Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet

Getting a job through compulsive tweeting marked my first exposure to the digital attention economy that was beginning to monopolize the Internet. I grasped a new formula: content = attention = followers = profit. Anything that made enough noise online could be monetized in one way or another. My online presence increasingly felt like a carefully c... See more

Eichhorn uses the potent term “content capital”—a riff on Pierre Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”—to describe the way in which a fluency in posting online can determine the success, or even the existence, of an artist’s work.

“Cultural producers who, in the past, may have focused on writing books or producing films or making art must now also spend con... See more

Sure, there are a few stars. But they’re very few. Andrew Sullivan was going it alone and had a limited audience, then he went to “New York” and had a guaranteed income and reached many more. Sure, he was fired from “New York” for his views, but now he’s got an independent newsletter and I ask you…other than reading how much money he is making doin... See more

We spent the last 15 years working for 👍 likes, ❤️ hearts, 🔁 retweets, and follows, anything for the clout. Insta filters, Twitter follow bots, and a meme worth dancing to on TikTok made the individual go viral. With virality, "influencers" were born and the Information Superhighway added a fast lane. In this fast lane, we created a world where p... See more