> Shitposting is posting that is completely detached from one’s real thoughts and beliefs, in the interest of being amusing. There's something missing here: th

> Shitposting is posting that is completely detached from one’s real thoughts and beliefs, in the interest of being amusing. There's something missing here: the people on the receiving end of the shitpost have to not really know if you're being serious or not. For example, recently one of my friends remarked that more and more people they know are getting covid. I replied that by believing in the virus for 2 years, we finally manifested it in reality. I don't believe that covid just appeared. That was something completly detached from my thoughts and beliefs, in the interest of being amusing. But that was just a joke. Why was this a joke and not shitposting ? Because it was made between two people that know each other's beliefs around covid, and can obviously identify this as a joke. Now if I post the same thing without context as a top comment on an article about new covid cases on HN, that would be shitposting. Most people here don't know my beliefs on covid, and may take the joke seriously. Unless that's what shitposting is, just a joke. It's hard to find a difference between one person that jokes all the time and one that shitposts all the time. Maybe the difference is that when you're face to face you can often see signs that a person is joking, unless the person actively hides them. With text, it's the opposite: unless you add explicit signs that you're joking, it's hard to know if you're serious.