Assignment 16 - Tahsen Hossain - Finals Speech

Speech

Raise your hands and keep them up if you recognise any of the following statements: “Ight imma head out.” “Send in the Naruto Runners and see dem aliens.” “The all-powerful Shaggy” “Pepe” “Stonks!”

All of you know what I’m talking about. Not only did your minds immediately recognise the statements but to accompany them many of you also conjured an image into your mind. And that image is likely the same as your fellow classmates’. For those that do not know, take a moment to look at the images littering the screen. The image you’re thinking of or looking at is a shitpost.

Shitposting has overtaken our social space, revealing itself to be a ubiquitous form of expression throughout the millennial and Gen Z populations. Shitposting has various meanings based on who you ask but for this case, we will be using reporter and design-expert Gustavo Turner’s working definition. “And what is a shitpost if not a pointless, carnivalesque attack against meaning itself? Like every aesthetic that draws from the absurd, shitposting is ultimately a cry of despair against impending disaster.” That is a complex definition but according to Jared Bauer’s analysis, it can be broken down into 4 intrinsic characteristics of shitpost culture.

The first is inaction. It is understood among the regular viewership and the author that motivation behind the post is not a true call to action but rather to highlight specific feelings. It is an understanding that the images are not defined by their message but rather the feelings of despair, failure, and hopeless paralysis that they portray.

The second is “trolling”, meaning that they exist as a counter-culture to the regular social media standards, to “normies” if you will. While the existing standard of social media is to share powerful or semi-boasting updates of your life in a positive connotation like pictures of your family on vacation or your recent achievements in sports; shitposting, in contrast, is meant to reveal the things we hold in a negative connotation, most popularly mental illnesses like depression, as a sardonic response. 

Thirdly, pessimism is also a common characteristic. Many shitposts are inspired by or are a direct response to post- Cold War optimism and the false promises of a better world, recognising these as common overarching causes for feelings of despair and hopeless paralysis in the face of an uncertain future.

And finally, shitposting is inherently paradoxical. It is both a cry for help and a “resignation to hopelessness.'' A rejection of optimism but a wish for happiness. This inherent quality of paradox catalyses absurdist design structures in pieces aimed at making sense of the world, revealing grief and trauma in its wake but also inciting laughter and camaraderie.

All of these characteristics combined with the massive scale of the shitposting cultures’ influence make for an unusually nuanced mechanism. And this mechanism of shitposting consequently has a multitude of diverse and similarly nuanced effects in our society.

Consider mental illness. Shitposting has become the custodian of mental illness awareness spawning its own sub-genre of shitposting called “depression memes”. In the Teenage Brain, Frances Jensen postulates that as society becomes more aware of mental illness, the interactions and reactions concerning it diversify. And the data supports this hypothesis. 

Spring 2019 saw the Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research publish “A Content and Thematic Analysis of Tumblr Posts Related to Non-Suicidal Self-Injury” or NSSI incidents. It found that “Results from the present study suggest that users searching for NSSI related posts on Tumblr risk being met with negative and triggering posts possibly designed to generate additional self-harm episodes”. And it went on to explain the difficulty they had in determining whether or not the posts were harmful based on context. Context is often essential to an understanding of shitposts and when exposed to persons without context, posts that are meant to be cathartic can seem insensitive, provoke outrage, or worse present an incentive for harmful behaviour in exchange for attention or perceived respect.

However, in the same study, it was found that large networks and support systems have been created around the exchange and viewership of these posts. Through the dissemination of shitposts, people’s cries for help have been answered and those participating feel as though they are part of a community. And though this simple and absurd acknowledgement of despair and hopelessness they have sent the message that the “fucking burden of being alive” need not be lifted alone, making shitposting a mass coping mechanism on the global scale.

So what is there for us to do? We seem to have created a mechanism that perpetuates the issues that it addresses but allows us to find comfort and laughter in those them. How do we deal with that?

I don’t actually know. I would be lying if I said there is an easy and clear solution, in fact, I’m not it can be so clearly defined as a problem. But, I have identified a few paths towards the answers.

The first is changing public education standards, either by introducing digital literacy and social skills into schools between the ages of 10 and 14 or somehow training parents to effectively teach appropriate online behaviours to their children. However, both of these are only band-aids.

The most effective path is with us. The internet is still very new and based entirely on the precedents we and the generation before us created. Every single one of you whether it be on the internet or in the real world are consciously or unconsciously accepting or denying these precedents with your actions. Therefore YOU MATTER. It seems odd that something so subtle and byzantine as shitposting can change how we see the world but now that you know I hope that you continue to enjoy them if you did before but understand that how you interact with them is relevant and very real.

To reference the Great Gatsby, it is no secret that we have been living in the “foul dust” of other people's dreams but what we do in the arenose climate will eventually define us, even something as small as posting a meme. 

Works Cited

Jensen, Frances E., and Amy Ellis Nutt. The Teenage Brain: a Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults. Harper Collins Publishers, 2016, pp. 170 - 204.

Eliseo-Arras, Rebecca K., et al. “A Content and Thematic Analysis of Tumblr Posts Related to Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.” Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research, vol. 13, no. 3, 2019, pp. 198 - 211, https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.kyvl.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cpid,url&custid=s1176192&db=a9h&AN=138783814. 

Bauer, Jared. “Storm Area 51 and the Rise of Depression Memes – Wisecrack Vlog.” Edited by Andrew Nishimura and Drew Levin, YouTube, Wisecrack, 10 Aug. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SBuh8oNxv0. 

“r/depression_memes - Just Facts.” Reddit, 2019, www.reddit.com/r/depression_memes/comments/dbadpt/just_facts/

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Oxford University Press, 2013.