The Different Types of People There Are on the Internet

A comprehensive, collectively-written list of the different types of people there are on the internet, written by Bebe Zeva, Leigh Alexander, Lesley Arfin, Ryan O'Connell, Kelley Hoffman, Tao Lin, Megan Boyle, Blake Butler, Gene Morgan, Brandon Scott Gorrell, Molly Young, Jimmy Chen, Joshua Lyon, Alex Blagg and more.

By Thought Catalog

Updated 14 years ago, January 19, 2011

A comprehensive list of the different types of people there are on the internet, written by writers we love.

People Who Are Embarrassing on Facebook

These people are generally your mom or extended family, and in rare cases, they can be really good friends that simply don’t ‘get’ the internet. If the embarrassing person is your mom, she’ll usually comment on your Facebook wall on a too-regular basis stuff like “How’s my baby boy?” and post the denim-themed, terribly humiliating family pictures you felt pressured into last year and tag you in every single one of them. People who are embarrassing on Facebook perhaps don’t seem to understand the temporal and widespread aspects of the internet and Facebook i.e. once you comment on someone’s wall “come over i miss u lets cuddle,” everyone, including your exes and friends and potential love interests, could possibly see it. If that isn’t the case – that they don’t understand the temporal and widespread aspects of the internet and Facebook – the alternative is even more uncanny and disturbing: that they find their comments and mass-tagging and overly revealing actions acceptable, normal, exciting, etc.

via Brandon Scott Gorrell

People Who Are Obscenely Obsessed with Social Networking

These people are in their twenties or thirties living in urban areas. They consider the promotion of their personal brand their top priority. Personal philosophies may include: “Didn’t Twitpic, didn’t happen” or “History is made through Facebook photos.” When socializing with technological devices, they prefer to hang out with people with influential online presences who are ‘down’ to play the social media game with you. Preferably these people wear clothes by brands with active online presences, hang out at places with strong online presences, and discuss topics that are highly relevant and quotable. They are usually charming and may genuinely enjoy hanging out IRL, but can’t fully relax without taking a strategic picture or updating their status. They consider themselves ‘cultural tastemakers’ and use social networking to inform and entertain their audience. When saying goodbye, they are more likely to say “@ me!” or “Tag me!” where most normal people would suggest “Call me!”

via Kelley Hoffman

People Who Have Won the Internet

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People who deftly dramatize and inhabit the internet; people who have read the whole thing; people who determine the rules of internet engagement. There aren’t a lot of them but there are too many to name–so maybe it is time we started a list. I will offer my top five: Molly Lambert, Julian Assange, Tavi, Andrey Ternovskiy, and Ned Raggett.

via Molly Young

People Who Have Forgotten What They Were Supposed to Be Doing

You might very well be a person who has forgotten what you are supposed to be doing. If you are, it is likely you were supposed to be paying a bill online, writing a time-sensitive email to someone, locating a map of a location to which you are imminently traveling, updating your online dating profile because you are feeling more lonely than normal, checking the weather because you want to know whether or not to bring an umbrella, emailing someone in the Accounts Payable department of a magazine you write for because they can’t seem to put a check in the mail, Skyping with your mom, watching a video of how to install inside-mount blinds, and/or buying a plane ticket you have been putting off buying but now it just doesn’t make any sense at all. Instead of doing any of these things you are watching a YouTube or Vimeo video, looking at the top ten most emailed articles on the New York Times and getting upset at how inane they all are and then reading one anyway, following a trail of clicks on Wikipedia until you forget where you started or why, reading your horoscope on free will astrology, watching Marcel the shell (again), looking at various locations of your childhood on Google Maps, repeatedly looking up fares for international flights you can’t afford, reading an article on Thought Catalog or HTMLGIANT or The Rumpus and then the string of increasingly irate comments dangling under said article and/or Googling yourself.

via Catherine Lacey

People Who Are Dads

Dads use Internet Explorer and have not installed flash. Dads think Firefox and Mozilla are rock bands or street gangs. Dads never empty their Recycle Bin so that a .jpeg entitled IMG_0549 of Dad from circa 2001 holding a 7.25 lbs. trout forever resides in both one’s mind and said bin. Dads use Bing because it’s the default search engine on their PC, which they got at CostCo. Dads actually say “www” before the name of the website. Dads got their cookies all over homedepot.com comparing lawnmower prices. Dads got their cookies all the fuck over macys.com shopping for fleece and slippers. Dads got their cookies all over redtube.com barely DSL-streaming hentai porn asking “what the hell is this?” inside their “computer room” at night while Moms are applying moisturizer to their brittle faces. Dads’ mousepads are Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore motif(s), purchased in the gift shop, along with beef jerky and Snapple for the long ride back. Dads go to “www” YouTube “dot com” to find out what the big fuss is, and while confronted by a Lady Gaga or Björk video, say “this woman clearly has a problem.” Dads got McAfee Security Scan popping up from the porn, which uses big time CPU and slows everything down, so Dads get upset asking “what the hell is wrong with this thing?” So then Dads go to CostCo the next week, or month, for a new computer saying to the youngster working minimum wage that he knows times are a changin’ and where are the Dell computers, you know, the ones that came out last year, and are on sale.

