How have e-girls shaped our culture?
An exclusive excerpt from Katherine Dee's magazine 'egirl 001.'
What exactly is the egirl? Katherine Dee, a leading internet culture writer and researcher is here to explain, with an outline of the first comprehensive timeline.
Dee, who has been hailed as “Marshall McLuhan’s clearest heir,” teamed up earlier this year with 2dcloud and Metalabel to launch egirl, a new series about egirl subculture. egirl 001, a 32-page full color magazine documenting the evolution of the egirl on a timeline spanning 1982 to 2024, is the series’ first release. Amidst illustrations by acclaimed artists like Kristina Tzekova and Blaise Larmee, Dee draws the connection between events like Sailor Moon’s Cartoon Network premiere to Tumblr banning pornography as mile markers in the egirl’s disparate, ever-evolving legacy.
Cataloguing not only the history, but the aesthetics of the egirl, Dee has effectively copy-pasting them from the internet directly to the page—a fitting journey for a figure that has captured the hearts and minds of the last two generations. Below, an excerpt from the magazine, which you can purchase from Metalabel.
This is an incomplete timeline of the e-girl, one of the celestial bodies of cyberspace.
What is the e-girl? She is more than just a “girl online.” She is a girl online who is desired. She exerts a gravitational pull on her orbiters, who circle her, each at their own distance. Some e-girls burn like red dwarfs: small but countless, their subtle light touching only a few admirers. Others flare brief and brilliant as blue giants before burning through their fuel in spectacular collapse. Many have already undergone their supernovae, their light still traveling through space — by the time we see their flash, we’re only watching an echo, our eyes capturing the afterglow of something that has long since scattered into darkness. All that remains are the traces: deleted accounts and archived streams drifting like stellar matter, forum posts and selfies expanding outward across the vast dark of cyberspace.
This is our telescope pointed at the cosmos. It is about all the light that has traveled years to reach us, some of it from stars already gone. It is a love letter to the twinkling that made us all look up.
egirl noun
A girl found on the internet playing video games. Not to be confused with a fake gamer girl or ethot, an egirl is simply online just to have fun like everyone else (and they do NOT want to date you). Egirls are commonly more toxic then you’d think, however, they are very nice to girls online. Gamer girl egirls are most commonly found on Overwatch.
A girl who uses tiktok. These egirls are dressed with pleated skirts or mom jeans, wears winged eyeliner with hearts under their eyes, blushed noses, and usually have bangs. They are can get popular fast from their tiktoks being posted on meme pages.
A girl who posts the egirl aesthetic on instagram. She also is dressed with a pleated skirt or mom jeans, wearing winged eyeliner with hearts under her eyes, a blushed nose, and has bangs. Her queen is Belle Delphine.
egirl (definition 1) - 2 mid, bombs down b
boys- IS THAT A GAMER GIRL????? YOU SOUND HOTTTTT
egirl- voice_enable 0
by professional egirl August 29, 2019
“Okay, so let me clear this up for you. There are two different definitions for egirl. If used by anyone older than gen z, the other commenters have the right idea, it is primarily used by creepy incel like a holes who use it derogatorily to shame geeky women.
However, for gen z, egirls and eboys are this generations emos, though they’re slightly different. Egirl/eboys are better at makeup, little bit softer, listen to more anime/electronic music, girls and some guys use pastels, and there’s a large subculture around gaming and anime. This sub culture was born from TikTok, and is primarily found there.
Personally it irks me to see it be used in a derogatory way, but a holes gonna be a holes I guess. There are a lot of creepy older “gamer dudes” who hit on tik tok egirls and then will get aggressive when ignored or rejected and then just shit on them for being fake or sluts. So I wouldn’t listen to their definition of what an egirl is. I like the tik tok version better.”
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