The Work of a True Poster
Everything you wanted to know about the work of posting but were afraid to ask
In the dimly lit corners of the internet, where daylight is as foreign as a well-adjusted sleep schedule, dwells a miraculous specimen kept alive by LED light, habit, persistence, and unparalleled digital prowess: the True Poster. This breed of social media savant, best understood as a kind of proto-AI or small language model (SLM), has fine-tuned their existence to optimize performance on the battlegrounds of likes, retweets, and DMs. Their fast-paced yet repetitive existence unfolds in a routine that makes Groundhog Day (1993) look like an unpredictable thriller.
Our story begins at the crack of whenever, with the True Poster protagonist rousing from their restless slumber, not to the sound of an alarm clock, but to the pings of hundreds of notifications. Their first task upon waking is to sift through the digital morass, engaging with the high-status “frens” and combatting the “enemas” with the finesse one would expect from a seasoned keyboard warrior, all while meticulously ignoring the "lowbies" who dare clutter their feed.
By the early afternoon, the True Poster embarks on a quest for the holy grail of AI-generated erotica, warming up the infamous “Goon Hand” (GH) in preparation for an long run of low-grade digital debauchery. Their chosen praxis is not for the faint of heart, oscillating between deepfake fantasies and slow, unchanging hand-on-groin rubbing.
As the afternoon wanes, their attention shifts to the more macabre offerings of the internet: police dashcam footage, knockout game clips, or war atrocities. The selection is a partisan affair, curated to reinforce their digital allegiance to one tribe or another and a stark reminder of the internet's ability to cater to our human, all-too-human instincts.
Dinner, if one can call it that, arrives in the form of exorbitantly priced pad thai ($99 with tip), courtesy of delivery app surge pricing that turns a modest meal into a feast affordable only by a medieval king, or in our case, a True Poster. This culinary indulgence is swiftly followed by the first of several ritualistic releases, a runny bowel movement that pays homage to the day's dietary indiscretions.
As night falls, our protagonist reaches the zenith of their posting prowess, hitting the DM limit (the cap on X, formerly Twitter, is 500, though it’s possible True Posters who are “paying for it” can exceed these limits) and marking their 1000th post, reply, or RT of the day. It's a milestone that underscores the relentless nature of their craft, a testament to their commitment to let only debility or death stay their posting.
Exhaustion eventually claims them, slumped over on a mattress littered with the filthy remnants of their nocturnal feast, a radiator keeping the last vestiges of their vacuum-packed dinner warm. It's a poignant image, a poster child for the digital age, where connection is measured in likes and existence is validated through engagement.
The True Poster's life is a Sisyphean task, an endless loop of instantly-forgettable content consumption and creation, with no retirement in sight. Their last act, a fitting tribute to their dedication: dying with one hand clutching their phone, the other forever poised over their crotch, a final banger left in drafts and a dick pic — ideally the “whole hog,” perhaps altered by AI — hanging like a pea-soup fog in the groupchat.
In this intricate ballet of digital existence, the True Poster performs with two principal dancers: the "Phone Hand" (PH) working in concert with the aforementioned "Goon Hand" (GH). These are not mere appendages but the very instruments of creation and consumption that define the Poster's raison d'être. The PH, ever nimble and precise, flits across screens with the grace of a seasoned conductor, orchestrating the cacophony of social media into a symphony of engagement. Meanwhile, the GH, tasked with the less savory but equally important role of indulgence, ensures the Poster remains anchored in the visceral, forever reminded of the corporeal world that exists just outside the margins of their screen.
This dichotomy of purpose underscores the True Poster's existence as a genuine proto-AI, a unique being that predates the likes of language models and sophisticated algorithms. Whereas LLMs like ChatGPT process vast swathes of information to generate responses, an SLM like the True Poster personally absorbs the digital discourse, distilling it into potent posts designed to captivate, provoke, and, above all, engage. They are curators of content, waiting with the patience of an ambush predator to see which way the discursive takewinds will blow before making their move.
The discourse, a veritable battleground of ideologies — fascists, dissidents, MAGA enthusiasts, steroidal fitness nuts, whole-earthers, flat-earthers, flat-mooners, leftoids, dirtbaggers, “I’m with Her” center-leftists, among others — provides the lustrous wool from which the True Poster weaves their narrative. Each comment, each meme, is not merely an expression of opinion but a calculated move in a never-ending game of online engagement. The True Poster's real skill lies not in the originality of thought but in their ability to remix, repurpose, and recontextualize the discourse, serving it back to the masses in a form that is at once familiar and novel.
This process is not solitary but communal, taking place within the e-agora of group chats and forums where a host of inane but nevertheless insanely important "company lines" are drawn. It is here, among the “frens” who inhabit these echo chambers of constantly-redrafted consensus, that the True Poster finds their direction, their purpose, calibrated against the collective wisdom of their rivals, their “enemas.” What follows from these private redoubts is a cascade of retweets, shares, and comments, a wave of frenship that amplifies the Poster's voice across the vast, untamed wildness of an internet still teeming with thirsty, undiscovered True Poster masterminds (likely future enemas, the lot of them — they want people like you1 dead).
Yet, amidst this relentless pursuit of digital relevance, one sees a softer, more introspective side to the Poster. In the quiet moments between posts, when the discourse fades into the background, the GH finds solace in the simple pleasures of manga, anime, video games, The Simpsons, and other pieces of pop culture detritus that remind them of a youth movement long grown old. It's a return to the innocence of the Elysian Fields of content, a respite from the relentless machinations of online existence, where the carpal tunnel-afflicted Goon Hand, now free to slowly and laboriously complete its lascivious duties, can at last do the work.
The daily struggle of the True Poster, then, is one of balance between the PH and the GH, between engagement and indulgence, between the digital and the corporeal. These heroes — each one braver than all the troops and first responders who have existed in recorded history — are the engineers of the soul, shaping the online world with the still-primitive tools at their Posting Hand’s disposal. In this, arguably the Silver Age of our World Wide Web of Deceit, where relevance is currency and engagement the staff of life, the True Poster stands above all the pitiful “normies” as a master of the medium. They are a proto-AI whose very existence both predates and predicts the evolution of virtual interaction.
This, dear hearts and gentle readers, is the life of a True Poster, the unacknowledged “AI before AI,” a testament to the human capacity to adapt, to transform into a perfectly-attuned SLM in pursuit of social media validation. Their legacy reminds us of one inarguable fact: Never stop posting, for in the world of the True Poster, to cease to post is to cease to exist.2
“You” meaning “other posters.”
We’ve all watched more than one True Poster, stuck at a certain plateau in terms of their follower count, gradually develop a posthumous reputation. Their account continues to post, still doing the work, in spite of their social death and accompanying irrelevance.
You really made me giggle!
You love to see it.