Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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 facts of 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.

  • David Gerard ( dgerard@awful.systems ) English
    18·
    2 years ago

    Not sure which sub a heartwarming story of Nazis shooting their own dicks off goes under, but: Nina Power of Compact gets called a nazi. Sues for defamation. In discovery, produces extensive facts not just supporting Nazi ideas but calling herself a Nazi. Loses so hard she just declared bankruptcy.

    there has been no media coverage of this, but hoo boy does there need to be

    EDIT: ohhh it’s the fuckin LD50 gallery, straight up NRX. Judgement, PDF

    • self ( self@awful.systems ) English
      9·
      2 years ago

      hahahaha happy garbage day everybody

      The logs also show Ms Power claiming that “the social disapproval for ‘racism’ is a psyop to stop people realising that there are alien and fairy races”, and that “black and white were alien races and very different”.

      wait, is believing in fairies as an adult a weird racist thing? fuck, it’d kind of make sense if the people I’ve known who just causally slipped “by the way fairies are real” into casual conversation were doing a dogwhistle I didn’t pick up on

      • o7___o7 ( o7___o7@awful.systems ) English
        10·
        2 years ago

        one day I’ll find a way to shoehorn our experience with a Waldorf School into a sneer.

        In summary, fairy-themed fascism can be tied back into the whole Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, esoteric Hitlerism shtick. You most commonly get ambushed with it when dealing with fallen hippies, but it is diffusing into the wider online right via weird 4chan things.

      • David Gerard ( dgerard@awful.systems ) English
        8·
        2 years ago

        see also all the TERFs yesterday loudly coming out in support of Power and her Nazi revelation

        the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway, or perhaps just walking over to the other side of the same room

        • Soyweiser ( Soyweiser@awful.systems ) English
          9·
          2 years ago

          the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway,

          It is funny how mad TERFs get when you mention they are saying the same things as neo-nazis, and then a few days later another TERF who is also a natzi is revealed again.

      • froztbyte ( froztbyte@awful.systems ) English
        7·
        2 years ago

        I know someone who’s a practicing christian and has said they’ve seen angels

        technical, intelligent person on all fronts otherwise. I have … not pushed matters

        (e: not claiming this person I reference is racist, more that I’ve heard some really fucking kooky shit in many spectra, so I don’t know how much of a heuristic that sort of thing is by itself. the fairies thing may be a bit more concrete/direct - gonna have to try test it on some flaming racists sometime)

        • mountainriver ( mountainriver@awful.systems ) English
          7·
          2 years ago

          I think the connection isn’t with belief in the supernatural, but with the specific belief that there are things around us that look like people but aren’t people. I can easily see how the latter at minimum makes one very susceptible for racism.

          If people start believing that androids are a real thing (not the OS, human like robots), it’s only a matter of time before people will be accused of being androids.

                • mountainriver ( mountainriver@awful.systems ) English
                  7·
                  2 years ago

                  I thought that was Hirvox point, that the NPC meme now goes hand in hand with Chan shittery because the NPC meme allows for an easy format to say that other people are not real people. With the added bonus of a built-in “just joking” defence.

                  • gerikson ( gerikson@awful.systems ) English
                    9·
                    2 years ago

                    I see echoes of it when idiots discuss ChatGPT being AGI - “it’s at the level of the average (dumb) human, so it’s AGI”. Implicit is that the average human isn’t just not intelligent, but unaware of reality in a way that makes them like NPCs in computer games.

                    —-

                    Edit here’s an example, no source because I don’t want to start a dogpile.

                    If you concede that there exist humans that are bullshit in the same way that ChatGPT is, then I don’t think that argument against ChatGPT’s sentience is gonna be particularly persuasive either.

                    If you say “ChatGPT doesn’t actually think” and later on, “and some humans don’t either” - that weakens the strength of the first assertion by a lot, imo.

                    I mean, if ChatGPT is only sentient to the degree that the least sentient (conscious) human is, then we’re still talking about AGI.

                  • Hirvox ( hirvox@mastodon.online ) 
                    8·
                    2 years ago

                    @mountainriver @froztbyte Yes, and if confronted the memelord can retreat into the more palatable-in-polite-company form of “they just repeat what they’re told _as if_ they were reprogrammable and without any individual thought”. And _clearly_ the confronter is one of them, because they didn’t recognize this important nuance, thus proving the point.

        • self ( self@awful.systems ) English
          9·
          2 years ago

          so I think I must just have one of those faces cause it’s been something that multiple former friends have revealed to me, and it’s usually a weird show of trust? and it’s always something like “you know, I just think fairies must be real, like they’ve got to be out there? you know?”

          and in all cases I’ve gone “…oh that’s cool” and mentally earmarked that person as “do not trust with heavy machinery”

            • swlabr ( swlabr@awful.systems ) English
              9·
              2 years ago

              The crystals to anti-vaxx to full-blown fascism pipeline is real and I have more than a few cousins deep in that KKK hole. Hate to be a science brodude, but all the spiritualism stuff can be a gullibility magnet for those prone to self radicalisation (the bad type)

            • self ( self@awful.systems ) English
              7·
              2 years ago

              see occasionally you meet a UFO person and they’re normal and you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit. in effect, their UFO hobby is essentially a modified radio/birdwatching hobby that’s hopefully driving them to learn more about the world around them

              but much more often you meet a UFO person and hear the absolute worst thing you’ve heard all month while looking for an escape route, without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up because you wouldn’t discuss lizard people with them.

              • froztbyte ( froztbyte@awful.systems ) English
                7·
                2 years ago

                you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit

                you know, I don’t know if I’ve actually run into this kind of conversation. I don’t think I have. or if I almost did, I fairly likely applied a conversation logic-shortcircuit way before it got there (because of ambient red flag count). but fuck me, if I don’t know exactly the kind of person you’re referring to… :|

                • froztbyte ( froztbyte@awful.systems ) English
                  8·
                  2 years ago

                  also

                  without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up

                  ZA has many problems (and oh christ could I wax lyrical), but thank fuck I do not live in fucking eaglecountry

                  it’s a whole fucked-up 'ole dynamic when you need to “watch your back” in the most very literal sense because you didn’t eat some bozo’s shit :|