Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

    • aio@awful.systems
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      3 hours ago

      And sure enough, just within the last day the user “Hand of Lixue” has rewritten large portions of the article to read more favorably to the rationalists.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        57 minutes ago

        User was created earlier today as well. Two earlier updates from a non-account-holder may be from the same individual. Did a brief dig through the edit logs, but I’m not very practiced in Wikipedia auditing like this so I likely missed things. Their first couple changes were supposedly justified by trying to maintain a neutral POV. By far the larger one was a “culling of excessive references” which includes removing basically all quotes from Cade Metz’ work on Scott S and trimming various others to exclude the bit that says “the AI thing is a bit weird” or “now they mostly tell billionaires it’s okay to be rich”.

      • blakestacey@awful.systems
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        3 hours ago

        There might be enough point-and-laugh material to merit a post (also this came in at the tail end of the week’s Stubsack).

    • blakestacey@awful.systems
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      3 hours ago

      The opening line of the “Beliefs” section of the Wikipedia article:

      Rationalists are concerned with improving human reasoning, rationality, and decision-making.

      No, they aren’t.

      Anyone who still believes this in the year Two Thousand Twenty Five is a cultist.

      I am too tired to invent a snappier and funnier way of saying this.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      7 hours ago

      That hatchet job from Trace is continuing to have some legs, I see. Also a reread of it points out some unintentional comedy:

      This is the sort of coordination that requires no conspiracy, no backroom dealing—though, as in any group, I’m sure some discussions go on…

      Getting referenced in a thread on a different site talking about editing an article about themselves explicitly to make it sound more respectable and decent to be a member of their technofascist singularity cult diaspora. I’m sorry that your blogs aren’t considered reliable sources in their own right and that the “heterodox” thinkers and researchers you extend so much grace to are, in fact, cranks.