“Meaningful, ambiguous or meaningless?”: Communicative disruption, cynicism and hate in Turkish Instagram shitposts

‘Shitposts’ are low-quality online content that deliberately adopts a hostile and ambiguous tone. This study examined 1.025 posts shared between 2023 and 2025 on 20 popular shitpost Instagram accounts in Türkiye using qualitative thematic analysis and quantitative content analysis based on ‘meaningfulness’ and ‘topic.’ This research aims to evaluate the constitutive characteristics of these posts, their potential for political criticism, and their possible links to extreme right and incel ideologies. The findings suggest that, although the content is not entirely meaningless, it exhibits weak and distorted semantic and formal density and contains strong violent stimuli. Although their potential for political critique remains limited, they exhibit frivolity and aggression rather than a coherent ideology or clear purpose. Various forms of discrimination were identified in 46% of the analyzed posts. These hostile discourses targeting groups such as women, LGBTQ individuals, and ethnic communities suggest potential links to extreme right and incel ideologies, likely fueled by a misanthropic, nihilistic worldview.