The Meme Textbook Part 2: The Language of the Internet | Page 38

Ironic Memes
As mentioned, memes are constantly evolving
and abstracting, especially as the comedic styl-
ings of the internet develop. “Shitposting” is
a term coined in 2007 that has come to mean
when people create content on the internet
that is random or nonsensical in nature, often
with the goal of derailing an already exist-
ing conversation. “Shitposting” is part of the
larger culture of ironic or meta humor that
meme culture has embraced. Aspects of “shit-
posting” include abstract theoretical events,
nonsensical imagery, spam posting, etc.
One of the clearest visual examples of this
is “Deep Fried Memes.” Originally appear-
ing in 2015, this meme is comprised of other
memes fun through a number of filters so
that the image becomes distorted, pixelated,
and appears as if it were ‘deep fried’ because
the colors often get darker. (Fig. 110-111)
These memes often derive their humor from
the choice of the meme ‘deep fried’ as well
as seeing how distorted the image can get.
Twitter became a popular social media for shit-
posting and otherwise abstract content because
of the digestability of the short tweet length.
Notable Twitter accounts include Horse_ebooks,
Dril, and Pakalu Papito. Horse_ebooks was
popular from 2011-2013 and would post seem-
ingly random sentence from equine books.
Dril was a twitter persona created in 2008 who
was known for tweets that were nonsensical,
as if he exisited in a parallel universe where his
problems were not unusual. Often, his tweets
would be formatted in two sentences, one to set
up the premise and the second to resolve the
joke but always in an abstract or unexpected
way. (Fig. 114) Pakalu Papito was a fictional
Indian convenience store clerk who was popuar
through 2013 and who made seemingly ran-
dom posts, often involving puns. Often, his
tweets would be set up in the format of a known
meme but would involve a bait-and-switch
punchline where the resolution is unexpected.
fig. 110
fig. LL