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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 18th May 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 week ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
171 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.)

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 20 points 6 days ago

The Torment Nexus brings us new and horrifying things today - a UN initiative has tried using chatbots for humanitarian efforts. I'll let Dr. Abeba Birhane's horrified reaction do the talking:

this just started and i'm already losing my mind and screaming

Western white folk basically putting an AI avatar on stage and pretending it is a refugee from sudan — literally interacting with it as if it is a “woman that fled to chad from sudan”

just fucking shoot me

Giving my take on this matter, this is gonna go down in history as an exercise in dehumanisation dressed up as something more kind, and as another indictment (of many) against the current AI bubble, if not artificial intelligence as a concept.

[-] foolishowl@social.coop 15 points 6 days ago

@BlueMonday1984 If Edward Said were still with us, this would be worth another chapter in Orientalism. It's another instance of displacing actual people with a constructed fantasy of them, "othering" them.

[-] Npars01@mstdn.social 11 points 6 days ago

@BlueMonday1984

The stages of genocide:

  1. Classification
  2. Symbolization
  3. Dehumanization
  4. Discrimination
  5. Organization
  6. Polarization
  7. Preparation
  8. Persecuted
  9. Extermination
  10. Denial

AI is the perfect vehicle for genocide

https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

The oil industry estimates 1 billion famine deaths from climate change & they are flooding AI with investment

"The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines"
Frank Herbert

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Uber but for vitrue signalling (*).

(I joke, because other remarks I want to make will get me in trouble).

*: I know this term is very RW coded, but I don't think it is that bad, esp when you mean it like 'an empty gesture with a very low cost that does nothing except for signal that the person is virtuous.' Not actually doing more than a very small minimum should be part of the definition imho. Stuff like selling stickers you are pro some minority group but only 0.05% of each sale goes to a cause actually helping that group. (Or the rich guys charity which employs half his family/friends, or Mr Beast, or the rightwing debate bro threatening a leftwinger with a fight 'for charity' (this also signals their RW virtue to their RW audience (trollin' and fightin')).

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 6 days ago

I mean “the right” has managed to corrupt all kinds of fine phrases into dog whistles. I think “virtue signalling” as you have formulated it is a valid observation and criticism of someone’s actions. I blame “liberals” for posturing and virtue signalling as leftist, giving the right easy opportunities to score points.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 6 days ago

"Free speech" is now a rightwing dogwistle, at least for me.

[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

Free speech is the perfect exemple of a formal liberty anyway. Materially it is entirely meaningless in a society where access to speech is so unequal, and not something worth fighting for in the absolute sense. Fight against the effective censorship of good ideas and minority perspectives instead.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago

Ahh yes, freeze peaches, buttery males etc.

[-] Talia@mstdn.social 8 points 6 days ago

@BlueMonday1984 omfg. That’s abhorrent.

[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago

EWWW WHAT THE FUCK

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

Thanks I hate it

this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

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