A decade ago, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. I spent hours a week at dozens of dingy, low-light NYC open mics. Every few weeks, some new suburbanite who hadn’t prepared a set would show up. They were always sure they’d get the crowd full of sultry comedians roaring with his raucous, spontaneous wit.
When he’d inevitably start to bomb, panic would set in. Their fallback to pull out of a jam was often saying the edgiest stuff they could think of. This usually ended up being slurs crescendoed with the n-word.
These edge lords would inevitably get a couple of awkward laughs, enough to convince their ego they were funny. Years later, I still see some of those guys still doing open mics. But now they’re complaining about how “woke” everything is. That “cancel culture” ruined comedy on their AI and slop-filled Facebook pages.
Merriam-Webster defines an edge lord as “someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others.” There are varying degrees of internet edginess, it often comes down to shock and awe over substance or clever commentary. Hack jokes about women making sandwiches or attack helicopter pronouns that are only funny to the worst people you know.
Over the past decade, moments like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo helped move the overall culture forward and away from white hegemony built on saying the most offensive you can think of for the lolz.
Progressive ideology is the arch-enemy of the edge lord. After all, acknowledging their marginalized targets are actual people who deserve respect and rights dulls their venom. But over the past couple of years, the pendulum has started to swing back as internet spaces become increasingly toxic.
The Presidential Embrace of the Edge Lord
Donald Trump won his second term by embracing these edge lords. Streamer Adin Ross is a misogynist idealogue who Twitch banned for “unmoderated hateful conduct.” Yet Ross sat down with Trump for a viral interview before the election. In an election night speech, UFC owner Dana White thanked Ross and edgy creators like the NELK Boys and Theo Von.
A 2020 study in the Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Communication claims social media sites encourage this behavior. The study claims the designs of platforms like Facebook and YouTube “might be contributing to polarizing, impulsive, or antagonistic behaviors.” Our feeds are full of rage bait from all sides of the political aisle. These sites are built to keep us watching. When we end up angrier as a result, that’s just more engagment.
Since 2022 when Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, the already edgy site has snowballed into a memelords hellscape. According to a 2024 study at Columbia University, “Twitter’s engagement-based ranking algorithm amplifies emotionally charged, out-group hostile content that users say makes them feel worse about their political out-group.”
Sam Hyde Enters The Conversation
That animosity allows previously niche figures an opportunity to step out from under their rocks. Sam Hyde is a controversial internet comic who donated to the legal fund of a Neo-Nazi website and had his Adult Swim show canceled after some had complaints about the show’s bigoted undertones.
Hyde’s content was mainly secluded to the underbelly of the internet until the holiday break when a video on his Twitter page discussing his problems with immigrants coming into the United States on H1-B Visas pulled in 20 million views. Under the old regime of Twitter, Sam Hyde was banned for extreme content. On X, his video went viral, catnip for his hungry followers.
As digital culture increasingly becomes our everyday culture, these loud, offensive voices aren’t going anywhere. These creators will stay emboldened as the algorithms seemingly encourage their arguments with views and fans. They start the same way as the comic I watched all those years ago, but instead of becoming bitter and isolated, they turn being a contrarian into a full-time job.
Now, they aren’t just the headliner; they help make the decisions of the world and even have an ear to the president.
