Dear shitposter, Gaut here. Welcome back to all 5,500+ (!!!) humor enthusiasts of Shitposting Works, a weekly email where I cover the week's best trends, memes, and the topic of shitposts across the internet.

This Week's Shoutout

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Post of the Week: Interview with non aesthetic things

💡 James, the 20 year old who built a social media empire of 5M+ followers by age 15.

This week we're talking to one of the creators behind non aesthetic things, a notorious meme account run by James and Bilal, that happens to have just come back from a 4 year hiatus and suspension on Twitter.

James is one of the most prolific audience builders and creators in the world, and was at his peak someone with more reach than 99.99% other humans across social media – all while his friends knew nothing about it.

Along with his friend Bilal, James amassed over 5M followers across multiple accounts, and mastered the algorithm well before Elon was ever thinking about buying Twitter. James has a unique talent for building presence online, and for curating content to his audiences.

Onto the interview:

What’s your origin story?

I was 13 when I started back in 2016. I was in eighth grade then and randomly started one day. I just wanted to make money to buy a computer. I had very slow growth at the beginning. I was lucky to meet some bigger creators in 2017 that helped me grow during the summer. A month after that, I hit my first 100K followers. My friend Bilal got me my start, and got much of the initial growth to where it was.

And a few months later you’re running some of the biggest accounts on Twitter?

Yea. Something like 20 different accounts, all in different niches. Memes, art, animals, sports, whatever.

Is that what got you suspended? Can you tell me about that?

Basically yea. I’ve just gotten my account back after a 4 year hiatus. Twitter didn’t love that I was using multiple accounts to boost each other, so eventually gave me the axe.

What type of reach did you have in your prime?

Something like 5M+ followers across different accounts. I was doing 3 to 4 billion monthly impressions. It was a lot of fun. I did some monetization but mostly did it as a passion project because I love contributing to this type of content on the internet, and curating it. Now that I got my account back, I’m just doing it for fun again.

How is it to split your “real life” with the type of reach you have on Twitter?

I’ve always kept the two separated, and didn’t want to let it get to my head. If the account gets taken away (like it did), I didn’t want it to be my entire identity. It’s not something that I want to do full time at all. It’s nice to have it pay for your groceries once in a while, but it’s hard to pay the bills as a full time creator.

When you were building these accounts, how did you approach building audiences?

I always focused on targeting a specific audience. It usually had to be specific. The more specific, the more likely you are going to get a loyal audience. Back in the earlier days of the internet, people would tend to follow accounts that were broad humor, and could please everyone from your Grandma to your friend. Nowadays, people tend to follow things that target more of their specific interests.

Did you consider doing other platforms than Twitter?

No, not really. I’ve always personally enjoyed Twitter because the engagement involves much more interaction than it does say on instagram. If I post something on instagram, all I get is likes and a few mindless comments. On twitter, I always get unique interactions. I can post multiple types of fomarts.. Text, video, images, etc.. The most powerful part of Twitter is just meeting people. Twitter the place to find out about what’s happening right now – it’s like a pulse on the current news.

On Instagram or Reddit, I feel like the content is more about things that happened a week ago or longer. That’s less interesting to me.

Why do you think memes are so powerful on Twitter?

I think it helps build connections with people. Like the way you and I met via a DM – This only happened because of Twitter. There’s a lot of social proofing that comes with an account with large followings. All because I can post funny memes. Now with this account I can DM my favorite small artist on Spotify and they’ll respond to me.

At ~2M followers, you have a serious chunk of Twitter DAUs following you. How do you manage your page?

I really see it like a business, even though it’s a passion. I take it seriously in the way that I give my audience what it expects. I don’t post outside of my niche, and I keep it clean. No meaningless ads and content that people don’t want to see.

You’re posting a lot. How do you curate your content? 

I’m basically always collecting content. Sometimes I schedule it, but I mostly post it manually. I think there’s an art in curating content from different platforms without directly stealing. For instance I’ll never steal content that I’ve seen on Twitter that same day, it’s bad form. Many accounts bigger will see my posts and instantly copy paste it and go more viral – it’s not very additive.

Are you ever worried about having that much reach?

Yea. I mean, it’s weird. Only like 5,000 accounts have more reach than me on Twitter. That’s a lot of responsibility for a 20 year old, and especially for a teenager at the time. It can definitely mess with your head, and you can meet the wrong people who will try to use your influence.

What do you think has changed at Twitter in the Elon era?

Twitter has brought back a lot of accounts like mine into the fold. I think this is a positive thing long term, and they are approaching it with the idea to bring more content on the platform. I think Twitter can grow a lot from where it is today because of that.

Thanks for all that. To finish up, who are you favorite creators right now?In fintweet, my favorite are @gurgavin and @parikpatelCFA. Otherwise @s8n is also great.

🐦 Tweets of the Week

It's been a wild few days. Elon switched the Twitter icon to doge, the Pope keeps going viral thanks to AI, and so much more amazing content.

The tweet that started it all.

Last weekend, Nikita sent an AI generated image of the Pope wearing a fancy looking puffer jacket that went completely viral. Not long after that, all of twitter had images of the Pope.

Shl0m's handle breaks my email, here's the link for that last tweet.

ChatGPT got banned in Italy

In proper European fashion, chatGPT got banned before it could see the light of day in Italy. Chris explained why:

Tech bros discover what parties are

This tweet is self explanatory.

Elon changed the twitter icon to doge.

In case you missed it, Elon was back to his doge-loving-days this week, and used the Twitter platform to showcase his love of the animal. Conveniently, he has a lawsuit he might be trying to burry..

Eric got a sneak peak in Elon's drafts.

In case you're lacking context, Elon *loves* to reply to people on Twitter, but typically keeps it to very simple replies, like the ones below:

ChatGPT said too much

Mark also got his time in the spotlight.

It's not just the Pope.

The state of the banks

The rate hikes work in a simple way

📈 Creator on the Rise

Rosey

Rosey brings the tiktok screenshot style over to Twitter. Definitely expect *a lot* of content if you go and follow!

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Keep on Shitposting,

– Gaut