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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 week ago by 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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[–] 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 child)

From that post about Nonlinear:

I reached out to some references Kat listed, which were positive to strongly positive. However I also got a strongly negative reference — someone else who I informed about the decision told me they knew former employees who felt taken advantage of around things like salary. However the former employees reportedly didn't want to come forward due to fear of retaliation and generally wanting to get away from the whole thing, and the reports felt very vague and hard for me to concretely visualize, but nonetheless the person strongly recommended against inviting Kat and Drew.

I didn't feel like this was a strong enough reason to bar someone from a space — or rather, I did, but vague anonymous descriptions of very bad behavior being sufficient to ban someone is a system that can be straightforwardly abused, so I don't want to use such a system.

This pretty much explains how and why the workplace culture in so many TESCREAL orgs is so, so bad.

Edit: OH MY GOD, Emerson is the Emerson from Mugglenet dot com??? I used to read that site when I was a little Harry Potter fan. Jesus. He should have stuck to correcting people's punctuation in the Hall of Shame.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 hours ago* (1 child)

    Whisper networks are awful, but the way to prevent them is to not let creeps into your community in the first place. And if you trust someone enough to ask them for advice like this, you should probably listen to what they say, even if it is "vague and hard for me to concretely visualize."

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  • [–] 1 point 54 minutes ago* (last edited 34 minutes ago)

    If someone is scared that if they criticize someone they will be "retaliated against", that seems like a sign that something is really bad. I've had to deal with some situations like this myself while organizing events (and I haven't always done a good job) but surely you should at least ask some more questions and err on the side of caution.

    Having said all that, this guy has done some research and has exposed an awful EA workplace, which is a good thing.

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