So why are people calling Infinite edgy?

[Salamander]

My understanding of "edgy" is to suggest "on the edge of what's socially acceptable."  For that reason, what "edgy" constitutes is always shifting and getting more extreme.  I think it would have been easy at one time to call Sonic himself edgy.  Mickey Mouse with spikes, sneers and wags his finger at you out of the screen/box, designed to be better than Mario and to brag about it (or at least have people do that on his behalf)?  I'd be surprised if nobody had ever made the suggestion.  By the time Sonic Adventure 2 rolls around, though, vanilla Sonic has become safe and mainstream, so to push the boundaries again, you have to go further.  So this time you have a black Sonic with red stripes, chest fur, uses guns, claims to be better than Sonic, has a tragic backstory, and most importantly is a villain?  Very edgy.  But again, time moves on and this becomes normalised.  So to get a villain who pushes boundaries again and looks cool and intense, you throw on more and more stuff: Weird visual glitches, straggling hair, glows, flies, has a gem on his chest, has his own logo, wears a mask, the mask has a scarred eye on it, the regular eye has an unusual colour, easily defeats the hero...

Yes, for me I would say that "egy" is really characterised by a family resemblance category of particular design tropes, and increasingly by the sheer number of them you can pack in.  I've cited a lot above that I think are easily recognisable among other villains, antiheroes, and characters designed to appear cool to young children, but the aspect I haven't played up enough is that idea of "coolness."  Being edgy is all about being cool in an excessive way that just looks absurd and try-hard to people outside of the regular audience (and possibly inside as well).  In that sense, it's similar to "gritty," which I think instead conveys excessive and immature ideas of "realism" but probably often ends up looking very similar to edginess.  If you boil it all down to its very basics, I'd say that the rule is "being darker than the other guy is cool."

[rosedust]

I mean he is edgy, like in my opinion. He's a different approach from what we've been seeing for the last couple of games. He's a edgy idea, I don't think he's a neccessarily edgy character when it comes to personality like Shadow, but I doubt he will be. Plus people find edgy/emo jokes just hilarious ever since the beginning of the internet, so I'm not surprised everytime I see him talked about "edgy" is thrown in there.

#StopEmoOppression

[Cornelius Fudge]

Honestly, I didn't want to tamper with the meaning of "edgy" in the off-chance that I did get it wrong, so I actually decided to search urban dictionary and this is what it says:

"Taking coolness to its extreme and generally beyond the realm of actual possibility, while at the same time seemingly unaware of how ridiculous it is."

Based off of that, I can't honestly say that Sega is trying to make Infinite "edgy". In all honesty, it's not solely the fact that Infinite is a pronounced badass that keeps us viewers interested, but it seems to be the fact that Infinite has an aura of mystery that makes him very cool and unique. People are constantly trying to piece things together and are making many theories on who Infinite is and what his motives are which stirs interest in his character. We have no idea who he is yet Infinite seems to have a lot to say and many people have caught on to that solely based on his theme song which, if scrutinized, reveals some interesting tidbits that can depict him as a corrupted hero or someone who is emotionally scarred. What's even more interesting is his constant gestures towards his mask, which seems cool, actually seems to place more importance on his scar which places even more emphasis and interest on it since we know nothing about it and would like to know how he got his scar.

At this point, he's not edgy, but if they try to depict him as a badass with no logical or sympathetic motives/understanding of the world around him, then we'd be very disappointed because that's the only thing keeping us interested in the first place. Sega did a great job depicting Infinite as a mysterious character, but one false move can easily dissuade us from wanting to know who he actually is.