Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts

About

Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts refers to a novelty Facebook and Twitter page that collects diagrams and illustrations from student textbooks and scientific publications that, when looked at without context, can be interpreted as shitposts.

History

On June 30th, 2016, Tumblr^[7] user ajani posted an diagram from an unknown biology textbook, writing "One of my favorite things about biology is that there are so many diagrams like this that look like shitposts if you remove any and all context from them" (post and viral reply^[8] shown below). The post received over 234,800 likes and reblogs in four years, prompting users to post similar diagrams that resembled memes on social media in the following years.

On January 11th and 15th, 2020, Facebook^[1] group and Twitter^[2] account Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts were created. On January 11th, the Facebook^[3] page made the first post, "The Crab Cycle," gaining over 470 reactions in nine months (shown below, left). On January 15th, the Twitter^[4] page posted the its first image, an image from an unknown book comparing two men (shown below, right), with the post gaining over 2,200 retweets and 8,600 likes in nine months (shown below, right).

Features

Both pages, which share their content, post diagrams and illustrations from various textbooks, scientific publication and other non-fiction literature which, when looked at without context, can be interpreted as shitposts. The pages often post content that has been submitted by users.

Highlights

Starting in January 2020, both the Facebook page and the Twitter account went viral, with multiple Facebook posts gaining over 10,000 reactions and multiple tweets receiving over 50,000 likes and 10,000 retweets. For example, a February 11th, 2020, tweet^[5] received over 10,400 retweets and 55,000 likes in eight months (shown below, left). A tweet^[6] posted on April 5th received over 27,100 retweets and 120,500 likes in six months (shown below, right).

Traffic

The Facebook group and the Twitter page accumulated over 463,000 members and 655,300 members within nine months, respectively.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References