Shitposting in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction This Paper Will Explore
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Zoë Sackman, 5/14/2015 ! Shitposting in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction! !This paper will explore “shitposting,” a unique form of internet humor that has evolved in the past five years to create a niche expressive outlet for the frustrations of the millennial generation. We will examine how the style and affect of shitposting, as well as the process behind its evolution, combine to create a uniquely relatable and political literary body of work which strives to process and respond to the anxieties of a life intertwined with the vast and overwhelming mechanizations of a failing capitalist society. ! !First, some history. The first occurrence of the word “shitposting” cropped up Something Awful forums in 2007, where it was used to refer to a the act of posting something absolutely inane and meaningless on a thread with the intention of contributing nothing relevant to the conversation, perhaps to the point of derailment (Mercer). A community of shitposters grew on Something Awful, before their migration to Twitter in 2008. These shitposters formed the core of the community which is now known as “Weird Twitter,” the nexus of modern-day shitposting. We’ll be looking at two Twitter accounts and a Tumblr blog which exemplify shitposting, and whose relationship to each other is particularly intriguing and relevant to our questions about what role shitposting plays for its audience.! !The first shitposter, @Horse_ebooks, is a Twitter account that was spawned in August 2010, originally created by Russian programmer Alexey Kouznetsov (Austin). The original account posted exclusively nonsensical phrases accompanied by links to places one could purchase eBooks about horses. The phrases were generated by a " #1 computer program and designed to evade spam detection because of their unpredictability. Examples of the most popular tweets from @Horse_ebooks follow:! #2 !The account gained significant popularity for being a shining example of shitposting, with the compelling addition of being a spambot. The account was later taken over by Buzzfeed contributor Jacob Bakkila, who continued to post in the style of the account, but with a slightly more developed sense of coherency, before terminating the account September of 2013 (Austin). ! !@Horse_ebooks became a pillar of the Weird Twitter community, despite (or perhaps because of) being a robot. The admirable combination of senselessness and poignancy evoked by @Horse_ebooks tweets influenced the direction of other, human, Weird Twitter shitposters, and soon a text styling similar to that of a spambot (inconsistent use of capitalization, poor grammar, and repeated phrases) was incorporated into the dominant style of shitposting (Mercer). Next to @Horse_ebooks, the next most famous Twitter shitposter is @dril.! !@dril relies on narrative much more than @Horse_ebooks, and his tweets often take the form of several sentence small stories rather than simple phrases. The account is built around a character who is self-aware as a Twitter user and often makes reference to his followers, but whose aggressive shitpost ramblings remove him from reality. @dril has been run by a real person from the beginning, and although the identity of the poster is not known, he has conducted anonymous interviews describing the goals of his work as “ironic, satirical” and an attempt to “impress my unseen superiors and grant [@dril] a promotion to a higher plane of existence” (RandomMan). Examples of popular @dril posts follow: ! ! #3 #4 !The final and most recent shitposter we’ll look at is Tumblr’s Shitpost Generator. Shitpost Generator is a blog operated by a Java program, which uses a text generator to create shitposts and uploads them regularly (Shitpost Generator). Shitpost Generator was created not to be a random text generator like @Horse_ebooks, but rather specifically to create text that resembles a shitpost (which, in turn, resembles random text generation because of the nature of shitposting). Some popular Shitpost Generator posts include:! ! ! #5 !Now that we’ve covered a brief primer on shitposting and taken a look at some key examples, we’re going to begin thinking about what it is that makes these posts popular with their audience. Chances are, if you don’t occupy shitposting circles, you may not find the above posts particularly interesting, relatable, or at all funny. This may be because the foundation that gives shitposting traction with the millennial generation is a strong sense of irony. The elements that make shitposting particularly relatable extend beyond irony, but irony is fundamental to understanding the humor of this generation, and therefore fundamental to understanding shitposting.! !Irony as a form of social interaction and humor is most fundamentally centered around acting like one enjoys some subject, while simultaneously understanding that no one can or should enjoy that subject (Burnett). Irony has become a critical part of navigating social interaction with millenials, and a misunderstanding of the irony at play in a situation can render it completely baffling to an outsider. The question is, why has this socializing system gained so much popularity? Why not transparently like what one likes, and dislike what one dislikes? ! #6 !The answer is that millenials as a whole feel very vulnerable, and irony is a form of humor which allows the participant to protect themselves from vulnerability in multiple ways. Irony is an in-joke. To participate, one needs to know what deserves to be a subject of disparagement, and one needs to know how to skillfully project their disparagement masked as genuine interest to the rest of the group. In this way, irony can easily become and expression of superiority for its participants, where those in the know are allowed to be secure in their knowledge of the underlying reality of the situation, regardless of what airs the group is projecting. On another level, irony allows participants to comfort their emotional vulnerability by cocooning their genuine selves in put-upon personas. This is a tool utilized by many social situations, but it is exaggerated with irony such that the awareness of the persona becomes part of the joke. Irony is a way to mix layers of authentic and inauthentic emotions such that millenials still communicate clearly with their peers, but feel comforted and protected while doing so.! !One might wonder why it is that irony has become such a staple in millennial culture—why it is that millenials as a whole feel such a sense of insecurity that they require ironic humor to feel comfortable socially. The truth is, millenials are coming of age in a time of huge financial distress, the crippling but necessary expense of high education, and widespread unemployment (Bors). Student debt has exceeded a trillion dollars, unpaid internships are becoming and insurmountable hurdle to establishing a career, and the discrepancy between the one percent and the rest of the country continues to grow (Bors). Its a terrifying time to be a young adult entering a failing capitalist society, and millenials are seeking consolation anywhere they can. Irony fulfills this role, and, in a more niche sense, so does shitposting.! #7 !Shitposting extends and refines the function of irony. The tone of shitposting is very often angry and emotional, and the most popular posts from @Horse_ebooks, @dril, and Shitpost Generator are often those that present emotional distress. Shitposting allows for an expression of fear and fragility which is masked not only by ironic enjoyment, but also by near incomprehensibility. Posts that appear to be complete nonsense for the sake of nonsense can upon further inspection be tied back to the sources of anxiety and pressure in the lives of their audience.! !@Horse_ebooks’ most popular posts include “Everything happens so much,” “Crying is great exercise,” and “Unfortunately, as you probably already know, people.” The somber tone of these posts merited thousands of retweets, and the appreciation of posts like these exemplify what shitposting is about. The phrases don’t make sense, but somehow they do, and they are allowed to speak to a vast sadness while still being funny. Retweeters are allowed to ironically appreciate these poignant statements, made by a robot, while on another level allowing the expression of existential sadness to resonate with them. It is no accident that the wildly popular @Horse_ebooks is a spambot designed to sell a product. That fact only serves to make the posts more poignant. When it came out that the account had been taken over by Bakilla, @Horse_ebooks mass of followers felt disillusioned and betrayed (Austin). The fact that @Horse_ebooks literally is mechanized capitalism allows nonsense phrases to be tied to the real world, and the vast dread occasionally, accidentally, expressed by this machine is recognized by users who feel this same same mechanized capitalism taking its toll on their real lives, and this same vast dread rising out of it.! #8 !@dril, too, produces content which at first glance appears to be meaningless and disconnected with reality, but by looking at his most popular posts, we can recognize a motif of financial pressures, the workplace, and sincere distress. In posts such as “BOSS TELLS ME I CAN KISS MY FERRETS AT WORK, BUT NO OPEN MOUTH. I PUNCH THE FLOOR SO HARD HIS SCREEN SAVER DEACTIVATES,” and “another day volunteering at the betsy ross museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it” the presence of the workplace grounds the tweet in reality where otherwise it would have none. The absolute incomprehensibility of asking one’s boss if kissing ferrets is allowed is comically ridiculous, but the volatile, floor-punching frustration of being subject to the boss’s iron rule and the almost intangible effect of one’s outburst it are truly relatable and poignant. When @dril tweets “… Candles $3,600, Utility $150, someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this.