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 so 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 a year ago, Maximilian Bentley Snyder the Zizian dictated a 1,500 word manifesto telling Yudkowsky to become a vegan. These have not been published because murder cult but three of the Zizians have issued statements leaving just Ziz, Youngblut, Suri Dao, and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham alive but silent. Two died after attacking outsiders, and two took their own lives, so I count 11 known associates.
Note to self: revise manifesto to be 22% less weeb
First as tragedy: the Scientologists call their teachings "tech"
Then as farce: Maximilian Snyder calls his methods of optimizing D&D characters "tech" (I am told that people who attended CFAR workshops used to call their teachings "tech")
He posted on LessWrong and won an AI Alignment Award in 2023. Nate Soares, Yudkowsky's right-hand man, endorsed his paper. Curtis Lind was attacked with a sword in November 2022, and the Zaijkos were murdered in their daughter's childhood bedroom around 31 December 2023. It sounds like at least one Zizian was still having friendly exchanges with MIRI leaders well after the 2019 protest at the CFAR reunion (although it is possible that Snyder discovered Ziz in 2024, the year he applied to marry Youngblut).