‘That's not what s**tposting is’: BBC schooled online after floundering attempt to explain internet culture

It remains to be seen whether the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg and her definition of ‘s**tposting’ was itself some form of meta s**tposting, but the reception online has been hostile to say the least. Feels bad, man.

The political editor tried to explain the online phenomenon during a discussion on BBC One’s flagship political podcast, Brexitcast, on Thursday evening.  

“Political parties or campaign groups make an advert that looks really rubbish and then people share it online saying, ‘Oh I can’t believe how s**t this is,’ and then it gets shared and shared and shared and shared and they go, ‘Ha ha ha, job done,’” Kuenssberg told her chortling and guffawing colleagues. 

The pithy panel discussed accusations that the Conservative Party is adopting a “s**tpost strategy” of its own, citing laughably but intentionally bad attempts at engaging with younger voters in online spaces, using gaudy color schemes and… *gasp* dodgy fonts like Comic Sans MS. 

The Urban Dictionary defines s**tposting as “the constant posting of mildly amusing but usually unfunny memes, videos or other pictures that are completely random or unrelated to any discussions,” while Wikipedia claims it involves “posting large amounts of content ‘aggressively, ironically, and of trollishly poor quality’ to an online forum or social network, in some cases intended to derail discussions or otherwise make the site unusable to its regular visitors.”

In the era of Trumpian politicking, in which virality and pithy quotes rather than substantive policy rule the headlines, s**tposting has entered the wider international consciousness. However, once again, internet culture has evaded definition by legacy media. 

Needless to say, the comments under both the BBC’s and Kuenssberg’s tweets on the discussion were replete with derisive s**tposts (you’ll know them when you see them).

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