Want to wade into the sandy 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 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.)
what are some of the all time most ludicrous and/or bigoted lesswrong posts? i am starting a podcast where my cohost and i show each other shockingly weird or bigoted texts and discuss them. mostly we're doing historical ones but rationalist stuff is fair game
ooh finally I’ve got a second podcast to listen to other than BtB
It wasn't on LW proper, but Yud endorsing a pedo science-fiction book as "basically Safe For Work" has to be up there.
https://awful.systems/post/2972738
Also PrimalPoly's dating advice:
https://awful.systems/post/67
Sadly I misremembered and this one wasn't from LW but I'll share it anyway. I think I had just finished reading a bunch of the "Most effective aid for Gaza?" reddit drama which was like a nuclear bomb going off, and then stumbled into this shrimp thing and it physically broke me.
source: https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-best-charity-isnt-what-you-think
Discussion here (special mention to the comment that says "Did the human pet guy write this"): https://awful.systems/comment/5412818
The reflective altruism guy has an ongoing series on hbd in the rat community that includes a bunch of that, you should check him out.
For example https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/04/18/human-biodiversity-part-7-lesswrong/
If you want a little hit of an unfair one, might want to look into the some of the weird manosphere guys who joined LW early on. Like https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Davis_Aurini.
E: Ah doesnt seem he wrote much (e: ah seems the site doesnt show the comments, change the ones it shows and they turn up): https://www.lesswrong.com/users/aurini (or it got purged). Amazingly, he is actually not the worst: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aPCKiEd2G8H3kkdnN/the-dark-arts-preamble?commentId=3nrQddAAYnZzegPt5
Oh man, I've found the old LW accounts of a few weird people and they didn't have any comments. Now I'm wondering if they did and I just didn't sort it
Does Anissimov count?
I think Yud's "ethical solution" to pedophilia will always have a place in my top ten of maximally unhinged shit I've ever seen on LW.
(The whole thread is a doozy.)
Also amazing how he, who wants to teach others rationality, writes a post like that which such an obvious flaw. (How do you know you can trust the sign? What stops people abusing this by writing signs themselves?)
this post is so mentally damaging that seeing it here two years ago is one of my most vivid sneer memories
https://awful.systems/post/694102
So much psychic damage (and also /r/brandnewsentence material) in that thread...
edit: That's not the alluded Yud's solution btw
edit edit:
Man rationalists from back when they didn't worry about being youtube-ready were something else.
Scott's Reactionary Philosophy In A Nutshell comes to mind. Also, don't forget to plug it here once the pilot is up somewhere. Count me as very interested.
I will! @odiumsymposium on bsky in the meantime