Anedgelord is someone, typically on the Internet, who tries to impress or shock by posting exaggerated opinions such asnihilism orextremist views.[1][2][3][4]
According to theMerriam-Webster.com Dictionary, the first known usage with this meaning was in 2015.[1] It was added to Webster's in September 2023.[1] Webster gave the following example:
We decided to watchIt's A Wonderful Life and my dad said, "Every year I wait forJimmy Stewart to jump off that bridge but he never does it"—merry Xmas from the original edgelord.[5]
Edgelords were characterised by author and journalistRachel Monroe in her account of criminal behaviour,Savage Appetites:
...internet cynics lumped the online Nazis together with the serial killer fetishists and the dumbestgoths and dismissed them all as edgelords: kids who tried to be scary online. I thought of most of these edgelords asbasement-dwellers, pale faces lit by the glow of their computer screen, puffing themselves up with nihilism. An edgelord was a scrawny guy with aLARP-y vibe, possibly wearing a cloak, dreaming of omnipotence. Or a girl with excessive eyeliner and lots ofTumblr posts aboutself-harm. The disturbing content posted by edgelords was undermined by its predictability...[6]
It is frequently associated with the forum site4chan.[7][8][9] The renegade rhetoric of the edgelord is often intentionally used by thefar-right totroll leftist targets.[3]
