Good shitposts come out of provocation, and there's always a little bit of insight communicated in effective provocation. Unless you're dril, it's hard for a poster to access that insight without betraying some trace of sincerity. The normal failure-states for shitposters are an excess of sincerity (EG gimmick accounts dropping the bit to repeat a slogan) or self-betrayal, which amounts to a loss of insight.
Yesterday I was hanging out with some new friends and we briefly slipped into the sub-topic of how insane the 07-10 period was. There's a demographic band of people who had to search for employment during that period who have a bone-deep sense of how bad things can really get. I just cannot stress this enough. For years, everything I applied for had 300-to-1 odds. I am very happy that kids these days have no idea, but they very profoundly have no idea.
Nightmare scenario for speculative fiction: the entire electrical grid goes down in the US for over a year due to an overlap between two mid-level climate catastrophes and political disaster. Inequalities drive a breakdown in the monopoly of violence. One organized faction of end-gamers starts a tactical nuclear exchange. This unlocks a new level of runaway climate processes, driving global conditions out of the zone for surface habitation.The light of consciousness goes out in the universe.
Today by chance I happened on a copy of Niklas Luhman's "Essays on Self-Reference" so we're probably going to get some more content along these lines.
Humanist interested in the consequences of the machine on intellectual history.