nethead

plural netheads · alternative Nethead

1. slangAn obsessive Internet user.

   This is, after all, a gathering of a typical fraternity of netheads, those Internet-obsessed students who every night fill the large computer labs sprinkled throughout campus.

   1998, Kimberly S. Young, Caught in the net, page 175

2. slangA supporter of the Internet and its flexibility and technical underpinnings, contrasted with Bellhead (a supporter of traditional centralized telecommunications networks).

plural Netheads

1. Alternative letter-case form of nethead.

   To see why Al “My Way Is the Highway” Gore and 50,000 other Netheads from across the country have dialed into Monta Vista this year, point your web-browser to http:

   1994 September 20, David Plotnikoff, “The fall invasion of neophytes plagues Usenet veterans”, in St. Petersburg Times, volume 111, number 58, page 4D

   2 more examples

   “So we’re going to an Internet café …” said Rosina, as the two nurses stood in the queue for the 105 bus. “That’s right. We go and use the computers, and we can eat and drink while you’re doing it. And meet other Netheads, too, if we want to.” “Netheads?” “Freaks. People like us.”

   2000, Christopher West, The Third Messiah, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Minotaur, →ISBN, pages 84–85

   In the early 1990s, Netheads liked to speculate that the reason the media only ran sensationalist scare stories about the online world was that newspaper and magazine editors, publishers, and writers knew their livelihoods were under threat.

   2001, Wendy M. Grossman, “The Internet Gets the Bomb”, in From Anarchy to Power: The Net Comes of Age, New York, N.Y.; London: New York University Press, →ISBN, page 13