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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Article on businessinsider with the nauseating title āThe modern parenting throuple: Parents are at a breaking point ā AI companies see an opportunityā because the age-old silicon valley product design technique of asking what your mother used to do for you, and how it could be sold back to you via a subscription is still very much in use.
https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-breaking-point-ai-companies-opportunity-2026-8
I confess I havenāt read the full article (which is why I havenāt given it a proper post) but hypervisible.blacksky.app has kindly pulled the highlights:
https://bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.blacksky.app/post/3mtupdpfcjs2p
One of the best bits:
š¤®
Why the fuck do these people have children. Why the fuck does any functional human being think it is a good idea to outsource raising their children to sam altman and his chatbot.
Who on earth thinks that training a chatbot to wear their personality like a rubber mask and manipulate people is going to end well? Honestly, I think this is perhaps the bit that triggers the most revulsion in me. I cannot comprehend wanting to be complicit in my own replacement by this thing, but so many people seem excited by the prospect of doing this to themselves.
@rook @BlueMonday1984
Iām reminded of the Stewart Lee routine:
āItās called Digital Parenting, this book, Digital Parenting. Thank God for that. If thereās one thing I canāt stand itās analogue parenting. The tears, the mucus, the vomit. The endless declarations of love and the duty of care. The sheer fucking interminable human joy of it.ā
How hard is it to talk to your own damn kids
But if I donāt obsessively optimize my career in ways that prevent me from making meaningful human connections, how am I supposed to keep up with the relentless march of AI??? Thank God I have AI to help pick up the slack.
Whether consciously or not, a lot of these people probably implicitly think of their kids as cost centers. I feel like this is widespread across finance-focused American households, not just in the executive strata.
This is probably an effect of the middle-class trope of having to save to send your kids to a (good) college.
Itās even a joke in an old āFriendsā, Chandler wants many kids, Monica is ācan we afford itā and he says āwe pick the one we like the most, and that kid goes to collegeā.
Kids are cost centers, itās just more overt in the US (and the UK for school catchment areas), at least if you want to give the outcomes society or your peers judges are the best.
In countries where the cost of higher ed is not born by the individual family, the cost is of the opportunity kind.
@lurker @rook some kids just have bad vibes
Going to be esp fun when the chatbots start to get ads
@rook https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/835b655b-21e5-428b-b7c1-1329638681d8 thread via wafrn for those without bluesky