You make a comment you know will offend. See their eyes darken as they snatch their coat from the chair, and you watch from the window as they walk sombrely through the rain.
Sound familiar? It’s a moment most of us will go through in our lives—saying something we quickly regret. In A Marriage Story, Adam Driver’s character, Charlie, screams at his soon to be ex-wife that if he could guarantee their son would be ok, he hopes she would get hit by a car and die. The realisation sinks in, and he starts to sob, collapsing to the ground.
Out of this impulse comes an online subculture of people who make inflammatory opinions to purposely provoke a negative reaction. While some merely get off on the backlash, others actually use it as an opportunity to gaslight. Their social media accounts have become soap boxes/stages/podiums/thrones/pulpits/rostrums, you name it. Basquing in cotton candy spotlights, they pour over their cauldron of detestable ideals; often insinuating they are far more enlightened than the general public would like to believe.
These “shitposters” meticulously curate an unlikeable persona as a way to come out the other side as the better person. If someone calls them out on a tweet/post, they will respond with accusatory comments about conjuring false images of them based on how they behave online, as if nothing is ever real on the internet. They relinquish responsibility for what they say, giving them ammo to appear as gurus for the outcasts, when in reality, they are insecure, attention-seeking, and unpleasant individuals.
The danger of treating the internet as a type of virtual reality is that you strip away your ability to understand how your actions affect people. If enough of these kinds of people gather in one place, their propensity to cause real harm rises astronomically. They thrive on the spectacle that having an unsavoury opinion creates. Fooled into thinking they are somehow privy to knowledge the rest of us don’t have, they talk of objectivity in order to keep the plate of their integrity spinning in the air.
The best outcome they can hope for is to go viral. They need engagement, but will publicly deny that out of self-preservation. Being seen to seek validation would be the end of their stoic caricature. An example of a shitposter is someone who had been previously overweight, goes on to lose that weight, and eventually becomes the very person they were victimised by. Among the posts about how drinking lemon water will boost your metabolism, they wax lyrical about how easy losing weight is, and only lazy people make excuses.
The economic, political, psychological, and physical barriers turn into fallacies. How can external circumstances prevent you from getting off your ass? They don’t care about your feelings—because emotions are for the weak. The immense cruelty serves to keep you beneath them; being on the same level is not a risk they are willing to take. Anyone who dares to question them is deemed a performative do-gooder, wanting to appear righteous.
It is important to note that trying to be a good person is frowned upon by this kind of shitposter. Denying harm is a safety blanket. This is only one example of the things you might see in this subculture. Another subset of this community is the Patrick Bateman wannabe section. The mere sight of a human being repulses them if it’s not their own reflection. Posting about all the designer clothes they can afford is their favourite pastime, and just like before, this belief of being enlightened encourages the sharing of provocative opinions.
A possible explanation for this subculture is the push to be unabashedly yourself, even if your true personality is being a terrible person. In their mind, someone not accepting them means they are doing something right. Now, we all dislike people, but if you know why people hate you and do nothing about it, there is a problem. It’s almost become a badge of honour to be despised, because at the end of the day, they believe people dislike them through a false perception, always claiming to be someone other than the person behind the accounts.
Shitposting like this falls under the umbrella of the cool girl/boy/however you identify trope; someone above feelings and things ‘normies’ do. I suspect this is an attempt to avoid being hurt, which I can empathise with, but this is not the way. You don’t get to create your own storm then cry when it rains. We are not reactionary, you are provoking. Would it be such a terrible idea to consider? Maybe your truth isn’t as riveting as you believe. In fact, obvious provocations are incredibly dull. There is a substantial difference between “talking shit” and trying to offend people for fun.
Nobody is perfect, not at all, but the fact is that words do hurt, and you’ll have a far easier time in this life if you follow the butterflies instead of the slugs.