For much of its early life, the Internet was an escape from the real world, a place one “went” to. In India, in the beginning of the digital revolution, many of us often visited booths to access the Internet — mostly to check our emails or search for information on Google. With the Internet now ubiquitous and available to all, that distinction has collapsed. Today, we live in a culture shaped by both the real and the virtual, often at the same time. The shift is so complete that it is almost invisible.
How do we understand this transformation? Three books — Taylor Lorenz’s Extremely Online (Simon and Schuster), Anurag Minus Verma’s The Great Indian Brain Rot (Bloomsbury Publishing India), and Santosh Desai’s Memes for Mummyji (HarperCollins India) — approach the subject from different angles, but together they show how the Internet has become our primary cultural habitat.
From a tool to a stage
Lorenz’s work provides the global scaffolding for this story. Drawing on years of reporting on Internet culture for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, she chronicles the rise of creators — the people who are online to make money — and how the Internet turned ordinary people into commentators and performers, in Extremely Online.
She provides a rosy picture of the Internet, as a place of endless opportunity and democratisation. She writes, “Blogs offered readers everything that legacy media couldn’t, revealing what writers really thought.” These blogs and forums, she argues, evolved into a culture where visibility slowly became a form of currency. As a result, the self is now curated; it is constantly fed into algorithms. The shaping and evolution of the self has become a public project. Lorenz tries to capture the moment when not just us, but the Internet itself transformed — from a tool to a stage, which then became the default mode of being for many of us.
The Indian story
Her book provides the global story. But when it comes to India, there is something far more chaotic taking place. Verma’s The Great Indian Brain Rot argues that India’s digital life cannot be understood through the western lens. His essays, written with a satirical edge, show how caste, class, aspiration, and misinformation shape the Internet. The “brain rot” he describes is not a lament about screen addiction or cringe content online; it is a commentary on how digital life amplifies the tensions in society.
According to Verma, the Indian Internet is a place where the earnest and the frivolous, the ordinary and the bizarre, coexist. As we scroll, we come across political propaganda right after an astrology reel. Or we see caste-based trolling thriving alongside self-care content. For many creators, the Internet is a platform that fulfils their desire for upward mobility as well as virality; the latter often helps them achieve the former. Cheap data and inexpensive smartphones have ensured that everyone has access to the Internet, which in turn has created a cultural churn that is still unfolding.
The digital and the domestic
Desai has long been one of India’s most perceptive observers and interpreters of the everyday life. In Memes for Mummyji, he argues that the meme, the WhatsApp forward, the short video, and even the AI slop that we all consume are not trivial artefacts; they contain our humour, anxieties, and aspirations, and give us a sense of belonging.
His observations reveal how deeply the smartphone has embedded itself in the Indian household, just like the pressure cooker. It has changed how people think and express themselves. We see it around us: our parents, who once struggled with technology, now send us emojis. And family WhatsApp groups, like drawing rooms, are arenas for affection, conflict, and negotiation. In short, the digital and the domestic are no longer separate spheres.
What these three books show is that online culture is no longer a subset of culture, as it once was, but its building block. In other words, the online space is where culture is now being made. On platforms such as Instagram, strangers unknowingly shape our identity and how we present ourselves. On YouTube or X, we post jokes and then watch nervously to see how quickly they travel, how viral they become. We share political statements through memes and hilarious videos.
Of course, this does not mean that the offline world has disappeared. For instance, when a protest begins online, it can gain momentum on the street, as we saw recently with the Cockroach Janata Party movement. We share memes online, but also discuss them in everyday conversation. If you happen to be a chronically offline person, taking part in daily conversations can be challenging if you are not up-to-date with the latest Internet lingo.
Lorenz reminds us that the Internet has given voice to people who were once excluded from public discourse. Verma warns us that the same systems can deepen inequalities and amplify prejudices. Desai shows us that our digital life is shaped by our everyday existence — our rituals, vulnerabilities, and negotiations.
Together, these three books suggest that “extremely online” humans are no longer an aberration. They are a product of the world we have built — a world where our identities, our sense of community, and the meaning of life itself are constantly mediated and determined by screens and algorithms.
Abhishek Baxi is an independent journalist covering the intersections and faultlines of technology, society, and culture.
Published – July 16, 2026 08:30 am IST