1ii26
John sez, in response to a reddit post: "Need new words for this level of cultural poisoning"
There's an IMAGE that exemplifies the Present Moment, though its instantiation was ca. 1500:
(see also Philip McCouat on the image
and Jeffrey Hamburger from JSTOR (pdf, 1984))
My first thought was of the lexical domain surrounding Misdirection (which is exemplified in the Bosch image, and see also Gustav Kuhn and Luis M Martinez (2012) on Misdirection (pdf)).
The current term of art seems to be "shitposting", which is way beyond literal feculence, well into metaphorical terrain.
Shitposting WikipediaClearly, we need to collect and explicate other terms as they are encountered in The Discourse. The common noun 'cringe' is somehow related....a contemporary form of online provocation. The term itself appeared around the mid-2000s on image boards such as 4chan. Writing for Polygon, Sam Greszes compared shitposting to Dadaism's "confusing, context-free pieces that, specifically because they were so absurd, were seen as revolutionary works both artistically and politically". Greszes writes that the goal of shitposting is "to make an audience so confused at the lack of content that they laugh or smile"...The Financial Times defined shitposting as "posting ostentatiously inane and contextless content to an online forum or social network with the effect of derailing discussion".
..."a deliberate provocation designed for maximum impact with minimum effort"
(the 'See also' lists several kindred terms, including 'AI slop". 'Algospeak', 'Brain rot'. 'Ragebait')
Renee Shaw offers this typology at Medium:
Memes vs Trolling Vs Shitposting
Easy to get mixed up. Memes have templates and are meant to spread. Shitposts have neither and are more about derailing conversations.Trolling is more about intentionally provoking a reaction from people shitposting doesn't always have malice behind it.
...and she provides a lovely diagram:
Bad Prose Paul Ford
...Even relatively respected people will spray this warm egesta from their posting cloacae.
New Words dictionaryblog.cambridge.org
clip farming, nuisance streamer, dark social
To Be Continued...
