Understanding ‘Shitposting’: the Internet’s Most Disruptive Art Form

Welcome to the 212th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we look at the depths of 4chan and the so-called ‘cancerous’ Internet culture to discover the history of Shitposting and its impact on social and political fields.

Shitposting is a term that today is (somehow) recognized by esteemed dictionaries like Oxford and Merriam-Webster but was once nothing more than an adjective used on obscure chatrooms and forums. Defined as the act of “posting deliberately provocative or off-topic comments on social media”, its uses come in many forms of low-resolution media, yet continue to dominate much of contemporary meme culture.

The origin of this mysterious medium can be traced back to 2007, first posted by a user known as ‘OhSNAP!Tray’ on Something Awful forums. Speaking to unproductive threads on the site, Tray would take a shot at the “same worthless shitposting and unfunny in-jokes” scattered all over the Internet, becoming the first documented profile to coin the term.

Over time, Shitposting would drastically evolve from exclusively text-based content to media of all forms, ultimately becoming a meme genre of its own. Lacking substance of any kind, the memes became progressively less contextual and yet somehow funnier. Best shown through the distorted ‘Lord Marquaad E’ trend, the avant-garde approach to humour would begin attracting attention from outlets like The Washington Post, who would publish an article in mid-2017 titled ‘Why is Millennial Humor so Weird?’.

The phenomenon is best described by The Daily Dot, which stated Shitposting is “a deliberate provocation designed for maximum impact with minimum effort”, using context-less media to reach so far into the absurd and confusing that the audience simply laughs. While popularized by the digital sphere, the premise is rooted in Dadaism, which dates back to the early 20th century in Europe. Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement prompted artists to create with rejection to logic and reason, expressing nonsense and irrationality in their works.