Cooper Lund was born and raised in Minnesota, and has now lived in Brooklyn for a decade. He’s only been to Philadelphia twice in his life.

Nevertheless, he can quickly rattle off a list of the city’s most notorious cultural touchstones: the introduction of Gritty, the decapitation of hitchBOT, what a “citywide special” is, that time the Sixers’ general manager ran multiple secret Twitter accounts to discredit his enemies and defend his collared shirts.

That, he claims, is because he’s a creature of the internet, and on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable.

“I have a soft spot for the Eagles, specifically from being on the internet,” Lund, 36, said. “Because of Philadelphia exposure, I have opinions on Wawa and Sheetz.”

Lund’s experience posting and riffing on Twitter and now Bluesky eventually led him to develop a full-on theory: spend enough time in certain corners of the internet, and you risk becoming spiritually and culturally Philadelphian.

It can sometimes feel like Philadelphia boosterism spreads far and fast online. Why, for example, was the internet itself overjoyed when Hannah Einbinder ended her Emmy’s speech with “Go Birds, F— ICE, Free Palestine?”

Inspired by his bold analysis, we at The Philadelphia Inquirer set out to talk to a number of chronically online people, both within and outside the city limits, to learn more about the phenomenon.

‘The center of weird regional quirks and affectations’

No one could exactly verify the theory, though there was no denying it often feels true.

“I feel like I have FOMO over this city that I’ve only been to one time,” said McKenzie Ortiz, a 29-year-old transit advocate who lives in Columbia, Mo. Ortiz is not sure how Philadelphia took over her feeds; all she knows is that her “For You” page on X is “only photos of the most beautiful streets in Philadelphia … and people saying ‘afternoon in Philly.’”

From 1,000 miles away, Ortiz followed Philly’s Democratic Socialists of America job fair (“coolest thing ever”) and tuned into how SEPTA cuts were impacting ordinary people. People’s enthusiasm for capturing Philly’s tree-lined sidewalks and walkable streetscapes even influenced how she views other cities. She recently visited Detroit and photographed the protected bike lanes there.

“I was thinking, if this was in Philadelphia, it would do numbers,” she said.

There are a number of possibilities for why the internet seems distinctly Philadelphian. Dan McQuade, a lifelong chronicler of Philadelphia and a visual editor at Defector, theorized that Philadelphia is a very large city that can feel like it is very small, filled with “yokels happy about a chance to talk up our town.”

Also, the sports teams have been relatively good for the last 25 years and, due to being on the East Coast, people in Philly can more easily set the online agenda for the day because we wake up earlier than they do on the West Coast, McQuade said.

He likened Philadelphia’s biggest fans to an old tweet about the nature of hobbies on social media: “Welcome to Twitter. Here is your copy of the Communist Manifesto and a season pass to Monday Night RAW for some reason.”

“Maybe the hobby of ‘being from Philadelphia’ is also that way?” he wondered.

The internet also rewards the visually absurd, the loud, and the energetic. As Lund said, Philly is “the center of weird regional quirks and affectations that play well on the internet.”

The Gritty effect

For example, Gritty. Gritty is a perfect meme. Gritty has also been embraced by lefties online, who see his frightening googly eyes and his ability to blow smoke from his (nonbinary) ears as unhinged chaotic good, a symbol of anti-fascism. Philly, too, is a symbol of that anti-fascist energy, and anti-fascist energy is having a moment.

Philly is “a city that is working-class, and a union city, and reliably anti-Trump. I think we’re just kind of that salt of the Earth. And that gets roped into all kinds of other memes,” said Gwen Snyder, an organizer and writer based here who attended the anti-Proud Boys protests of 2018, just after Gritty was rolled out. Many of the activists brought Gritty signs to the protests.

That year, cultural critic Emily St. James wrote an analysis of just how exactly “Gritty can simultaneously be a high-fivable hockey mascot whom kids adore and an advocate for the radical dismantling of capitalism.” In the years since, Gritty has remained an icon of Philly’s anti-fascist attitude, spreading across the internet through memes and quips and political takes.

So the lefty internet loves Gritty, which sometimes translates into love of Philadelphia; it’s like Gritty as gateway drug.

“He just has an aura around him, you just respect Gritty,” said Laasya Vulimiri, a Raleigh, N.C., native who is chronically online. Gritty and hockey fandom initially drew her into Philadelphia’s orbit.

But now Vulimiri, who has never been to Philadelphia, talks about other aspects of city life with the jaded recall of someone who’s seen it all. She reminisced on the phone, from 12 hours away, about the “sanitation workers strike recently, where everybody was like, ‘No screw you, we’re not crossing the picket line,’ and it just got to smelling so bad because all the trash was piling up everywhere.”

Go Birds

For those who have imbibed the spirit of Philadelphia from the internet, there can be real-life consequences. Ryan Nanni, who grew up in Florida and cohosts the general interest sports podcast “Phantom Island,” became an Eagles fan in 2018, partly because he went to a Super Bowl party in New York where both the fans and the game itself were “energetic and absurd.”

Then he enjoyed how the fandom online experienced everything “at an 11.”

In time, he found himself transforming from amused observer to actual fan. He even bought a used 1980s black silk Eagles jacket embroidered with the name “Penny” and had a Philadelphian take photos of it at the Linc.

“I never get the sense that I’m buying into this well-oiled, super-polished machine,” he said of his team.

But now Nanni is reckoning with the fact that his daughter, who is 9 and growing up in Nashville surrounded by people who do not say Go Birds, genuinely cares about the Eagles.

“It’s one thing for me as an adult to make this choice,” Nanni, 42, said recently. But he said, “I may have accidentally baptized one of my children into caring about the Eagles an unhealthy amount, as well.”

There’s one more piece of the puzzle that may help explain how Philadelphia seems to dominate the internet: We simply believe that Philadelphia is the most important topic of conversation, so everywhere we look we see evidence.

Or maybe the internet didn’t make Philly bigger — it just made us easier to find.