by their conjunction. That is to say, Silent Generation does not refer to "any generation which happens to be silent"; the Great Depression does not simply refer to "any depression which is great". Similarly, to be Extremely Online is not the same thing as "being online to an extreme degree", it's a specific aspect of 2010s and 2020s Internet culture. This is reflected in the major sources, which go beyond passing mentions to establish notability with significant coverage, like The Daily Dot article which is devoted solely to defining the phenomenon. Additionally, like I said above, there are Vox, Korn Ferry, Reason, the Journal of Digital Social Research, Vox (Romano), WENY, and Politico which specifically mention it with capitals.
  The sources above, aside from the RealLife magazine article, don't really show that it's being used in lowercase. Vice, as well as the Huffington and Washington Posts, are both passing mentions. The New Yorker is, well, quite open about their archaic style guide (they say "coöperate" and "reëlect"). Pitchfork doesn't even use it in the body of the article, it's just in the subtitle for the headline. And New York Magazine doesn't seem to have any consistent style at all (it says "extremely-online" with a hyphen in the first link and "extremely online" in the second). jp×g 21:08, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

  Zero of the three cited New York magazine articles do what you claim one of them does. Even if one did, I would bet you a pile of crypto that the hyphenated case is a compound adjective directly modifying a noun phrase (and such hyphenation is normal, though it is decreasingly conventional to do it with a -ly word, and MoS itself eschews it in such a case). This tends to call into question this editor's later claim "I am aware of what the sources in the article say, since I put them there when I wrote it."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support – even a lot of the cited sources don't cap it. This capping for stylistic emphasis is at odds with our style guidance from MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Dicklyon: A lot of the cited sources are passing mentions I included to offer examples of its use in a broad range of situations, not significant coverage used to define it. These all use capitals. It is definitely not for "stylistic emphasis"; I exhort you to read my comment above. Other societal phenomena like the Lost Generation, American Dream, and Second Great Awakening are capitalized the same way, for the same reason, and have been for a long time. jp×g 22:14, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

  I'm unconvinced. The daily dot says "The phrase Extremely Online—usually capitalized—dates back to at least 2014" and links a two-word lowercase Tweet in 2014. From there, some people may have picked it up and started to cap it. What do you call that if not stylistic emphasis? They didn't even get that much right, if I read Twitter correctly, as "ms. Extremely Online" joined there in 2013. And Here is an article from just yesterday about being "Extremely Online" (capping from its title), that uses lowercase in the text. Sources have perhaps capped the "Lost Generation" for a long time, but not "extremely online". Dicklyon (talk) 22:41, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

  I'm not sure who "ms. Extremely Online" is, but searching it returns a Twitter user pasta_niece using it as their display name -- Twitter users change their display names quite frequently (sometimes as often as once a week). And the reason the "Lost Generation" has been capped for longer is because, well, "Lost Generation" refers to stuff that began in 1914 and "Extremely Online" refers to stuff that began in 2014. But, most importantly, it is easy to find a conjunction of any two arbitrary words in news articles: "extremely silly" returns 2,440 results, "extremely pedantic" returns 44 results, "extremely Italian" returns 31 results and "extremely Swiss" returns one. The difference between being extremely silly and Extremely Online is that one of these things has been repeatedly referred to as a societal phenomenon with a specific name; there are plenty of sources which reflect this. It is not simply the random combination of two words, as the article would imply at a lowercase title. Changing the title would change the scope of the article. jp×g 19:24, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support Does not appear to require capitalization at all._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 17:44, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per JPxG. The sources most concerned with the term and its history use the capitalised variant; the others are unconvincing and in some cases actively inconsistent (we should not be aping sources with no attention to detail). The use is also, as noted, consistent with other articles on social phenomena of this sort. Vaticidalprophet 22:21, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

  Works about the term are probably a bit too specialist to rely on. Recent works using the term in its full glory, but lowercase, include this review of books related to the topic on Wired, this Real Life article on the topic, this "Extremely Online Glossary", this Crack article, etc. They see no need for the caps. So the caps are not necessary. Our MOS:CAPS says to avoid unnecessary capitalization. So we avoid caps here. It's not complicated. Dicklyon (talk) 02:33, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

