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I figured the command to shitpost was literal.
Considering the number of poop-related stories, I thought it may be ordered / required.
I’ll echo others in that I think there’s a good balance. I’m not a writer or anything, but I do understand how it’s a tight rope to walk. If everything is a deep dive, there might be 2-3 posts a day just due to the time they take. If everything is a shitpost, it detracts from the quality.
You don’t have to worry quite as much about members I feel, since we’re clearly dedicated. But when you’re trying to also attract new readers through MSN or whatever other aggregator you use, you have to tailor it towards that audience. Basically I’m saying I don’t envy you, but I think y’all are doing pretty damn good in this regard.
I read this whole post and I have to ask, what the shit
Here and I always thought shitposts were about bidets. Least that what happens in the memes channel on discord 🙂
Did someone mention bidets? We should talk about how great they are. But not in the memes channel. Nick doesn’t like that.
Name/topic do not correspond!
I think there is a good balance now. A proportionally higher number of simple posts to keep things fresh and give sufficient breathing room for the fewer in-depth articles.
I think you have a great balance as is. I really like the long educational articles and they’re the main reason it’s worth being a member, but most of my visits hare are for “Is there something funny or interesting I can distract myself with for 5 minutes”, and I save the long form ones for things like Lunch, commute, etc. I wouldn’t mind more shitposts, but I think it’ll be a bad look for any new visitors to your site if significantly less than half of your articles are relevant / serious.
The Salami data storage shirt is probably my most prized possession.
Keep it up!
Autopian Creative Director:
“We have what appears to be a dynamite site. but I think we could use a little more shitpost.
“Really explore the white space this time.
“There’re not a whole lot of car sites that feature shitposts and we’d be doing ourselves a disservice and every member of the Autopian if we didn’t write the hell out of this!”
“Always leave them wanting more” is an old Vaudeville rule, and there’s something of that in a ‘shitpost’ (a-la-Autopian). if the E/E ratio is weighted too far to one side it gives the commentariat a chance to provide some of our shtick (‘shtickpost’) to round it out.
Staying with Vaudeville, it’s like the interstitial acts that filled in during costume and scenery changes, the Fozzys between the Gonzos, where material was trotted out to see if it played at all.
“We have standards. Super high standards.
…we require posts meet “the double-E rule.” Entertaining or Edifying (ideally both).”
Perhaps the triple-E rule would be good?
Because nowhere in there do I see edited.
Yet almost every day – outside of Mercedes’ writing (women always do a better job somehow) – I find factual or grammatical mistakes which would have been cured by a simple Google search and editing.
Which distracts from the message, subtracts from the authoritative voice, and takes the fun away.
Two Nights in Bangkok?
Really?!?
It’s not a big deal to the rest of us!
That was a joke! The very next line is “Wait that was just one night, and I’m being silly.”
It’s nice to see a hard man like you be humble
I like to think of their grammatical and editorial errors as anti-Ai both in seeing them lets us know that humans are making these articles and poison-pilling the Ai readings
And there are certainly more important things to worry about in the world!
There is so much AI slop these days that I get a small ping of relief each time I see a spelling or grammatical error here, because I know it was made by the human writers I enjoy and not some AI bot like the ones that have replaced the writers of so many other sites I frequent.
Same! I also have begun to specifically enjoy “QWERTY” style typos because then I know it was actually typed!
Even if that were a real mistake, I wouldn’t have caught the reference!
And for the record, I gave the whole team grammar books (my go-to: Strunk & White), and while I always want us to improve, I think we’re decent there and in the area of fact checking, though in the area of typos…
Let’s just say: Lots of us have the universal blood type!
Oh man, I’ve got feelings about Strunk & White. A lot of grammatical “rules” are contrivances entirely of their provenance – and before we get all philosophical and argue “yeah well everything is made up at some point,” old S&W were fanning the grammar hammer fast and loose and actually broke several conventions for things that they believed on a personal level “sounded good.”
(This is not me coming at DT or saying there should be no rules at all or any such thing, just that in an arbitrary world full of arbitrary rules, some are much more arbitrary than others, and it grated when some are elevated as authoritative.)
The engineer is giving writing advice??!! Admittedly UVA does a better job than most with respect to making sure their engineers have a well rounded education… but engineering school barely teaches writing more than a lab report! UVA engineering does require a senior thesis and the feedback generally is very good with respect to the actual writing.
One town’s very like another
When your head’s down over your pieces, brother
It’s a drag, it’s a bore, it’s really such a pity
To be looking at the board, not looking at the city
Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town
So your definition of “shitpost” includes opinion pieces and news of the weird.
Plus most of Torch’s taillight takes. Which is what brought me here in the first place.
MORE SHITPOST. I’m usually avoiding work, and by golly, I see Mercedes and know that’s going to be an hour long read, following links, and sometimes I want the empty calories of a chuckle post of something silly.
This made me giggle thinking of the old Christopher Walken Saturday night live cowbell bit. IT NEEDS MORE SHITPOST!
Was this story a shitpost?
… yes.