dunking

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dunking is in social media a particular (ab)use of quote posts, popularized using Twitter's quote tweet feature, to quote a post with a comment intended to at a minimum refute the quoted post, though often to also mock or otherwise denigrate, sometimes in an attempt to appear wittier and garner more reactions (likes and reposts).

Blocking Dunking

The target of a normal "dunking" on Twitter can stop future "dunks" from that dunker by blocking them. This has the additional effect of rendering their original tweet as "This tweet is unavailable" inside any existing "dunk tweets" from that dunker, thereby removing context and substantially reducing the apparent cleverness or appeal of the dunk.

As a workaround, dunkers switched to screenshot dunking.

Screenshot Dunking

(move to its own page if significant enough to split apart)

Screenshot dunking (AKA Screencap dunking) is variant of dunking where the dunker posts an image (screenshot) of the original post they mean to quote / dunk, thereby bypassing any mechanisms to block or otherwise prevent such dunking of (otherwise) public posts.

Related:

People sometimes post screenshots of fake tweets (trivial to change with browser Web Inspector tools), or outright synthesize their own image text (text-as-an-image) quotes to post e.g. using tools like:

• https://real-stop.glitch.me/
• http://pngwriter.com/

IndieWeb Examples

• https://gregorlove.com/2018/08/here-i-built-a-tool-delete/
  • POSSE dunk tweet: https://twitter.com/gRegorLove/status/1027464850216116224

See Also

• 2017-12-04 Slate: “Dunking” Is Delicious Sport / But it might be making Twitter even more terrible.
• 2018-08-29 Eugen: Strongly considering adding screenshot-dunking to the code of conduct as well. We don't need that culture here.
• https://mastodon.social/@SuperDante/100635922584452628
  • "@crushv @Gargron Where you post a screenshot of a post that you think is dumb and everybody talks shit and/or laughs in the replies to that photo Krang Nelson on twitter does it for 99% of his tweets" @SuperDante August 29, 2018
• Semi-satirical example (self-dunk) to demonstrate dunking incentive on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drewisgooden/status/881498761100492800
  • "shut up bitch" @drewisgooden July 2, 2017
• https://queer.party/@AzureFemme/100634350729192811
  • "Also I'm seeing "screencap dunk" culture coming over already and seriously can we not" @AzureFemme August 29, 2018
• quote tweet
• https://twitter.com/McKelvie/status/1040953016084508672?s=19
  • "I see twitter is doing that thing of showing that people liked bad tweets instead of actually liking the quote tweet that dunks on them again. Great way to get peope to engage, good job" @McKelvie September 15, 2018
• https://twitter.com/McKelvie/status/1040953016084508672?s=19
  • "I see twitter is doing that thing of showing that people liked bad tweets instead of actually liking the quote tweet that dunks on them again. Great way to get peope to engage, good job" @McKelvie September 15, 2018
• fisking
• 2019-11-07 Buzzfeed: Twitter Is Trying To Fix The Dunk And Ratio
• https://twitter.com/holden/status/1195762242433642496
  • "One of my beliefs that puts me at odds with a lot of my Twitter tribe, and I welcome pushback on it. Fundamentally think that shame *is* a tool of political/social action (which loses me half my followers) but must be sparingly used in personal relations (which loses other half)." @holden November 16, 2019
• "Dunktags" proposal to correlate responses around a given tweet without boosting it in Twitter's algorithm Don’t Dunk the Gunk
• Example of either a dunkchain or dunkstorming thread: https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1562916200866267138
  • "Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven.
    
    https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1562530929838436355?s=20&t=Anxeqtkb5PiVIELnC7dCoA" @WhiteHouse August 25, 2022
• clapback