By Layal Al Challah | Staff Writer
Someone who is chronically offline would probably go like “oh, you mean TikTok, like the Kesha song?” It refers to someone who is extremely out of the loop with everything going on in the virtual world. So, in contrast, chronically online refers to someone who is completely aware of every online and digital event, slang terminology, and cultural moments, to the point where it seems like they only exist online – ignoring their existence in the real world. It is mostly prevalent amongst Gen Z, since we have not been raised in a world where the internet did not exist. Their whole existence morphs into a solely digitalized one. One special thing about people who are chronically online is that they are too invested in the cancel culture, where they’re always looking for people to cancel and expose, just so they can be deemed the righteous people they so want to be. However, they have shown to be focused on the wrong things, where the real issues that should be addressed end up being abandoned.
The word chronically online is mostly used for people who act like that. However, the word chronic typically refers to people who suffer from chronic illnesses, so using the word chronically online somehow dismisses part of their struggle, especially since individuals that are chronically ill do not have the capability to let go of their struggle, unlike individuals that are chronically online. Consequently, the word extremely online is preferable. I believe most of us are extremely online to a certain extent, but some people get too consumed with the online world that it starts impacting their mental health, social life, and functionality. Being chronically online makes it hard for us to disconnect and relax, therefore negatively affecting our mental health, and the way we interact with people face-to-face.
Us being extremely online is probably only going to increase due to the phenomenal advances in technology, which is great because these technological breakthroughs are only going to make our lives easier and more accessible. With that extra accessibility, we may find ourselves drawn to a space that is predominantly digital, with minimal attention to the real world, and little information of what is happening around us and how to flow normally through life. Most of us, if not all, have probably already been swallowed into the cyberworld, which is fair as long as we keep a grasp on who we are, and how we interact with the world.
Some users online have already delved deep into the digital life, resulting in eccentric, impersonal, and disconnected online interactions. Disconnected in a way where they were too invested in the cyberworld, they completely disconnected from the real world. People’s extremely online takes are mostly manifested on Tiktok and twitter, so here are some absurd instances in which people took their ‘online-ness’ a bit too far:
- This is a great example of how extremely online behavior is manifested. It is very absurd how some people do not have a grasp of the concept of empathy. We always talk about having ‘second hand embarrassment’ due to being more and more exposed to people’s lives online, and therefore witnessing many embarrassing moments in strangers’ lives. We have been so focused on others’ experiences that we somehow forgot to formulate our own, which is why the concept of having ‘second hand happiness’ was so weird to that twitter user.
- The concept of online friends has been around since the internet was invented, but it boomed during the pandemic, which is the period that was the pinnacle of growth for a lot of Gen Z kids. So, during the disaster of COVID-19, a lot of us grew only knowing how to make online friends, who are called ‘mutuals’. ‘IRL mutuals’ basically refers to friends in real life, but our ability to make friends during the pandemic was buried very deep that some of us forgot how to refer to them.
- ‘Ratio’ is a term used widely in twitter comments to refer to a comment that got more likes and retweets than the original tweet in which the comment was made on. A lot of people know it solely from twitter, to the point where they did not know it stemmed from mathematics.
A lot of these extremely online takes can be very hilarious, so if you want to know more about how absurd some of them can be, search “chronically online” on TikTok and twitter and you’ll find thousands of hilarious videos about the topic. So, if you find yourself rigorously living the online life, you are probably an extremely online individual, but that’s okay. Being extremely online is not bad, especially since most of us had no choice but to mature in an exclusively cyber world due to the pandemic. However, it is up to us to do our best to separate our online life from our offline one, so we don’t lose ourselves on the internet.