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(I get the feeling we're close to this bubble's end.)

Anyways, 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 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[-] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 11 hours ago
[-] schnoopy@awful.systems 1 points 37 minutes ago

Rationalists blurt out racist stuff

P(rationalists are racist) ~ epsilon and since P(say racists things) * P(I observe rationalists say racist things) is very high we must still deeper.

P(say racist) = P(are racist) * P(other reasons) ergo P(other reasons) must be very high. So they must be impressing women.

I have pretended to do science. Please clap.

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 4 points 3 hours ago

Almost everybody attending a rationalist event is going to be some brand of cosmopolitan internationalist nerd, whether they accept it or not.

Words fail me. A few CFAR people had contacts in Czechia and Germany but most of these people can't dare to explore exotic subcultures in their own city, and race pseudoscience is central to their culture.

[-] istewart@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago

I think there's an inbuilt unexamined assumption that they are automatically part of a cosmopolitan elite, thanks to their paths through early life, and they are now transcending beyond that. Standing on the shoulders of David Brooks, perhaps

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago

At best, I think "cosmopolitan" means "wants to stay at a Hilton on three continents, and gets off to Japanese and American porn."

Someone diagnosed the Post-Rationalists as bring resentful that their educations and class backgrounds did not bring them the wealth, power, and status they felt they deserved.

[-] rhamph@awful.systems 3 points 4 hours ago

One comment at the moment:

Or maybe they’re just racists, and trying to impress a woman is a convenient excuse?

With, shockingly, three out of three upvotes (but one agree balancing one disagree)

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 2 points 4 hours ago

🎶 Can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding 🎶

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Possibly the modal jarring experience is that they're talking alone with a nice man who seems pretty normal (if a little awkward), and that guy will just inject a conspicuously racist comment into their conversation. Not like a casual comment that seems unfortunate in context, or an edgy comment in a discussion that was already dancing around race, but something completely out of the blue.

How could such epistemically healthy individuals possibly be racists, literally unthinkable.

I know what actual chuds are like. That being the case, when I see this behavior from rationalists firsthand (again, usually in front of a woman), it often strikes me as bizarre and performative.

Then a few paragraphs later he starts delineating the types of racism he finds acceptable:

people making these comments are usually not "actually" racist. Almost everybody attending a rationalist event is going to be some brand of cosmopolitan internationalist nerd, whether they accept it or not. And if they're not, they're still not going to be racist in the way that a guy from San Antonio whose relatives used the N word at the dinner table is racist. Their "racism" was internalized as a result of a passive and NPC-like relationship with social media, and is fundamentally uninteresting to outside observers.

Basically if you were being racist (charismatically) I don't think OP would have a problem.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 5 hours ago

Went for "classy" racism but got classist instead

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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