Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting 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 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.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Fool's in advance.)
Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think he's weird for not disclosing his politics to people he's trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which — again, very weird, no possible explanation for this — nobody has adopted. Don't worry, he's well-read:
The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who don't want their beliefs examined:
To which the top reply is my choice sneer:
beware the man of one book
"Drink deep, or taste not the fanfiction spring"
Wow, farriers are going crazy with these modern horseshoe designs!
image transcription
Above: a single axis scatter plot. The ends of the axis are labeled "Left" and "Right". Data points are distributed similarly to normal distribution, the center being more concentrated than the extremes. Caption: "What people think the political spectrum is vs What it actually is".Below: A two-dimensional scatter plot. The ends of the horizontal axis are labeled "Left" and "Right" and the vertical axis is labeled "Independent Thought" at the top and "Groupthink" at the bottom. The data points are evenly distributed inside a bell curve shape, with the peak of the hump at Independent Thought and between Left and Right, and the wide bottom of the bell spanning the whole Left-Right axis at maximum Groupthink.
Data points near the top of the bell (Independent-Center) labeled '"Un-intentional moderates" (from Paul Graham's The Two Kinds of Moderate)'. [Original image uses double quotes around the term Un-intentional moderates and single quotes around the title of Paul Graham's shitpost.]
Data points at the bottom center of the bell (Groupthink-Center) labeled "Intentional moderates".
In the bottom corner a watermark crediting the image to "@shw1nm".
I love the implication that being an independent thinker means agreeing with both the majority and other independent thinkers.
Finally, someone has solved the political compass. No-one will ever come up with a new political spectrum again. Soon we will have world peace
This is only the beginning. Check these out!
Chart 1
Left edge of the image labeled "Progressivism", right edge labeled "Libertarianism".Above: A series of points on a horizontal line, each labeled with the name of a political ideology or system and a representative picture. Rightmost two of the dots are blue, others are red. From left to right:
Below: Flags labeled with political ideologies and systems. Arrangement of flags notated as [X, Y, Flag, Label] where X represents approximate relative distance from left edge and Y represents approximate relative distance from bottom edge.
Chart 2
A square chart divided in quadrants and colored with a gradient, which is symmetric with respect to the origin. Each quadrant is subdivided into a 19x19 grid. Axes are labeled and the labels' background colored as follows:X-axis left: "Post-Modern Relativism/Religiosity" (blue), middle: "Strong Fact Based Inter-subjective Analysis" (yellow), right: 'Pseudo-Objective "Science" Worship' (blue).
Y-axis top: "Status Quo" (red), middle: "Swift, Pragmatic Reform for Social + Economic Justice" (yellow), bottom: "Regressive Revolutionary" (red).
Each quadrant it yellow at origin and purple near their respective outermost corners. The remaining corners are orange next to Y axis and green next to X axis.
Caption At the bottom "On all axes, to be closer to the middle is to trend towards the path to an ideal"
Labeled points by quadrant:
Top left:
Top Right:
Bottom Left:
Bottom Right:
Chart 3
A blue question mark shape on white background. Image titled "Matt Boyle's Question Mark Politics". Ideologies and political figures are marked along the curve of the question mark, starting from the "upper end of the hook and towards the dot at the bottom:On the dot at the bottom of the question mark:
Chart 4
An equilateral triangle formed from four smaller congruent equilateral triangles (AKA a Triforce shape) with political ideologies written in bubble-style labels arranged as follows:Written directly on the triangle edges without a bubble:
Chart 5
X-axis goes from "SOCIALISM" on the left to "CORPORATISM" on the right. Y-axis goes from "LIBERTY" at the top to "TYRANNY" at the bottom. On the Y-axis lies a thick double arrow labeled "GOVERNMENT" and colored with a gradient from white at the top arrowhead labeled "LESS" to red on the bottom arrowhead labeled "MORE", resembling a compass needle.Near the top left and right corners of the diagram are labels "LEFT" and "RIGHT", respectively.
Around the arrow's shaft is a yellow circle of curved directional arrows, each pointing along the arc towards the bottom of the circle.
Dashed lines from the top of the diagram curve around the needle and yellow circle similarly to magnetic field lines, converge back towards the center below the compass, and end in downward pointing arrowheads.
Arranged around the yellow circle in terms of clock face hour hand positions:
The left half of the X-axis is labeled "LIBERALS" above and "DEMOCRATS" on the bottom and a blue donkey symbol next to the needle. The right half is similarly labeled "CONSERVATIVES" and "REPUBLICANS" with a red elephant symbol.
