this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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. Also, happy April Fool's in advance.)

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (18 children)

a journalist wants to ask me about Urbit. Should I install Urbit so I can at least say I've tried it and can speak authoritatively?

[ ] no
[ ] hell no
[ ] jesus h. christ no why

i just had a 1.5 hour half-hour chat with another journalist about the Fucking Rationalists

i have a call with a third one scheduled for tomorrow

i have followed these fucks for 15 years in detail and i still don't know how to properly explain them to our lovely pivot-to-ai readers

at least it'll be these suckers' job to do the explaining while i rant

fuck. it's rationalist season

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 16 points 3 days ago (10 children)

@dgerard @BlueMonday1984 I've been following them for 35 years—hell, I hung out with Curtis Yarvin on usenet in the early 90s, visited him and fondled his lizard once in '93—and the only way I can explain them is that they're larping a bad post-cyberpunk novel and aren't entirely clear on the whole concept of "fiction".

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I also legitimately can't tell the degree to which they don't understand they're LARPing a dystopia versus how much they completely understand that and that's why it's gonna be so awesome for them once they make fetch happen.

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 7 points 3 days ago

@YourNetworkIsHaunted It's probably a mixture: some of them understand the relationship between beliefs and reality, a whole bunch of others are LARPing away (and we'd all be better off if they signed up to play EVE Online instead), there are probably some today who look at Yarvin and see a ladder to power and wealth, and everything in between.

You can't ascribe unity of understanding and intention to any group of n > 1 humans.

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