Do I have the courage to tag @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses in this post? No, but it’s happening now. Gaud God speed fellow humans.
Gaud is a monster. If you do not know about Gaud, they have a tumblr account so feel free to check them out.Anyway, to Mary Douglas. Gaud transgresses many boundaries here, including, but likely not limited to: socially acceptable versus not socially acceptable, human versus pink eldritch goo, and making people comfortable versus making people uncomfortable. Gaud is the self proclaimed “Patron Saint of Shitposts”, and often makes posts that toe the line between socially acceptable and socially unacceptable through multiple methods.
This post, for example, takes a relatable concept and adds something that is... uncomfortable. Tie in something that can be taken as oddly sexual, in this case the tag “like a slutty little chipmunk”, and you have a monstrous post.
Gaud is also obviously a human controlled account, but never shows themselves to be human, unless in a monstrous way. More often than not, Gaud is portrayed as pink goo which is molded into other forms. They’re somehow able to maintain a physical form akin to human (see picture), while still being liquid enough to be able to pass through a straw. Similarly, in their posts they always claim to be an eldritch creature, at least to my knowledge.
Here’s the picture, it’s probably better that it’s just a link and not an image.
Despite their love of making people uncomfortable, Gaud also seems to give a lot of users a level of comfort. At the bottom of nearly every post, one can spot trigger warning tags, so people can filter out the things that trigger them or just do not want to see. Gaud is also very clearly a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, which helps many users feel more comfortable with being themselves. This isn’t to say that Gaud doesn’t try to make people uncomfortable constantly, but one can find certain personal freedom when interacting with their posts.