Above and below the X-axis are dashed horizontal lines. The area between the dashed lines is labeled "MODERATES". The top dashed line is labeled "Libertarianism" with arrows pointing upwards and the bottom dashed line is labeled "Secular Moralism" with arrows pointing downwards.
The top left of the moderates area is labeled "JEFFERSONIAN", top right is "JACKSONIAN", bottom left is "WILSONIAN" and bottom right "HAMILTONIAN".
The field lines converging in from the left/right sides of the compass towards the bottom pass by labels "POLITICALLY CORRECT"/"PIOUSLY CORRECT", "ECONOMIC INTERVENTIONISM"/"MILITARY INTERVENTIONISM", "COMMUNISM"/"THEOCRACY", respectively. They meed in the middle and pass through "COLLECTIVISM", "FASCISM" and "TOTALITARIANISM".
Chart 6
Blue circle labeled "Patriarchy" partially covering a pink circle labeled "Matriarchy". Left side represents "Gender Atheism", right side "Sexuality Atheism". Yellow arrow pointing from top left to bottom right labeled "Axis of Care". Red arrow from bottom left to top right labeled "Axis of Knowledge" The intersection of the axes of Care and Knowledge is labeled "Market Economy".Left of the Patriarchy circle is "Men's Rights Movement" and to the right of the circle is "Fourth-Wave Feminism". Left of the Matriarchy circle is "Radical Feminism" and to the right "Liberal Feminism".
Labels connected by small black arrows are arranged on the circles like so:
Near the bottom end of the Axis of Knowledge is "Cultural Marxism", from which an arrow points along the axis to '"True" Anarchy'. Slightly further along the axis, close to the overlapping edge of the blue circle is "Soft Sciences" from which arrows point in two directions. The first one points towards the arrowhead at the bottom end of Axis of Care. On the arrowhead is "Welfare State", which leads to "Left Totalitarianism" at the tip of the arrow, then to "Marxism-Leninism" to the left and back to Welfare State.
The second path from Soft sciences is three consecutive arrows following the edge of the Patriarchy circle to "Positivist Materialism" at the tip of the Axis of Knowledge arrow, which leads to "Real Anarchy" on the arrowhead. Between Market Economy and Real Anarchy on the Axis of Knowledge is "Hard Sciences", from which another three arrow chain along the covered edge of Matriarchy circle leads to Cultural Marxism.
Opposite to Real Anarchy, on the Patriarchy side of Axis of Care is "Theocracy", which leads backwards on the Axis to "Right Totalitarianism", to "Austrian School" on the right, and again through Positivist Materialism to Real Anarchy.
Transcriptions for the last two will be in follow-up reply. I'm hitting the character limit.
none of these are complete without posadism
Charts 5 and 7 in particular are giving Pyramid Power and/or Flat Earth.
LOL it's almost as if the prerequisite to making a political compass is to be completely fucked in the head
What's almost causing me to spiral is the commonality of socialism and communism being portrayed as on the road to monarchism. I'm not spiralling because I very quickly realise that these are all made by idiots, and/or that what they are focusing on is the perception of socialism and communism as being authoritarian.
That and "antifa fascists" in chart 4. AKA the Scists. lol
yeah the "antifa fascists" absolutely sent me
holy shit some of these are beyond cursed
Chart 7
"THE REAL POLITICAL SPECTRUM"On the left "SERVANTS OF THE AEONS", humanoid energy beings among space nebulae. On the right "SLAVES OF THE ARCHONS", reptilian humanoids.
The spectrum from left to right, with symbols in parentheses:
Chart 8
A conventional two-axis (Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian) political compass chart. Authoritarian left, authoritarian right, and libertarian right all represented by a spooky profile portrait of Max Stirner smoking a cigar. Libertarian Left quadrant contains a smaller image of the diagram itself, which contains still smaller image of the diagram itself, except the libertarian left quadrant says "decentralized chomskian anarcho-molotov-cocktailism" in unreadably small type.I feel I've lost enough sanity transcribing these that I'm almost ready to make a political compass chart myself.
Hi, I'm an unimtentional moderate centrist! I don't have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chesterton's fence! Everyone's sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: I'm an independent thinker!
I'm just glad all my friends are such smart rational independent thinkers that we've all independently come to the same conclusion that the status quo is perfect!
Did they try to add a bell curve in a place where it shouldn't be te last image? Im fascinated by how little sense it makes, and by how bad the adding a groupthink axis is.
So "unintentional moderates" are those that both choose deliberately to believe in centrist political ideology and to participate in groupthink?
It is some Paul Graham thing apparently, i have not read that blog post.