Adrian Chiles (Opinion, 4 June) has just discovered the word edgelord – a term that was new to me too – and now he sees it everywhere. He’s not wrong: it’s rife on social media, in podcasts and in YouTube comments. But how did he overlook the edgelord-in-chief himself?
Donald Trump is the archetypal edgelord: endlessly provocative, chronically online, allergic to truth and addicted to the attention his outrage generates. He didn’t just dabble in edgelordery for clicks – he built his own social media megaphone to broadcast it. It’s as if Truth Social had been handed the nuclear codes.
Chiles writes about edgelords with bemused detachment. But Trump shows what happens when trolling becomes statecraft, and moral vacuity masquerades as “telling it like it is”. This isn’t just an online persona – it’s a governing style with global consequences.
Next time Adrian spots an edgelord, he might glance across the Atlantic and realise that we’re all still living with the results.
Anthony Lawton
Church Langton, Leicestershire
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