  The Daily Dot and Vox are "specialist sources"? jp×g 19:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

  "The sources most concerned with the term and its history" are too specialist, as they'll likely cap for emphasis the term they're talking about, whether on those sites or others. It makes more sense to pay attention to how the term is used in less specialized contexts. Dicklyon (talk) 04:55, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

  I am still not sure what your definition of "specialized" is. Vox is a news outlet that writes about topics ranging from presidential elections to philanthropic organizations; it's not clear to me that there is any way in which it could be less specialized. jp×g 06:17, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

  Construe my comment more narrowly. The specialized sources are the articles about the term, as opposed to using the term, no matter what channel or publisher they're on. Dicklyon (talk) 15:08, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support as MOS:CAPS sets a high bar for capitalization which this term fails to clear. Rublov (talk) 01:55, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Rublov: MOS:CAPS is a guideline for capitalization in article text, not titles. I do not see how this is relevant to the discussion. jp×g 17:33, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

    @JPxG: The first sentence of MOS:CAPS is Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization, without qualification. This is a general principle which is often used in requested moves, see for instance Talk:War on cancer#Requested_move_16_November_2019, or Talk:Syrian civil war#Requested_move_11_February_2021 where MOS:CAPS is cited in the closure justification. There is also WP:NCCAPS specifically for article titles, but since the first sentence of that policy is Do not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name that doesn't really help your case. Rublov (talk) 18:38, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

    The way something's spelled in reliable sources is, generally, the name of the thing. Articles should be titled the name of the thing they're about. Is there a reason why MoS requires Extremely Online to be lowercase, but does not require the same of Lost Generation, Great Depression, Era of Good Feelings, Bronze Age, Silent Generation, or Golden Age of Radio? jp×g 19:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

    I can't speak with authority about the other article titles but I do find it more plausible that they are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources per MOS:CAPS. Worth noting that we do have articles titled Very good very mighty and Very erotic very violent which seem more directly analogous to this article than your examples. Rublov (talk) 20:36, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

    JP, confusing spelling with styling, and styling with naming, is a common enough confusion. Nobody is arguing about how to spell extremely online, or whether that should be the title; the discussion is about how how to style it, in terms of capitalization. WP has style guidelines specific to that kind of issue. Read them. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    @Dicklyon: Well, the guideline explicitly says that it does not apply to "proper names". What constitutes a proper noun (or a proper adjective) is not rigorously defined; there is an excellent summary of the distinction between proper and common nouns at the Wikipedia article on that subject, which I would recommend consulting if you are unsure. Within the scope of the guideline itself, "proper name" is a fairly loose category that does not exclusively contain the names of people, buildings, books, etc (since it is said to apply to foreign loanwords like Art Nouveau). jp×g 05:59, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    Well, it's not a noun phrase, so clearly not a proper name or proper noun. And it's not derived from one, so unlikely a proper adjective. Perhaps you're leaning on what Proper adjective says about group identity: Sometimes, an adjective is capitalized because it designates an ethnic group with a shared culture, heritage, or ancestry. This usage asserts the existence of a unified group with common goals. I agree, that is sometimes done. The point here, though, is that there's scant evidence of that capitalization being adopted by general sources for this case, unlike Black or Aboriginal. Probably because there is no such group, no such shared culture, heritage, or ancestry; no such common goals. Dicklyon (talk) 15:08, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    JP, if you do not understand how MOS:CAPS is relevant to WP:NCCAPS and titles, please do brush up on that before continuing to argue here. Titles are capitalized in sentence case, so how a phrase would be capitalized in article text is determinative. And I pointed out where MOS:CAPS spells out, in its lead, the criterion, based on usage in sources. We've shown you plenty of sources about exactly this topic that don't cap it, so the fact that "extremely online" might sometimes be used with other meanings is not relevant. Plus, as you can see from book n-grams, the digram "extremely online" is pretty much never used for any other meaning, as it hasn't appeared in 40 books yet. I've never heard of Era of Good Feelings, but book n-grams show it's pretty consistently capped since about 1950. As for Bronze Age, even longer. You can use consistency with title of topics consistently capped in sources to argue for capitalization of a topic title that's not consistently capped in sources. This one is not even close. Dicklyon (talk) 04:49, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    I am aware of what the sources in the article say, since I put them there when I wrote it. It is important to be mindful of which sources constitute significant coverage, which are used to supplement ancillary information, which are merely passing mentions of little significance, and which are from questionable sources altogether: I'm not sure where "Bitch Media", which you linked earlier, falls on this scale. It seems like what you're saying here is that some number of decades need to elapse before it's possible to locate this article at a capitalized title, which doesn't seem realistic or reasonable to me. jp×g 06:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    No, that's not the point. Many new proper names are immediately recognized and treated as such in sources; no time period is needed, because they're obviously names. In this case, the evidence in sources is that this isn't one of those. The origin story has it lower case, and many current uses (e.g. multiple news stories in the last few days) still have it lower case. I'm saying that that could change over time, as it has for some of the other examples you mentioned, like Era of Good Feelings. Dicklyon (talk) 15:16, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

