Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 25th January 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 month ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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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[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

For example, SaintParamaribo writes:

You should have steelmanned S.Adams more, and be more generous to the guy. He JUST died. He actually recommended your blog. He was a mentor to many of us. (emph mine)

That is just crazy. Small detail, I used to read his blog as 'look at this crazy guy' entertainment (I actually read the orgasm hypnosis when it came out), but I had to stop cause his bullshit stupid stuff was making me angry. (That a lot of themotte guys looked up to him was one of the many reasons I thought very low of that place)

The compromise I worked out with myself was to let myself publish, as long as it ended on an overall positive note and emphasized his good qualities.

And this is why the whole SSC style project is so doomed, everything is fine if you also say nice words.

Anyway, if I had heard that Scott Adams recommended my posts as insightful I would have walked into the sea. Even more so if I considered myself a Rationalist, the guys big project was to break down peoples trust in consensus reality by his bullshit, he literally was against what people claim Rationalism should be, he believed in the secret ffs.

His interest in persuasion was teaching people when others were doing it to them, not teaching them to do it to others. His interest in Trump was Trump doing it BACK at the media, not on his poor voters.

[Scott Alexanders reaction is basically: no he was trying to teach people persuasion]

Lol no, his reasons for doing all that was self promotion. Positioning himself as the wise expert. Gullible fools, arguing about what the real intentions of the wallet inspector.

[-] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 1 month ago

Lol no, his reasons for doing all that was self promotion. Positioning himself as the wise expert. Gullible fools, arguing about what the real intentions of the wallet inspector.

Yeah, the "master persuader" schtick was funny to start with, but it wore real thin real fast once it became apparent it was just his half-hearted way of pitching himself to the MAGA crowd, hedging his reputation in case Trump lost.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 4 weeks ago

In part the self promotion is also what Scott is doing here, look at him going 'see how diverse and thoughtful our community is', this sort of reactions to comments is also quite easy content. And jesus fuck is it long (while not actually saying anything new it seems, I have not read it all but oof).

this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026

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