science diagrams that look like shit posts

Because the textbooks have just recycled the same 1970s graphics year after year to keep things cheap.” Novario believes this ultimately comes down to “rough translations from a basically uncompensated professor to an under-compensated, non-accredited art student, all of which happened 30 years ago. Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts January 18, 2020 “So there’s an earnest, creative energy put behind them,” which makes it particularly fun when it goes wrong. “I’d say a lot of times the source material is really trying to take boring subject matter and make it visually striking or entertaining in some way,” says Caldwell. And so, although some shitposts are derived from actual shitposts, there’s one last variable needed to find shitpost equilibrium: earnestness. That said, the absurdity can’t go overboard. “There’s even a Tumblr that keeps track of them. “These have very little review or editorial oversight, so people will post diagrams in the form of cartoons, memes or dicks (intentional and unintentional). Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts January 15, 2020Īs a specific example, Klotz cites the table of contents on journal websites. Plus, there are very few opportunities to express creativity or humor, having silly figures in papers is a way around that.” “Basically, it comes down to the fact that many scientists, like much of the populace in general, are trolls who love memes. Those terms seem like shitposts to me by themselves.”Īlex Klotz, a physics professor at California State University, Long Beach, agrees.

But in physics, we have quarks, gluons, squarks, gluinos, WIMPs, white dwarfs and black holes. In medicine, chemistry and biology, terms are long strings of Latin affixes.

Novario specifically references inside jokes within the theoretical physicist community like “the spherical cow ,” and adds that “physics terms have always seemed like they came from a troll. Thus, shitposting ingredient #2: the scientists themselves.Īccording to Sam Novario, a nuclear physicist in Tennessee, there has long existed “something like a shitposting tradition” in the scientific community - particularly physics. After all, if every scientific diagram made for a good shitpost, it wouldn’t be long until every such diagram ever was reposted as a meme. Still, that argument only gets you so far. Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts January 22, 2020 Lauren Boots, an admin of the “ Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts ” Facebook group, says the best science diagram-turned-shitpost is one that’s so absurd out-of-context, it makes you think, How on earth is this scientific? Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts January 20, 2020 It’s both painstakingly serious and utterly absurd at the same time. “But take the diagrams out of their source material and that’s all flipped on its head,” Caldwell continues. The latest viral science diagrams, on other hand, have much to do with the arrival “shitposting.” That is, as Caldwell puts it, a specific type of trolling “where you straddle the line of appearing earnest, but with a tinge of absurdity.”īasically, out-of-context scientific diagrams achieve the shitposter’s ultimate goal, because much like wikiHow shitposting, these images are derived from places of authority, where they’re dealing with serious subject matter in a serious fashion. Science diagrams have been going viral since the days of Advice Animals, but they were rare since their shareability largely had to do with what jokes could be added around the image. Science Diagrams that Look Like Shitposts January 17, 2020Īccording to Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, this isn’t necessarily all that new.

“I especially love the ‘no fear’ duck, that’s why it’s my pinned post.” “The shitpost diagrams are really funny,” he explains, while admitting he has no idea why they’re so funny. Both were created earlier this month, and both are skyrocketing in popularity. Meanwhile, the Facebook group from which he migrated boasts 200,000 members. Yet since creating a Twitter account dedicated to “ science diagrams that look like shitposts ,” the high school sophomore wields influence over 276,000 people. He hasn’t, though, published any papers on theoretical physics or offered a novel approach to combat climate change - in fact, he has little interest in science at all. But it’s taken Luke, a 15-year-old in Colorado, a month. It often takes decades of groundbreaking research to become renowned in a scientific field.

Science diagrams that look like shit posts