The Cobrasnake

A love letter to a time before Instagram and the legendary party scenes of the 2000s that brought together the new millennium’s rising stars of pop culture. Under the moniker the Cobrasnake, the photographer Mark Hunter captured the party scenes of Los Angeles and New York during the hipster-glam heyday of the 2000s—and in doing so defined the look of a generation. Armed with just a Polaroid and a primitive website, Cobrasnake captured pioneers of youth culture from Kanye West and Steve Aoki to Jeremy Scott, Katy Perry, and Virgil Abloh—icons of the indie pop world in the making. Intimately connected with the people around him and keyed-in to the edgier fringes of the fashion, music, and art worlds, Hunter photographed influencers before they were influencers, in the wild and at play from the streets of LA to NYC and beyond. Collected here for the first time are more than three hundred of Cobrasnake’s favorite images alongside ephemera, from concert tickets and backstage passes to outtakes and unseen photographs from his many adventures. These photographs are records of the last generation of partiers to predate the livestreaming of culture afforded by today’s social media—capturing the energy and vibrancy of a time before Instagram.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet, revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off—“terrific,” as the New York Times calls it, “Lorenz…is a knowledgeable, opinionated guide to the ways internet fame has become fame, full stop.” For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism. By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms’ power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. In this “deeply reported, behind-the-scenes chronicle of how everyday people built careers and empires from their sheer talent and algorithmic luck” (Sarah Frier, author of No Filter), Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet. Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century. “Extremely Online aims to tell a sociological story, not a psychological one, and in its breadth it demonstrates a new cultural logic emerging out of 21st-century media chaos” (The New York Times). Lorenz reveals the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.

Smile today, it’ll be a breathtaking; Let a smile begin your day, smile regardless Of what anyone says, And in a short while all of your troubles Will fade away.

CHAPTER I. DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA, OR THE COMMON SUN-DEW. part, which alone is capable of movement, consists of a prolongation of the leaf; the spiral vessels being extended from this to the uppermost part. We shall hereafter see that the terminal tentacles of the divided leaves of Roridula are still in an intermediate condition. CHAPTER II. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE TENTACLES FROM THE CONTACT OF SOLID BODIES. CHAPTER III. AGGREGATION OF THE PROTOPLASM WITHIN THE CELLS OF THE TENTACLES. CHAPTER IV. THE EFFECTS OF HEAT ON THE LEAVES. CHAPTER V. THE EFFECTS OF NON-NITROGENOUS AND NITROGENOUS ORGANIC FLUIDS ON THE LEAVES. CHAPTER VI. THE DIGESTIVE POWER OF THE SECRETION OF DROSERA. CHAPTER VII. THE EFFECTS OF SALTS OF AMMONIA. CARBONATE OF AMMONIA. [ NITRATE OF AMMONIA. PHOSPHATE OF AMMONIA. CHAPTER VIII. THE EFFECTS OF VARIOUS OTHER SALTS AND ACIDS ON THE LEAVES. COLUMN 1 : SALTS CAUSING INFLECTION. COLUMN 2 : SALTS NOT CAUSING INFLECTION. COLUMN 1 : SALTS CAUSING INFLECTION. COLUMN 2 : SALTS NOT CAUSING INFLECTION. ACIDS. ACIDS, MUCH DILUTED, WHICH CAUSE INFLECTION. ACIDS, DILUTED TO THE SAME DEGREE, WHICH DO NOT CAUSE INFLECTION. CHAPTER IX. THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN ALKALOID POISONS, OTHER SUBSTANCES AND VAPOURS. CHAPTER X. ON THE SENSITIVENESS OF THE LEAVES, AND ON THE LINES OF TRANSMISSION OF THE MOTOR IMPULSE. CHAPTER XI. RECAPITULATION OF THE CHIEF OBSERVATIONS ON DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA. CHAPTER XII. ON THE STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENTS OF SOME OTHER SPECIES OF DROSERA. CHAPTER XIII. DIONAEA MUSCIPULA. CHAPTER XIV. ALDROVANDA VESICULOSA. CHAPTER XV. DROSOPHYLLUM—RORIDULA—BYBLIS—GLANDULAR HAIRS OF OTHER PLANTS— CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE DROSERACEAE. RORIDULA. BYBLIS. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE DROSERACEAE. CHAPTER XVI. PINGUICULA. PINGUICULA GRANDIFLORA. PINGUICULA LUSITANICA. CHAPTER XVII. UTRICULARIA. [ UTRICULARIA VULGARIS. UTRICULARIA MINOR. UTRICULARIA CLANDESTINA. CHAPTER XVIII. UTRICULARIA NELUMBIFOLIA, AMETHYSTINA, GRIFFITHII, CAERULEA, ORBICULATA, MULTICAULIS. POLYPOMPHOLYX. GENLISEA.

Strip Tees is a fever dream of a memoir—Hunter S. Thompson meets Gloria Steinem—about a recent college graduate and what happens when her feminist ideals meet the real world. At the turn of the new millennium, LA is the place to be. “Hipster” is a new word on the scene. Lauren Conrad is living her Cinderella story in the “Hills” on millions of television sets across the country. Paris Hilton tells us “That’s hot” from behind the biggest sunglasses imaginable, while beautiful teenagers fight and fall in love on The O.C. Into this most glittering of supposed utopias, Kate Flannery arrives with a Seven Sisters diploma in hand and a new job at an upstart clothing company called American Apparel. Kate throws herself into the work, determined to climb the corporate fashion ladder. Having a job at American Apparel also means being a part of the advertising campaigns themselves, stripping down in the name of feminism. She slowly begins to lose herself in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cultlike devotion to the unorthodox CEO and founder of the brand. The line between sexual liberation and exploitation quickly grows hazy, leading Kate to question the company’s ethics and wrestle with her own. Strip Tees captures a moment in our recent past that’s already sepia toned in nostalgia, and also paints a timeless portrait of a young woman who must choose between what business demands and self-respect requires.