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Comment by Barrera | Hacker News Reader

I opened the article hoping to see some examples of actual shitposting and explanations of what makes them shitposts, and not just trolling.

Nope.

Scroll to the bottom and hopes surge because there's an image. People staring at their phones while standing next to each other. One of them has a strange grin. But it's actually an ad to "McKinsey's unique insights" as an app. Maybe?

Nope. It occurs in the footer. McKinsey is sponsor of the post.

Have I just been shitposted? I am more confused now than I was before clicking the link.

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I'd say the difference between a shitpost and trolling is malice. Trolling is done to get a rise out of someone while shitposting is meant to be treated as just detached absurdist humor.

With many people on social media being increasingly touchy about the slightest perceived offenses, calling something a shitpost acts kind of like how /s indicates sarcasm. IRL it's easy to tell when someone you know is joking when they say something that might be wrong or offensive, but the same mechanism doesn't necessarily exist online, thus the rise of "shitposting" as a term.

E.g. if I were to say something in favor of flat Earth theory, people who know me would instantly know I'm being absurd for the sake of humor but someone seeing the same posted online might assume I'm a flat Earther.

I'm sorry this happened to you, here's something that might make things better:

https://i.imgur.com/M4VSkga.jpg

What if I told you I lost a million dollars playing high stakes underground billiards? Well that's not true. It’s significantly more than a million…

There are good ships, and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, and may they always be.

And that is my ship toast for the day.

This might be the first Hackernews thread in history where you can get away with shitposting. (As examples only, of course.)

Possibly, yes. I have noticed a de-grumpifying effect over the past year or so. Early Hacker News had a strong pedantic voice that bordered on parody, almost painfully so when discussing inoffensive topics.

Maybe it’s been Dang’s gradual moderation work or a natural shift in the community, but people here seem to have relaxed…a bit.

I think they did a change to the guidelines a few years back that might've contributed to it.

Trombones are actually just trombs that have bone.

> a deliberately provocative or off-topic comment posted on social media, typically in order to upset others or distract from the main conversation.

Note that words like provocative and upset may lead you to automatically assume every shitpost is highly offensive in political or cultural sense, but that’s not the case. A lot of more recent “shitposts” achieve the same effect by just upping the absurdism.

I've noticed that many shitposts take the focus of the trolling from external to internal. That's what makes them so good. Self-deprecation is always better than attacks on another person.

And I find absurdist shitposts that don't offend people or deprecate the bearer much healthier. No one gets mad, and no one trades their self esteem for laughs.

The best thing about grandfather clocks is that they will always tell you the time. You may not like it, but it is a fact you must accept. Nobody appreciates father time, but he knows best.

Like the best shitposts, I’ve spent time reading it and gotten absolutely nothing in return; if nothing else, it shows that the author knows the subject matter

Meta, no? Like watching that gif with that truck thats about to hit the bollard and then 5 minutes has passed whilst you waited for a payoff that never comes.

> some examples of actual shitposting

Just go to @dril on Twitter. The king of shitposts.

@dril leads you down a rabbit hole into Weird Twitter[0] where you see nothing but low-effort posts not designed to especially go viral or to make lots of friends, but posted anyway despite the low quality.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/weird-twitter

this is such a meta shit post its amazing

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