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. Also just came back from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, movie was awesome)
this isn't really a sneer. and maybe it's in the wrong place tbh. idk.
i have a long-time internet friend / "mutual" who is the only person i'm regularly in contact with that i think might be fully Seduced by the Chatbot. (i have a really good friend and long-time collaborator who's all in on Agentic Coding, which is a real bummer, but he's a strictly "I use this for computer stuff and do not ever talk to it like a human being" type of guy, plus the company he works for is all in and he's sick of writing shopify websites for bullshit brands blah blah blah -- anyway that's a whole other genre of thing.)
anyway friend A is an incredibly kind person who's been unbelievably supportive of me over the years. we've disagreed a number of times, i think we are good at doing so reasonably. and even though his arguments sometimes resemble those of more nefarious figures, i think he's motivated by an earnest optimism about technology's capacity to change the world for good -- one i find very naive, but believe is coming from the right place
anyway i posted a link on mastodon to a long piece i wrote, he, like, read it a bunch of times, paraphrased my argument back to me to make sure he had it right, and then kindly said he disagreed. well and good enough. except it feels a little more personal than disagreements we've had before, because one of the implications of the piece would be that he himself is probably experiencing low-grade psychosis lol and is therefore not necessarily a reliable narrator of his own experience
idk. it'll come as no surprise to anyone on this particular website that i feel very strongly that i'm right here -- if not about this guy's particular mental experience, i minimally feel that i'm adequately representing the interests of the constituency my piece represents. (it's a newsletter i maintain as part of organizing i'm doing.) it's also a genuine expression of my belief, which is that this bullshit article i was writing about was fucking bullshit
but not only does it go against all my Late Millennial Woke instincts to stake a claim that people's Lived Experiences are not valid lol -- it's just kind of a bummer to ultimately genuinely believe that my friend has been ELIZA'd or whatever. he's said i'm really helping him think through this moment but i also just kind of, idk. it's just not a good feeling
That sounds rough but at least you are there for your mutual. I find that the modern online environment full of propagandists and huckers and just plain idiots makes it hard to sit with other people and understand each other's point of view. That does not work if the person on the other side of the keyboard is just going to reply with talking points, but treating everyone as just reciting talking points is not a great way to live life. That sort of thing is better in private but so many people have no contact information except public social media handles now.