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 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.)
what are some of the all time most ludicrous and/or bigoted lesswrong posts? i am starting a podcast where my cohost and i show each other shockingly weird or bigoted texts and discuss them. mostly we’re doing historical ones but rationalist stuff is fair game
If you want a little hit of an unfair one, might want to look into the some of the weird manosphere guys who joined LW early on. Like https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Davis_Aurini.
E: Ah doesnt seem he wrote much: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/aurini (or it got purged). Amazingly, he is actually not the worst: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aPCKiEd2G8H3kkdnN/the-dark-arts-preamble?commentId=3nrQddAAYnZzegPt5
I think Yud’s “ethical solution” to pedophilia will always have a place in my top ten of maximally unhinged shit I’ve ever seen on LW.
(The whole thread is a doozy.)
So much psychic damage (and also /r/brandnewsentence material) in that thread…
edit: That’s not the alluded Yud’s solution btw
edit edit:
Man rationalists from back when they didn’t worry about being youtube-ready were something else.
The reflective altruism guy has an ongoing series on hbd in the rat community that includes a bunch of that, you should check him out.
For example https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/04/18/human-biodiversity-part-7-lesswrong/
Scott’s Reactionary Philosophy In A Nutshell comes to mind. Also, don’t forget to plug it here once the pilot is up somewhere. Count me as very interested.