Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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 facts of 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.

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Not sure which sub a heartwarming story of Nazis shooting their own dicks off goes under, but: Nina Power of Compact gets called a nazi. Sues for defamation. In discovery, produces extensive facts not just supporting Nazi ideas but calling herself a Nazi. Loses so hard she just declared bankruptcy.

    there has been no media coverage of this, but hoo boy does there need to be

    EDIT: ohhh it’s the fuckin LD50 gallery, straight up NRX. Judgement, PDF

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        5 months ago

        we have scientifically ascertained that this is in fact that rare correct use case for the following emoji sequence: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    • froztbyte@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      5 months ago

      there are some phenomenal whoppers just in the opening paragraphs of that article, holy shit

      this is gonna make great piecemeal reading today!

    • self@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      5 months ago

      hahahaha happy garbage day everybody

      The logs also show Ms Power claiming that “the social disapproval for ‘racism’ is a psyop to stop people realising that there are alien and fairy races”, and that “black and white were alien races and very different”.

      wait, is believing in fairies as an adult a weird racist thing? fuck, it’d kind of make sense if the people I’ve known who just causally slipped “by the way fairies are real” into casual conversation were doing a dogwhistle I didn’t pick up on

      • o7___o7@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        one day I’ll find a way to shoehorn our experience with a Waldorf School into a sneer.

        In summary, fairy-themed fascism can be tied back into the whole Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, esoteric Hitlerism shtick. You most commonly get ambushed with it when dealing with fallen hippies, but it is diffusing into the wider online right via weird 4chan things.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        5 months ago

        see also all the TERFs yesterday loudly coming out in support of Power and her Nazi revelation

        the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway, or perhaps just walking over to the other side of the same room

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          5 months ago

          the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway,

          It is funny how mad TERFs get when you mention they are saying the same things as neo-nazis, and then a few days later another TERF who is also a natzi is revealed again.

      • Jonathan Hendry@iosdev.space
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        5 months ago

        @self

        This is one of those David Icke things where you’re not sure if reptilians/fairies/aliens mean reptilians/fairies/aliens or if they’re some kind of code or euphemism.

        • deborah@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          5 months ago

          If you always bet on “everything confusing that weirdos say is a euphemism or proxy for Jews or Black people”, you will beat the house. Canadians, lizards, trans people, common punctuation marks, apparently also the seelie court I guess.

        • self@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          having unfortunately known several David Icke fans: it’s always veiled antisemitism, and the veil gradually disappears the more you let them talk

          e: yes, the area I live in is teeming with various flavors of conspiracy nut, why do you ask

          • Mike@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            5 months ago

            I vaguely remember his original car crash on Wogan after he went loopy and it was barely veiled antisemitism even then - lizard people and the like

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              5 months ago

              “ah ah but he wrote books - that surely can’t be the works of a person frothing in racism!” is something I’ve heard from a surprising number of people I’ve met

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        I know someone who’s a practicing christian and has said they’ve seen angels

        technical, intelligent person on all fronts otherwise. I have … not pushed matters

        (e: not claiming this person I reference is racist, more that I’ve heard some really fucking kooky shit in many spectra, so I don’t know how much of a heuristic that sort of thing is by itself. the fairies thing may be a bit more concrete/direct - gonna have to try test it on some flaming racists sometime)

        • mountainriver@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          5 months ago

          I think the connection isn’t with belief in the supernatural, but with the specific belief that there are things around us that look like people but aren’t people. I can easily see how the latter at minimum makes one very susceptible for racism.

          If people start believing that androids are a real thing (not the OS, human like robots), it’s only a matter of time before people will be accused of being androids.

                • mountainriver@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  I thought that was Hirvox point, that the NPC meme now goes hand in hand with Chan shittery because the NPC meme allows for an easy format to say that other people are not real people. With the added bonus of a built-in “just joking” defence.

                  • gerikson@awful.systems
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    9
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    5 months ago

                    I see echoes of it when idiots discuss ChatGPT being AGI - “it’s at the level of the average (dumb) human, so it’s AGI”. Implicit is that the average human isn’t just not intelligent, but unaware of reality in a way that makes them like NPCs in computer games.

                    —-

                    Edit here’s an example, no source because I don’t want to start a dogpile.

                    If you concede that there exist humans that are bullshit in the same way that ChatGPT is, then I don’t think that argument against ChatGPT’s sentience is gonna be particularly persuasive either.

                    If you say “ChatGPT doesn’t actually think” and later on, “and some humans don’t either” - that weakens the strength of the first assertion by a lot, imo.

                    I mean, if ChatGPT is only sentient to the degree that the least sentient (conscious) human is, then we’re still talking about AGI.

