SHITPOSTING
Shitposting can be described in a very precise and intuitive way, as the act of posting content with little to no value. The origins of the term, as many relevant terms in internet culture usually are, are uncertain. Before the 2010s the term was often used to describe a specific sort of misbehaviour in online forums, in which the users would spam posts and comments unrelated to the forum’s purpose. The images and texts that were posted, or shitposted could be either trolling or intentional derailing of the topic, by bringing up massive amounts of information relating to more inflammatory and polemical topics, kidnapping the user’s attention from the original discussion. Nevertheless, the current meaning of the term “shitposting” is barely related to its original meaning. Considering that in the early internet age shitposting meant to post content in order to undermine a serious topic, a very important change has taken place in internet culture due to the concentration of a huge amount of users in the platforms owned by American monopolies such as Facebook (which englobes instagram and whatsapp) and Twitter. In such platforms now there are countless profiles, pages and accounts fully dedicated to shitposting. The act of shitpostig evolved, beginning as a tactical maneuver to conquer attention, into the nihilistic practice of actively publishing content, especially images, that compensate in quantity what they lack in meaning. Bellow, there are several examples of what is commonly and currently (2021) understood as shitposting.
Image 1: The profile picture of the subreddit r/shitposting, which is also a typical shitpost.
Image 2: a shitpost featuring pop culture characters, the text in Arabic, was probably google translated by people who don't speak Arabic in order increase the reading difficulty.
image 3- An edition or remixing to a still frame taken from the animated series The Simpsons. Published with no caption or justification on a shitposting group on Facebook
Shitposting can be described in a very precise and intuitive way, as the act of posting content with little to no value. The origins of the term, as many relevant terms in internet culture usually are, are uncertain. Before the 2010s the term was often used to describe a specific sort of misbehaviour in online forums, in which the users would spam posts and comments unrelated to the forum’s purpose. The images and texts that were posted, or shitposted could be either trolling or intentional derailing of the topic, by bringing up massive amounts of information relating to more inflammatory and polemical topics, kidnapping the user’s attention from the original discussion. Nevertheless, the current meaning of the term “shitposting” is barely related to its original meaning. Considering that in the early internet age shitposting meant to post content in order to undermine a serious topic, a very important change has taken place in internet culture due to the concentration of a huge amount of users in the platforms owned by American monopolies such as Facebook (which englobes instagram and whatsapp) and Twitter. In such platforms now there are countless profiles, pages and accounts fully dedicated to shitposting. The act of shitpostig evolved, beginning as a tactical maneuver to conquer attention, into the nihilistic practice of actively publishing content, especially images, that compensate in quantity what they lack in meaning. Bellow, there are several examples of what is commonly and currently (2021) understood as shitposting.