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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.)

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[-] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 7 points 22 hours ago

AI seems good at purple prose and metaphors that don't exactly make sense. No, I do not give a fuck about the "triangle of calm" when it comes to, of all things, the narrator taking off her shoes. No, I am not interested in how long the narrator sets the timer on the microwave when she makes literally the blandest meal of all time.

Now I'm sure the techbros truly think this is good "literary" writing. After all, they only care that the writing sounds flowery, because they seem to be very good at missing the actual meaning of everything. I remember Saltman saying that the movie Oppenheimer needed to be more optimistic to inspire more kids to become physicists (while also saying that The Social Network did that for startup founders).

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 7 points 21 hours ago

All I could think about is who has a microwave that beeps while it's still cooking?

[-] fullsquare@awful.systems 6 points 15 hours ago

maybe it's carbon monoxide detector going off, it would make more sense

[-] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago

Mine does if I use the defrost setting. I assume it wants me to rearrange the contents, but when it beeps the contents are still one solid chunk of ice. It doesn't make sense, especially for a device that claims to have a "smart" sensor.

It's a bit like the excerpt. It feels like someone is trying to rewrite the American Psycho routine, but it hammers the obsessive compulsive tropes with all the subtlety of a brick to the face while simultaneously lacking an overall purpose. It's just noise.

[-] jaschop@awful.systems 4 points 19 hours ago

I had the thought, that maybe the author could be intentionally trying to be mind-numbingly boring, but that just killed it. Into the slop jail!

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 17 hours ago

I mean maybe it's poorly worded and there's only one set of beeps at the end. But then why would the protagonist be reminded multiple times?

Unless she's remembering all the times in the past that microwaving bland chicken reminded her of the world being orderly?

But now I think I'm thinking too deeply about microwaves.

this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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