    Speaking of news, I just went through the first page of Google news hits, and found exactly zero that capitalize Extremely Online. This will vary, of course, but is probably a significant enough sample to conclude that it's not consistently capped in sources, and is widely used in lowercase with the meaning we describe in the article. Dicklyon (talk) 15:23, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support lower-case per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS. This is not a proper name, and the claim that it is "used as a proper adjective" in the lead is nonsensical WP:OR. Proper adjectives are definitionally derived from proper nouns, so if there no proper noun, there cannot be a proper adjective. What the lead is trying to say is that the phrase is sometimes capitalized as a form of emphasis. This is common in Internet subculture (cf. terms like "Good Thing" – Jargon File entry here). But WP does not capitalize for emphasis or signification (see MOS:EMPHCAPS).

  "Other societal phenomena like the Lost Generation, American Dream, and Second Great Awakening are capitalized the same way, for the same reason, and have been for a long time." That's a badly false analogy, for numerous reasons, the most obvious of which is that reliable sources near-uniformly capitalize those things, and do not for "extremly online"; and the latter is not in much of any way comparable to a generational monicker (which is conventionally capitalized as such a noun (thus "Generation X"), nor a central tenet, belief system, or doctrine of a society (even these are usually lower case, e.g. manifest destiny, per MOS:DOCTCAPS), nor a massive global cultural shift as named in historical hindsight (see also the Rennaissance and Industrial Revolution, versus the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement). Likening "extremely online" to these thigns isn't comparing apples and oranges, but comparing apples and lug nuts. And DOCTCAPS could not exist if JPxG's implication that WP capitalized such things generally were actually true. The truth is the exact opposite: titles like Lost Generation and Second Great Awakening are the rare and minor exception, not the rule. The very fact that we have Civil rights movement not Civil Rights Movement basically already tells you how this is going to conclude. If sources only half the time or so capitalize something of serious international, historical imporatance and WP thus lower-cases it, then WP is certainly not going to capitalize some bit of Internet jargon just because some people like to upper-case it to be arch and amusing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

  PS: After poring over the article on a cleanup run, I also observe that much of the directly quoted source material from the news mentioning this phrase put it in lower case. I think that clinches it. This has been capitalized in this article to date simply for WP:ILIKEIT reasons. " Changing the title would change the scope of the article" = a very strange idea. There's no evidence to support such a notion, or article titles would virtually never change case on Wikipedia. I think JPxG maybe confusing the idea "a phrase can have two or more meanings" with "there are two or more encyclopedic topics vying for this title"; the latter is not the case.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The lead Tweet

What's with the unexplained creapy 2012 tweet in the lead? I think I'll remove it and see if anyone comes back with a reason to put it back. Dicklyon (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems to pertain to much later material about a particular Twitter user (who is already getting arguably WP:UNDUE coverage in here; I think I detect a WP:OR insinuation that this user invented the phrase). The tweet is already summarized there, so we have no need to repeat it verbatim, much less is an unduly attention-grabbing manner, especially since it also contains a vulgarity, and it is in no way necessary to understanding the topic (it's just "color" someone threw in). It's basically a pull quote (so, see MOS:PULLQUOTE) except that the version integrated into the prose isn't a direct quote but a paraphrase.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I would recommend you consult the discussion five sections above on this talk page, where the issue was discussed in January; it wasn't "thrown in", it was there from the first revisions of the article. The reason it's mentioned in the text is because a few people had said that inclusion of a specific tweet needed specific mention in the text to establish its relevance. (On a side note, no, dril did not invent calling stuff "extremely online", and if you're interested in unciteable OR, I'm not sure but I believe it was Nick Mullen. I didn't go very deep into the subject because, frankly, the specific identity of a person who coins a term tends to be both trivial and contentious. jp×g 17:56, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Dril avatar

