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.
If I may add to these excellent suggestions:
The Night Circus and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Go in cold, do not spoil! Enjoy with a a warm beverage. The readers are phenomenal.
The Laundry Files series by local hero Charles Stross, in which it turns out that P=NP, the Great Old Ones can be summoned in polynomial time, Cthulhu ate America via regulatory capture, and the world is suffering from the magical equivalent of global warming. Our protagonists have to mitgate all of this on a British civil servant's salary.
The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, in which Our Regular Subjects have become a problem.
the night circus is one of my favourite books of all time ever, very much recommend. If you like that the magicians by Lev Grossman feels very similar in a way I cannot put my finger on, though it does not really fit into this list.