this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 4 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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.)

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (4 children)

the effort of rampant libertarians to jumpstart a social movement is going as well as expected

PauseAI Has 'officially disendorsed' PauseAI-US

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

My first thought was maybe one of them isn't focused enough on doomerism and is too concerned with practical shit, which in lesswrong and AI doomer spaces is a nono (practical concerns about GenAI and data centers are okay as a way to draw in normies, but they want to make sure you speak the shibboleths that indicate your real concern is Skynet). Thus whichever one is the less doomer one would get a smidgen of credit in my eyes.

I was disappointed to learn the real reason...

We endorse pointing out harmful actions. But we condemn attacks on people’s character.

...although it is probably a good thing that someone is willing to call Sam Altman a slimeball and Anthropic lying hypocrites? So I'll give PauseAI-US a tiny bit of credit for that.

...or maybe not

When I read Holly's Twitter feed, I get why someone would have a gut reaction like "this is an unhinged person who's stooping to the level of personal attacks on people who seem nice and are just trying to do their best".

Whatever credit this PauseAI-US person gets for willingness to call people out, they lose for doing so through twitter.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

This is terrible, absolutely horrible, disendorsement is only a few short steps from defenestration. How could these people do this

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not sure about the Libertarian connection, but the comments feature Eliezer Yudkowsky and at least one member of the MAPLE cult (Goldenberg).

A "no attacks on people's characters" policy seems like a terrible idea in this space because so many people are grifters, liars, and apocalyptic cultists. At some point you have to say "you are a bad person who uses false words to do bad things."

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A “no attacks on people’s characters” policy seems like a terrible idea

Rationalists: "Its not our fault that we got deceived and manipulated by SBF, lots of people were fooled by him! ~~pay no attention to the fact we repeated the pattern of falling for it with OpenAI and Anthropic also~~"

Also Rationalists: "You can't jsut call people ~~in or adjacent to our in-group~~ bad people!"

Also Eliezer: "There's a standard Internet phenomenon (I generalize) of a Sneer Club of people who enjoy getting together and picking on designated targets. Sneer Clubs (I expect) attract people with high Dark Triad characteristics, which is (I suspect) where Asshole Internet Atheists come from - if you get a club together for the purpose of sneering at religious people, it doesn't matter that God doesn't actually exist, the club attracts psychologically f'd-up people. Bullies, in a word, people who are powerfully reinforced by getting in what feels like good hits on Designated Targets, in the company of others doing the same and congratulating each other on it. "

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2 points 11 hours ago

Tag yourself I'm "(I suspect)"

I don't think it's a very novel insight to point out how this pattern is pretty typical of high control groups, though I guess most are much more explicit about the in-group/out-group distinction there. Our very good friends seem less inclined to treat everyone outside the circle like they're part of a grand anti-tescreal conspiracy, at least.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

not Libertarian in the organized political sense, more like steeped in the dominant California ideology