So You Wanna Shitpost: A Creator’s Guide to Weaponized Nonsense
There are two kinds of people on the internet: those who think before they post, and those who post like their frontal lobe is still buffering.
This guide is for the latter.
Shitposting is a legitimate creator strategy in the year of our Glitchlord 2025. It’s posting a picture of a cracked rubber duck at 3 a.m. with the caption "I forgive you, but my sleep paralysis demon does not,” and watching it outperform your carefully planned carousel by 800%.
To be effective, you need to post as if your brain is lagging. Say what your inner saboteur is thinking. Make content that feels like a cry for help but converts like a freebie funnel.
It’s not too late to get off this ride.
Shitposting 101: What Even is it?
Shitposting is the art of deliberately detonating the standard rules of content creation. If traditional social media is a job interview, shitposting is showing up in a bathrobe, screaming about how fonts are a scam, and getting hired anyway. It’s the rotten fruit of the internet’s attention economy: loud, glitchy, weird on purpose, and allergic to polish.
Historically, the term came from early message boards like 4chan and Something Awful, where trolls would derail threads with intentionally pointless or nonsensical posts. But today, in the algorithm-choked feeds we’re stuck with, it’s something more evolved. More devious. More performative. It’s not about being random. It’s about being strategically berserk.
A shitpost is an eye-roll at hustle culture, content calendars, and your $1,200 personal branding course. It’s a vibe, a virus, and sometimes, a manifesto. It looks like a manic meme, a blurry screenshot, a Threads poll that asks, “Should I get bangs or commit a felony?”
If cringe is dead, shitposting is its necromancer. It resurrects bad ideas with the unsettling energy of someone who hasn’t slept since the last algo update.
The best shitposts? They’re calculated nonsense. Weaponized weirdness. Punchlines wrapped in pixels. And they don’t care if you get it. Because it’s not about you, it’s about them. Screaming into the void — and somehow, getting 600k likes for it.
Who’s doing it right?
Or, really wrong, by some standards (clearly not ours).
The psychology of the shitpost
We live in the age of context collapse. You don’t know who’s watching your content: your followers, their grandma, an ex, or a brand recruiter. Every post has an invisible audience that makes you second-guess everything. Is this funny? Too niche? Is the girl I ghosted going to see this and text her group chat?
Shitposting sidesteps this entirely by rejecting coherence.
It's liberating.
Absurdist humor content tends to outperform polished brand messaging, especially among Gen Z and younger millennials. Why? "Perceived authenticity," aka: the mess feels real.
The average viewer doesn’t want your flawless B-roll. They want to feel like they stumbled into your frontal lobe mid-meltdown. They want memes that read like diary entries written during a caffeine overdose. They want the glitch in the matrix. They want to see you snap, but in a relatable way.
And honestly, we’re all just doomscrolling through late-stage capitalism, looking for a hit of serotonin that doesn’t feel like somebody made it in Canva.
Shitposting rewires expectations. When your audience learns that you don’t play by the rules, when your chaos becomes the rule, they follow not for polish, but for surprise. They’re in it for the whiplash. They want to see what you’ll post next because your content feels like opening a deranged fortune cookie.
If branding is about consistency, shitposting is about inconsistency with character development. You’re not building a brand. You’re building lore. That’s psychology, baby.
How to Shitpost Like you Mean it
Don’t care too hard (but secretly, care a lot)
The best shitposts look like they got written during a nervous breakdown at a gas station, but the truth? They’re often crafted with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker who’s also hallucinating. Use Notes app confessions like, “My therapist blocked me, and honestly? Valid.” Post memes that look like they time-traveled from Windows 95. Screenshot your inner monologue and slap a fake product ad over it.
The goal? To feel unhinged without being unfunny. The mess is the point, but it's an intentional mess.
Ugly = beautiful
Overexposed lighting. Janky transitions. Filters that make your skin look like wet pasta. Shitposting rejects beauty standards and content standards. If it’s giving “haunted Sims character,” you’re doing it right. We’re talking fonts that clash, aspect ratios that threaten your screen’s integrity, and jerky movements that induce motion sickness. Refinement is for cowards.
Post at "wrong" times
Schedule your unholy content for when no sane person should be online: 3:47 a.m. Mid-sneeze. During your ex’s wedding. While your boss is presenting Q2 revenue projections. Post while you’re on hold with customer service. Post during a full moon. Mid-meeting. The time stamp is part of the joke.
Invent your own lore
Invent fake events. Weave in recurring references. Your goal is to make followers feel like they missed Season 1 of your personality. Some examples:
Inside jokes? No. Outside hallucinations. Gaslight your followers into thinking they were there.
Weaponize the poll feature
Polls are your playground. Ask questions that cause psychological distress.
Layer sincerity like a jump scare
Nothing hits harder than a sudden pivot from “I am the girl your mother warned you about” to “seriously though, go outside and drink water.” Use shitposting as a Trojan horse for real talk, but keep it weird. Deliver wisdom through a freaky image of Shrek in a tuxedo.
Every post should feel like a dare
Ask yourself: would your childhood self understand this post? No? Perfect. Would a brand manager cry if you posted it? Even better. Make your audience feel beautiful, unnerving mix of dread and devotion.
Platforms That Reward the Unhinged
More than one of them might surprise you. (Enjoy the Jerry Chen starter pack on Bluesky, for one. It’s just him. He’s the whole starter pack. E N J O Y.)