                  • Hirvox@mastodon.online
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    8
                    ·
                    5 months ago

                    @mountainriver @froztbyte Yes, and if confronted the memelord can retreat into the more palatable-in-polite-company form of “they just repeat what they’re told _as if_ they were reprogrammable and without any individual thought”. And _clearly_ the confronter is one of them, because they didn’t recognize this important nuance, thus proving the point.

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          5 months ago

          given some of the other things I’ve seen from the guardian, not sure that would’ve necessarily been a contraindicator

          • Jonathan Hendry@iosdev.space
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            @froztbyte

            I mean they didn’t seem very fashy at first. The later ones (2018, when she was fashy on the down-low ) started to get TERFy but earlier (2010-2014) it was all "the police aren’t your friend” and stuff about government trying to restrict the right to protest, etc.

            (I looked over her Guardian contributions after reading about the bankruptcy etc in this thread.)

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          5 months ago

          she had a piece in The Quietus in 2018, but by 2020 they had kicked a writer out for being pals with DC Miller, her co-plaintiff in this case

          (just for confusion one of the Quietus guys is a different Luke Turner)

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        5 months ago

        causally slipped “by the way fairies are real”

        wait, what? What sort of context? Multiple people? FFS TELL

        • self@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          5 months ago

          so I think I must just have one of those faces cause it’s been something that multiple former friends have revealed to me, and it’s usually a weird show of trust? and it’s always something like “you know, I just think fairies must be real, like they’ve got to be out there? you know?”

          and in all cases I’ve gone “…oh that’s cool” and mentally earmarked that person as “do not trust with heavy machinery”

          • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            5 months ago

            just remembered someone i met decades ago going on and on about spiritualism and ESP and just happened to drop in their own massive racism, there’s definitely a type

            • swlabr@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              ·
              5 months ago

              The crystals to anti-vaxx to full-blown fascism pipeline is real and I have more than a few cousins deep in that KKK hole. Hate to be a science brodude, but all the spiritualism stuff can be a gullibility magnet for those prone to self radicalisation (the bad type)

          • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            5 months ago

            yeah i have one of those faces too (tall, blue eyes, Danish cheekbones), disconcerting number of nazis who wanted me to be in with them

                • sc_griffith@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  10
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  I’ve never had the full on “let’s be nazis together” invite but I’ve had several people launch unprompted into “now that it’s just us white folks we can talk for real” mode. internally they must have been like “I see white skin, we are clear for takeoff, 54321”

                  funnily enough it hasn’t happened since I became visibly trans

                • froztbyte@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  ja that can happen/s here too

                  presumably your bones comprehend all the non-weather reasons that .au is such a popular za expat destination

                  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    8
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    5 months ago

                    those particular south africans apparently made perth in particular a fucking delight of genteel racism in the late 90s

                    tho they didn’t particularly change the nature of it

          • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            5 months ago

            i mean, i have a friend who is literally a UFO religion believer, but they’re decent and politically good and trustworthy and present as normal-English, so

            • self@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              5 months ago

              see occasionally you meet a UFO person and they’re normal and you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit. in effect, their UFO hobby is essentially a modified radio/birdwatching hobby that’s hopefully driving them to learn more about the world around them

              but much more often you meet a UFO person and hear the absolute worst thing you’ve heard all month while looking for an escape route, without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up because you wouldn’t discuss lizard people with them.

              • froztbyte@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                ·
                edit-2
                5 months ago

                you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit

                you know, I don’t know if I’ve actually run into this kind of conversation. I don’t think I have. or if I almost did, I fairly likely applied a conversation logic-shortcircuit way before it got there (because of ambient red flag count). but fuck me, if I don’t know exactly the kind of person you’re referring to… :|

                • froztbyte@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  8
                  ·
                  5 months ago

                  also

                  without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up

                  ZA has many problems (and oh christ could I wax lyrical), but thank fuck I do not live in fucking eaglecountry

                  it’s a whole fucked-up 'ole dynamic when you need to “watch your back” in the most very literal sense because you didn’t eat some bozo’s shit :|

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      5 months ago

      Wonder how the lawyers reacted when they got that treasure trove filled with stolen nazi gold during discovery.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          5 months ago

          They will certainly win a lot of drinks in any ‘who has had the dumbest clients’ contests.

          ‘And then we found the “I’m definitely a Nazi now lol” message’ is a great punchline for a dumbest client ever joke

        • sc_griffith@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          5 months ago

          I read the judgement quite carefully and it makes no reference at all to the discovery material. the only evidence it demonstrates awareness of is public or is testimony