Style Guide — TikTok “Braindead Poster”

The TikTok top-of-funnel look: loud, ugly-on-purpose, screenshot energy. It should look like it took 90 seconds to make — because that’s the native dialect of the feed and it out-reaches polished content. Reference: POST-20260603-002 (_assets/POST-20260603-002-tiktok.png).

Why this style

TikTok rewards a hard hook and an instant payoff, not production value. “Too clean” reads as an ad and gets scrolled. The braindead poster is a pattern-interrupt: a dumb-simple claim, one circled object, one punchline you want to send to a friend.

The formula

1. POV / setup tag (small black box, top-left): POV: it's 2026.
2. HOOK (huge, 2–4 lines, ALL CAPS, one phrase highlighted): the spicy/relatable claim. ≤ 8 words per line.
3. One dumb visual (a doodle vial, a circle, a red arrow) — never a polished render.
4. PAYOFF (mid-size): the answer, in plain lowercase. End with a meta line: “that’s it. that’s the whole post.”
5. Footer: full breakdown → @indexalabs + the research-use disclaimer (small).

Visual rules

• Canvas: 1080 × 1920.
• Background: flat off-white #FBF9F2 (or a single loud colour — never gradients).
• Type: one bold sans (Arial/Helvetica/Liberation Sans, bold). No font pairing. Oversized on purpose; mild clipping/overlap is fine and on-brand.
• Colour kit: ink #111111 · highlighter #FFE53B · alert red #FF2D2D (circles/arrows) · accent #4B3FCF (one payoff line only).
• Marks: one yellow highlighter bar behind a key word; one red hand-drawn circle + arrow at the visual. Max one of each — restraint is what keeps “messy” from becoming “noise”.
• Safe zones: keep the hook in the upper-center. Right ~120px and bottom ~420px are covered by TikTok UI (icons + caption) — nothing important there.

Copy rules

• First line is the hook and must work with zero context.
• Lowercase payoff = casual, human. Caps = the claim.
• Punchline beats explanation. If the post can end on “that’s the whole post,” it should.
• Caption: relatable one-liner + a follow reason (“follow for how to read a COA”) + disclaimer. 5–8 hashtags (#peptidetok #peptides #fyp …).

Hard rules (guardrail)

• Research/educational framing only. No dosing, no “treats/cures”, no medical claims. Disclaimer on-image and in caption.
• One idea per post. If you’re explaining, you’ve lost.
• Block/limit off-topic spam comments early.

Reusable template (SVG)

Duplicate _assets/POST-20260603-002-tiktok.svg and swap the hook/payoff text. Re-export to PNG:

convert -density 96 -background none POST-YYYYMMDD-NNN-tiktok.svg POST-YYYYMMDD-NNN-tiktok.png

Hook bank (steal these)

• “EVERYONE SAYS ‘PEPTIDES’ AND HAS NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE”
• “YOUR BODY MAKES THESE EVERY DAY AND YOU CAN’T NAME ONE”
• “POV: you bought a peptide and never checked the COA 💀”
• “‘RESEARCH GRADE’ MEANS NOTHING WITHOUT THIS ONE PDF”
• “PROTEIN vs PEPTIDE in 4 seconds (so you stop guessing)”