Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th March 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high. > The post Xitter web has spawned so many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them. (Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
    11Ā·
    22 days ago

    Back and forth a few years ago on the SlateStarCodex subredit, roughly:

    Scott Alexander: Bay Area rationality is wonderful, we have foundations and group homes and jolly social activities and a Solistice ritual and even ā€œReciprocity and Propinquity: two different rationalist dating/matchmaking servicesā€

    Rando:

    I donā€™t know, I live in a nice community in a different city where people I know have lots of Shabbat dinners, choirs, board game nights, discussions, etc. And zero people I know have joined a cult, and one person I know has developed psychosis, but she had a family history of psychosis, starting having symptoms in early adulthood, and pretty quickly went on antipsychotics and got a lot better.

    Is it just that California attracts weird shit and if you put people in California, whatever theyā€™re already doing will get culty?

    Alexander: base rates! how do your demographics compare to ours?

    Rando:

    Probably similar size and age? Nearly everyone I knew has parents who are teachers/lawyers/doctors/therapists/etc, so I guess upper middle class according to that book you wrote about a while ago.

    Itā€™s not like everyoneā€™s doing great, lots of people have depression and anxiety and probably smoke more weed than is good for them. Most of those people already had those problems from their adolescence.

    But our rates of weird problems, like multiple people with overlapping psychoses tied to some guy, are low.

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      8Ā·
      22 days ago

      Suppose youā€™re a college grad who has to decide between the usual unpaid internships at dumb startups vs. getting to be a ā€˜research fellowā€™ for a group that says itā€™s going to solve philosophy and save the world, and the only catch is that the group is actually a cult. Still seems pretty tempting honestly.

      Oh?

      • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
        7Ā·
        21 days ago

        My first degree was a professional degree, so after college I went out and got a paid job doing that, using the experience I had developed in paid summer jobs. Even when I was young I think I would have said no to Leverage Research.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        7Ā·
        21 days ago

        a group that says itā€™s going to solve philosophy

        This must hit really hard if you are Wittgenstein

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        7Ā·
        21 days ago

        I mean, giving inflated titles and grandiose plans is part of the sales pitch. Yā€™know, for the cult.

        Like, I think thereā€™s a fundamental misunderstanding here. The problem isnā€™t that the people who want to be cult leaders are able to attract a lot of people who are preinclined to be cult followers and those people suffer the associated psychic damages. Itā€™s that even the less culty parts of the rationalist subculture seem to produce a weirdly high number of wannabe cult leaders, even if they donā€™t conceptualize themselves that way.