Ironic for this to be an issue here, but should this article be using the off-brand dril avatar? It was thoughtfully retired from the dril article in favour of a plain blue circle a couple of years ago. --Lord Belbury (talk) 12:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

With no response in a few weeks, I've switched to the circle. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:58, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Lead image

@JPxG the image might have been added to the article 7 months ago, but it was uploaded in 2008. The "demotivational poster" meme format is entirely outdated and is essentially from another era of the internet as "extremely online". I get why the Chapo image shouldnt be the lead image but a 13 year old meme is almost hilariously out of place and has nothing to do with this article. Might as well use this instead. jonas (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this (although disclosure, I selected the image to add to this article). Motivational posters feel very dated and not with the era of this article. I mean, can you imagine Felix Biederman posting a motivational poster except as an intentionally lame joke?
As alternative possibilities, we could have someone walking around livestreaming themselves on a mobile phone. I added an image in the past, but it was removed as being just some random guy (true, but the mindset is more what matters to me). We could also have an image of Nick Mullen if we can find a source mentioning him (I definitely think his longtime user name "extremely online guy" popularised the term.) Or some of the Capitol rioters like the Qanon shaman guy. Incidentally, searching for mention of this article is a lot of fun, I particularly liked this, this and this. Blythwood (talk) 17:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, when I first wrote the article, I'd used the embedded dril tweet in the place where a lead image would normally be. At some point this was swapped out and put further down the article (the idea being that it needed to be directly next to the part of the body text where said tweet was referenced). After that went to the pot, I went around trying to find a photo of Donald Trump making posts online, which involved plodding through hundreds of archive photos (and coming up with nothing), so I said to hell with it and just found a photo of a guy making posts online. The demotivator showed up a little bit later. I do think that Nick's screen name was behind a lot of the term's popularity (could never find a source for this but I know it's true). But just having one person as a lead image seems inapt to me -- what would you say to a collage of a few different images? I am not at my computer right now, but in a couple days I will be, and I can show you what I mean. jp×g 21:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that either the demotivational poster or the picture of Chapo are useful for illustrating this concept. This doesn't strike me as the kind of article that needs a lead image. Spicy (talk) 21:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. None of the images are great, but the chapos have at least been specifically described as extremely online, unlike the unidentified guy in the meme. Benjamin (talk) 09:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I also looked for pictures of Trump on his phone, without success. How about this Trump tweet instead? Seems fitting. https://web.archive.org/web/20210107022900/https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/781926033159249920

These images might also work

• 
• 
• 

jonas (talk) 22:27, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

The third one would be okay, I guess. It's neutral, at least. Idk, none of them are great. Benjamin (talk) 05:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Missed this discussion when removing the image yesterday, which JPxG has added back. I'd agree with upthread comments that a 2003 meme isn't a great illustration of a term that didn't appear until 2014. Would also say that it doesn't match the text, that an "extremely online" person is someone too immersed in internet pop culture, where a "serious business" internet user is one who takes a trivial online discussion too seriously. (Looks to camera.) If we can draw a thread between the two memes then we should do so in "Background", which currently doesn't go back any further than 2010, and put the image there. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:21, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

A man viewing a mobile phone while cycling. Extremely online people have been described as engaging with digital content to an unhealthy degree.

How would people feel about this? It's the same image as the one used on the selfie injuries article, which is the only problem. But I haven't found an image as good anywhere else. Blythwood (talk) 20:27, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

A man ignoring a child while taking a cheerful selfie or (more likely) filming a bike ride doesn't seem to correspond to anything in the article. Ignoring someone while intently reading or typing something on a phone, perhaps, but not this. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)