Want to wade into the snowy 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.)

  • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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    3 days ago

    It is nuts to deny the experiences these people are having. They’re not vibe-coding mission-critical AWS modules. They’re not generating tech debt at scale:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes

    They’re just adding another automation tool to a highly automated practice, and using it when it makes sense. Perhaps they won’t always choose wisely, but that’s normal too. There’s plenty of ways that pre-AI automation tools for software development led programmers astray. A skilled, centaur-configured programmer learns from experience which automation tools they should trust, and under which circumstances, and guides themselves accordingly.

    Wow, the whole thing is indefensibly capital-W wrong, just an utterly weird rose-tinted view of the current corporate experience.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        Man, due to a weird alignment of the spheres I started reading those Honor Levy excerpts in the voice of Max Payne-style hardboiled narration and it fits weirdly well? Like a bargain version of the same sort of mid-budget semi-affectionate parody of existential angst that’s all tone and minimal substance.

        • blakestacey@awful.systems
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          1 day ago

          I am retrospectively disturbed by how well “I really came in a fluffer that time” slots into Dorothy Parker’s flow.

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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            6 hours ago

            I mean she was undoubtedly too much of a lefty for the Thiel set to ever admit her influence, but I feel like that’s the exact type of vibe she’s trying and mostly failing to evoke.

    • istewart@awful.systems
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      3 days ago

      centaur-configured programmer

      Cory, baby, my dogg, sure “enshittification” was a big hit, but you can’t expect that your rough-draft followups are automatically gold