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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.)

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[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 11 points 2 weeks ago

Old Twitter was terrible for people's souls. I can only imagine what it is like now that the well-meaning professionals are gone and catturd and Wall Street Apes are the leading accounts.

[-] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 2 weeks ago

I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that short-form social media in general (Twitter and imitators, Instagram, TikTok) is essentially a failed set of media. But I'll concede that's like cramming a Zyn pouch in my mouth while making fun of a guy chain-smoking Marlboros.

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago

I've read speculation that in 30-50 years people will have an attitude towards social media that we have towards cigarettes now.

That would be really nice but that scenario feels pretty optimistic to me on a few points. For one, scientists doing research were able to overcome the lobbying influence and paid think tanks of cigarette companies. I am worried science as a public institution isn't in good enough shape to do that nowadays. Likewise part of the push back against cigarettes included a variety of mandatory labeling and sin taxes on them, and it would take some pretty major shifts for the political will for that kind of action to be viable. Well maybe these things are viable in the EU, the US is pretty screwed.

[-] nfultz@awful.systems 4 points 2 weeks ago

Haven't seen any estimates of death toll due to social media but cigarettes is/was pretty staggering (20-40m), way too big to hide - https://www.ucpress.edu/books/golden-holocaust/hardcover - if it's "only" 50 years to flip the consensus on social media, that would be a faster process, I do hope its possible though. Tobacco execs had the good sense to keep a relatively low profile compared to Zuck and Musk, so that might speed it up.

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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
23 points (92.6% liked)

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