Note / 01
Vienna · ongoing
Observation, not project
6 min read
Professional
shitposting:
when a brand can actually joke.
This isn't a project I built. It's a topic I fell into, kept reading about, and now keep a folder of screenshots for. A short field note on what professional shitposting actually is, the brands that make it look easy, and why nine out of ten attempts age like warm milk.
No client. No brief. Just a topic that wouldn't leave me alone.
Overview · what this actually is
One screenshot, then
a folder, then a habit.
I didn't plan to fall into this. It started with a Wendy's roast thread late one night, then a Duolingo TikTok someone sent me, then a folder on my desktop quietly turning into a hundred-plus posts, ads, and replies. At some point I noticed I wasn't just laughing — I was studying. Comparing brands. Mentally cutting the lines that didn't work. Trying to work out why one post lands and the next one sounds like a manager wrote it after a workshop.
So this page isn't a case study. It's the thing I'd write if a friend asked, "why is this funny when this other one isn't?" Professional shitposting, as far as I can tell, is not random chaos with a logo on it. It's controlled looseness. Tasteful mischief. A brand speaking internet without sounding like it's begging the algorithm for a hug. The brands that pull it off don't really do memes. They have a voice that happens to survive the format.
If it needs a deck to explain
why it's funny, it's already
dead.
Five brands worth studying
01 · Wendy's
The opening shot of the modern era
A fast food account on Twitter started roasting customers, competitors, and itself with the energy of a finance bro at 2am. Most of it was light. Some of it was genuinely sharp. The point isn't that it was funny — it's that the voice never broke character, even when the joke wasn't great. That consistency is most of the trick.
02 · Duolingo
The owl that took it too far, on purpose
Under one social team, Duo went from a friendly mascot to a passive-aggressive creature threatening users about their streak. The thing nobody copies right is the restraint: every video sounds unhinged, but the product — learn the language, do the streak — is in every single one. The brand never disappears under the bit.
03 · Ryanair
The airline that talks back
Slapping a mouth filter on a plane fuselage and using it to dunk on customer complaints shouldn't work. It works because it's perfectly self-aware: yes, the seats are bad. Yes, the bag fees are insulting. We know. The acknowledgement is the joke. Most brands try to dodge their reputation; Ryanair welds it into the content.
04 · Aldi · Cuthbert
The reactive masterclass
M&S sued Aldi over a caterpillar cake. Aldi's social team went #FreeCuthbert and ran with it for weeks — court date jokes, fake mugshots, the whole bit. Worth studying because it wasn't a planned campaign. It was a brand recognising a moment, deciding it was funnier than the lawsuit, and refusing to let it go. Speed and nerve.
05 · Surreal
The deadpan school
A billboard campaign with quotes from celebrities who had never tried the cereal — Serena Williams, Dwayne Johnson, others — with a tiny disclaimer underneath: these people are not customers, this is just an ad. It's the dryest possible version of professional shitposting, and probably my favourite. No memes, no filters. A brand confident enough to make the joke at its own expense.
What separates the good from the desperate
Voice
Survives the format
The brands that pull this off had a voice before they had a meme strategy. Wendy's was already snarky in print. Duo was already vaguely menacing in-app. The internet just turned the dial up — it didn't invent the personality.
Specificity
Inside jokes beat trend-chasing
The strongest posts come from the brand's own world — Aldi vs M&S, Ryanair vs its own seats — not from hijacking whatever audio is trending that week. Trend-chasing dates fast. A specific joke about your own thing keeps.
Restraint
Most of the work is what you don't post
Every brand here has an obvious filter: the cut version, the too-far version, the one that would have been funny but off-brand. Most of being good at this is being willing to delete things — or never posting them in the first place.
Notes &
colophon.
- Type
- Reading note / personal observation, not commissioned work
- Focus
- Internet-native brand voice — what works, what doesn't
- Studied
- Wendy's, Duolingo, Ryanair, Aldi UK, Surreal, Liquid Death, Innocent, Steak-umm
- Why here
- It's a taste signal. Portfolios usually hide these.
- Tools
- Screenshots folder, Notes, time
- Bias
- I genuinely find this stuff funny and probably overweight it