Monetizing the Madness (Without Selling Your Soul)
Irony-poisoned creators are figuring out how to monetize without killing the vibe. Some tips:
Digital zines or PDFs
Sell journals that read like fever dreams. Drop a zine called "How to Cook for Demons (and Other Exes)." Release a PDF guide to identifying cryptids based on aura alone. Make it downloadable. Make it confusing. Make people pay $4.99 and not regret it until page 11.
Merch
No tasteful fonts. No minimalism. You are not a lifestyle brand. You are a batty personality quiz with a Teespring store. Tote bags that say "I ghosted myself and it worked." Crop tops that say "Raccoon incident survivor." Mugs that say "I derail conversations for the plot."
Affiliate links
Promote a skin serum like "this made me legally a lizard" or push a kitchen gadget with "I haven’t known peace since I bought this garlic crusher, and neither will you." It’s all in the caption. Make your regret marketable.
Tipping platforms
Ko-fi, Buy Me A Coffee, or even a standard PayPal.me link. But stay chaotic. Your description should read, "Tip me so I can buy rare Garfield memorabilia off eBay and maybe start a shrine."
Courses or consults
Yes, even you can sell a masterclass. But instead of “How to grow your IG following,” make it “How to gaslight the algo with nonsense and still go viral.”
Drop boxes of lore
Sell access to a Google Drive full of nonsense. A folder labeled “Emotional Support JPEGs.” Or “Rejected Tweets and Cryptic Screengrabs.” Make scarcity your personality.
These strategies are about turning your unmedicated delusions into passive income. Monetize like you’re kidding. But never kid about getting paid.
A Word of Caution: Cringe is Always Lurking
The edge of genius and humiliation is razor-thin. Shitposting is a high-wire act performed drunk, blindfolded, and livestreamed. And the fall? It's called cringe — and it echoes forever.
Here’s how to avoid turning into That Guy (in five easy steps!):
- Don’t over-brand your content. Logos kill punchlines.
- Don’t explain the joke. If it needs a thread, it’s not that funny.
- Don’t copy formats without committing war crimes of creativity. Borrow the bones, not the blood. Remix it or risk becoming aesthetic plagiarism.
- Don’t trauma-bait. There’s a difference between absurdism and emotional manipulation. And no, “lol jk unless?” doesn’t count as a disclaimer.
- Don’t post during breaking news unless you are the news. Nobody wants to see your “me vibing” meme sandwiched between disaster headlines.
Stay weird. But stay aware.
The Ethics of Sh*tposting
The dark side of posting like you’ve been hit with a brick full of memes? Sometimes that brick lands on someone else’s head.
Shitposting has been co-opted for evil more than once. Troll farms use meme formats to spread misinformation. We’ve watched ironic jokes metastasize into conspiracy theories. Your goofy poll asking “would you rather fistfight a pack of wolves or marry your ex’s ex?” could end up on a Telegram channel used to recruit disaffected teens into some fringe ideology with a mascot made of ASCII art.
So, a few commandments for not being the worst:
- Punch up. If you’re not mocking power, you’re just bullying. CEOs? Fair game. Your barista? No.
- Don’t fake disorders, tragedies, or trauma for laughs.
- Don’t sanitize hate with humor. “It’s just a meme” is not a moral pass.
- Know your audience, but also know who shouldn’t be laughing. If your joke plays well in bigot circles, you didn’t write a banger. You opened a portal.
TLDR: Shitpost with a soul.
You are not Immune to Shitpost Lore
Every lawless creator eventually becomes a prophet of their own invented past.
What starts as a throwaway gag becomes canon. You make one post about being banned from Red Lobster for summoning a cryptid, and suddenly, your followers are referencing it like scripture.
That’s shitpost lore. And it’s gold.
Build it. Expand it. Cultivate a digital ecosystem where the in-jokes are so deep that new followers need a wiki. Refer back to fake events with cult-like confidence:
You aren’t a content creator. You’re a lore master. Now act like it.
Final tips for chaos goblins
- Title your Notes folder “POST IF POSSESSED.”
- Use your typos as captions. They’re funnier than anything you write on purpose.
- Respond to your own posts like a second personality.
- Block brands who DM you “hey bestie” unless they offer $10k and no notes.
- Marry a bot. Divorce it for content.
- Post mid-anxiety spiral and then vanish like a prophecy.
- If your own post makes you think “I should be monitored,” hit publish.
- Measure success by how many people comment, “Please seek help.”
Consider Your Posting License Activated
Congratulations, Soldier of the Scroll. Your posting license has been officially activated, laminated with glitter glue, and blessed by the Council of Chronically Online Goblins. You are now authorized to sow anarchy across the digital wasteland with reckless abandon and zero context.
You may feel the temptation to become a “serious” content creator again. To color-correct your grid. To use the word “optimize” in a sentence. Banish those thoughts. They are lies told by Canva demons.
Because let’s be honest, today, the only sustainable content strategy is psychological warfare — except make it ✨art✨.
So go forth:
- Channel the rat god.
- Offer sacrifices to the algorithm via unwell image slideshows.
- Reignite the duck incident every full moon.
- Treat your Notes app like scripture and your Instagram stories like battlefields.
- Build that weird little nest from tinfoil thoughts and let strangers crawl inside.
You’re ready.
