Pirateposting
Pirateposting is a shitposting format that recaptions popular meme templates with pirate slang like "scurvy," "scallywag," and "landlubber," often pasting tricorne hats or eyepatches onto the original characters. Isolated pirate-themed edits circulated on iFunny starting November 2020, but the format hit critical mass in April 2023 when the Twitter gimmick account @pirate_posting started reposting community submissions.
Overview
Pirateposting is a shitposting format that recaptions popular meme templates with pirate slang like "scurvy," "scallywag," "matey," "landlubber," and "plunder," often pasting tricorne hats, eyepatches, or skull-and-crossbones onto the original characters 4. Urban Dictionary describes the practice as "the act of posting complete nonsense to social media in the hopes of getting Pirate Booty," which captures the deliberately dumb tone 6.
A parallel video branch known as Pirate Irony ran alongside the caption-swap side, kicking off on TikTok in early 2023 with clips that mixed greenscreen pirate silhouettes, gold doubloons, treasure chests, and stock audio like a pirate shouting "There be treasure!"2.
How It Spread
How to Use This Meme
Typical pirateposting edits start with a recognizable exploitable template and swap key words for pirate slang; common substitutions include "scurvy" for any illness or condition, "scallywag" or "landlubber" for insults, and "booty" or "plunder" for anything valuable. Some edits also paste a tricorne hat, eyepatch, or skull onto the original character, and the joke usually lives in the mismatch between the template's usual tone and the deliberately dumb pirate voice 1.