via Jimmy Chen

People Who You Went to Grade School with Who Are Now Delusional About Your Former Friendship

You don’t really remember this person. You think maybe your mom made you invite them to your 11th birthday party, but you are not sure. Fast-forward 10-15 years, and they have found you on Facebook and Twitter, and added you on Gchat by finding your email address on your portfolio site. They remember “the good times back in the day.” You do not. You are not sure you were there for that glorious past they are always talking about.

They have a very boring job or they are a stay-at-home parent. They want to be your “best internet friend.” They want to talk to you all the time. They “like” all your statuses, profile pictures and all the links you post. They retweet you all the time, and they add your boyfriend or girlfriend on Facebook. They send you a message every few days to “ask how your week is going.” They Gchat you to see if you had fun at that party Facebook said you attended. They don’t know that they’re annoying the crap out of you. Or else they don’t care.

via Rawiya Kameir

People Who Promote Their Family

These people tend to be parents that have just joined Facebook, at last, after they spent a couple years slowly coming to grips with the concept, and then spent a few additional months wondering if joining would alienate/embarrass their children. Finally they joined, and their profile picture is of them out to a “big occasion dinner” with their kids. Or they are at a tourist attraction with their husband or wife, and in these cases the photo seems to subtly say, “See, we’re not that old, we can still hike!” But, in many cases—and these are the cases that are more embarrassing and unfortunate to see—people who promote their family can be young people that married at a bizarrely young age, or got knocked up, or have an older sibling that just had a child, so they’re now a young aunt or uncle. In these cases their first twenty tagged photos are of them cradling their spouse/child/nephew/niece and trying to tell you, essentially, “Check me out, I’m a loving person that loves my family members, they love me back, I’m all grown up now y’all.” The (adult) people who promote their family do not have Twitter. They might have LinkedIn, though they probably do not because on LinkedIn they cannot promote their family as easily. The (young) people who promote their family (say, under 30) do use Twitter, mostly to tweet about what they are up to with their family this weekend (hint: apple-picking!) or to retweet their younger brother, who is even younger, still a teen, not yet a person who promotes his family, so his tweets are quick hits about music like “Man I love that new Kanye song Runaway, the video is siiiick!” The (young) people who promote their family also use Facebook to post photos of them drinking with the family at a family holiday event, with captions like “Me, Suzie, Sally, and Sammy taking a birthday shot with mom and dad, love you mom and dad!”

via Daniel Roberts

People Who Write Yelp Reviews

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Full disclosure: I use Yelp a few times a week. Whether it’s for researching a restaurant, finding the right doctor or checking out a reliable neighborhood drug dealer (J/K on that last one. I wish), the website has been extremely helpful and a welcome addition to my life. That being said, I don’t think I will ever write a Yelp review. Nope. Not ever. It takes a certain type of person to write a Yelp review and I don’t think I have it or want to have it. Yelpers, as they’re so affectionately referred to, are the types of people who are know-it-alls. They’re the friends you have who share their opinions on everything, solicited or not. They believe that they have the best taste in music, film, food, everything. If they have a soggy taco at the neighborhood Mexican restaurant, they act horrified and think it’s their duty to inform the masses of their lackluster dining experience. Some people use Yelp only to write bad reviews. They’re like Ben Stiller’s character in Greenberg, always writing complaint letters to whoever they feel has wronged them. It’s another example of the Internet giving everyone too much of a voice. But I suppose I’m being hypocritical here seeing as how I’ve been dissuaded from going somewhere based on a bad Yelp review. However, I always keep in mind that the person giving the bad review about Jamaican Me Crazee might have just had a bad day or might be one of those cynical assholes who works at an independent record store.

via Ryan O'Connell

People Who Take Shit Seriously

These people are usually women in their late 20s or early 30s who spend a good portion of their day, every day, trolling the Internet looking for things to be upset about. These Womyn will engage in lengthy arguments in the comments sections of magazine blogs, and will type a lot of words, and quote a lot of quotes that don’t really make any sort of clear point other than, “I don’t know how to work my own life.” They will become frenzied over such topics as: hipsters, middle class people, lower income people, and gluten. If you were to say something funny about a homeless lady you saw once, they’d totes block you like this (finger snap noise.)