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On 24 September, a White House communications adviser posted a video on X of a new presidential Walk of Fame, captioned: “Wait for it”, with a pen and eyes emoji. The video pans over a succession of presidential portraits to reveal – in place of Joe Biden’s portrait – a framed photograph of an autopen signing his name. The sight-gag references the Maga conspiracy theory that, unbeknownst to “Sleepy Joe”, unscrupulous aides used the autopen to sign pardons in his name. The post delighted supporters and outraged critics, which only further delighted supporters.
And that was precisely the point. This combination of cheap humour and rage bait is the province of the shitpost, a genre of low-effort social media content designed to amuse insiders and annoy outsiders. Like so much of internet culture, shitposting was pioneered on the message board 4chan – but Donald Trump is a natural. On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, he tweeted: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” The shitpost forces a choice: undermine public decorum by laughing along, or get offended, outing yourself as a hater and a loser.
The deliberate impropriety of the shitpost makes good-faith engagement impossible. Like a children’s game of made you look, responding means either sinking to the level of the shitpost or looking ridiculous by responding earnestly to a low-effort provocation, which only proves the shitpost has had its intended effect.
Refusing to abide by discursive norms can signal a refusal to abide by political norms. After Trump dubbed him “Low Energy” Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican primaries, the more professorial younger brother of George W Bush made the mistake of arguing that he was, in fact, dynamic and busy, as if Trump were making a political claim that could be contested. But this was nicknaming as shitposting. Instead of clever metaphors, Trump’s nicknames are low-effort direct literalisms. From “Little Marco” Rubio to “No Talent” Jimmy Kimmel, their purpose is not to make a substantive claim or offer an accurate description of reality, but to titillate allies and bait enemies.
Unencumbered by the establishment strategists who urged decorum during his first administration, Trump has elevated shitposting to a national strategy in his second term. Two days before the Walk of Fame announcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a video of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents hauling civilians into unmarked vans, cut to the opening credits of the Pokémon television series. As the theme song’s refrain has it: “Gotta Catch ’Em All”.
On 4chan, home to the small but significant crossover of anime fans and the extreme right, posters debated whether the video was “based” (internet slang meaning authentically cool and irreverent) or “cringe” (shamefully straining for the approval the “based” attain with ease). But the real target audience was liberals outraged not only by state violence but by its shameless public celebration. If the right dominates meme culture, it is less because the “left can’t meme” than because it is far easier to “own the libs” who remain committed to rational political discourse. Where liberals seek earnest debate, the shitpost offers a polemic without a point, an opportunity to indulge in cruelty.
At best, shitposts function as satire. The hopecore genre on TikTok combines motivational speeches with slideshows of mountain lakes and island sunsets over a soundtrack of atmospheric strings and lo-fi guitar scales. Hopeless core shitposts adopt the same format but with comedically clumsy speeches that render the inspirational slideshow absurd, mocking the vacuousness of online inspo culture. A day after the Pokémon shitpost, the DHS turned hopeless core satire into a schoolyard taunt, posting a clip of podcast bro Theo Von saying, in his trademark laconic style, “Heard you got deported dude – bye” followed by Ice arrest videos cut to a soundtrack of reverb-soaked introspective guitar scales. The DHS deleted the post over Von’s objections, but just as “Low Energy” Jeb’s protests guaranteed his nickname would stick, Von’s complaint only attracted more attention to the video.
In recent days, the vice president, JD Vance, has called one prominent liberal pundit a “dipshit” and told critics to “go straight to hell”. Vance is too much of a try-hard to succeed as a shitposter, but his comments revel in the chaos shitposting creates. This chaos can have dire consequences. The 2019 Christchurch mosque shooter described his attack as moving from shitposting to effort posting, by which he meant from trolling to taking meaningful action. But political violence itself has begun taking the form of the shitpost. Charlie Kirk’s assassin inscribed a furry meme to bait newscasters into reading it aloud, and friends of the Dallas ICE facility shooter described him as an “edgelord” and speculated that he signed a bullet “anti-Ice” as an irony-poisoned provocation. Liberal encomiums to civil discourse can feel pious, but as shitposting stretches public decorum to breaking point, what remains is an incoherent politics of cruelty that licenses outrage for its own sake.
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Robert Topinka is a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at Birkbeck, University of London
