Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? 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 facts of 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.

  • self@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    hahahaha happy garbage day everybody

    The logs also show Ms Power claiming that “the social disapproval for ‘racism’ is a psyop to stop people realising that there are alien and fairy races”, and that “black and white were alien races and very different”.

    wait, is believing in fairies as an adult a weird racist thing? fuck, it’d kind of make sense if the people I’ve known who just causally slipped “by the way fairies are real” into casual conversation were doing a dogwhistle I didn’t pick up on

    • o7___o7@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      one day I’ll find a way to shoehorn our experience with a Waldorf School into a sneer.

      In summary, fairy-themed fascism can be tied back into the whole Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, esoteric Hitlerism shtick. You most commonly get ambushed with it when dealing with fallen hippies, but it is diffusing into the wider online right via weird 4chan things.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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      4 months ago

      see also all the TERFs yesterday loudly coming out in support of Power and her Nazi revelation

      the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway, or perhaps just walking over to the other side of the same room

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        the TERF to nazi pipeline is a doorway,

        It is funny how mad TERFs get when you mention they are saying the same things as neo-nazis, and then a few days later another TERF who is also a natzi is revealed again.

    • Jonathan Hendry@iosdev.space
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      4 months ago

      @self

      This is one of those David Icke things where you’re not sure if reptilians/fairies/aliens mean reptilians/fairies/aliens or if they’re some kind of code or euphemism.

      • deborah@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        If you always bet on “everything confusing that weirdos say is a euphemism or proxy for Jews or Black people”, you will beat the house. Canadians, lizards, trans people, common punctuation marks, apparently also the seelie court I guess.

      • self@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        having unfortunately known several David Icke fans: it’s always veiled antisemitism, and the veil gradually disappears the more you let them talk

        e: yes, the area I live in is teeming with various flavors of conspiracy nut, why do you ask

        • Mike@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          I vaguely remember his original car crash on Wogan after he went loopy and it was barely veiled antisemitism even then - lizard people and the like

          • froztbyte@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            “ah ah but he wrote books - that surely can’t be the works of a person frothing in racism!” is something I’ve heard from a surprising number of people I’ve met

    • froztbyte@awful.systems
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      I know someone who’s a practicing christian and has said they’ve seen angels

      technical, intelligent person on all fronts otherwise. I have … not pushed matters

      (e: not claiming this person I reference is racist, more that I’ve heard some really fucking kooky shit in many spectra, so I don’t know how much of a heuristic that sort of thing is by itself. the fairies thing may be a bit more concrete/direct - gonna have to try test it on some flaming racists sometime)

      • mountainriver@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        I think the connection isn’t with belief in the supernatural, but with the specific belief that there are things around us that look like people but aren’t people. I can easily see how the latter at minimum makes one very susceptible for racism.

        If people start believing that androids are a real thing (not the OS, human like robots), it’s only a matter of time before people will be accused of being androids.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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      4 months ago

      causally slipped “by the way fairies are real”

      wait, what? What sort of context? Multiple people? FFS TELL

      • self@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        so I think I must just have one of those faces cause it’s been something that multiple former friends have revealed to me, and it’s usually a weird show of trust? and it’s always something like “you know, I just think fairies must be real, like they’ve got to be out there? you know?”

        and in all cases I’ve gone “…oh that’s cool” and mentally earmarked that person as “do not trust with heavy machinery”

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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          4 months ago

          just remembered someone i met decades ago going on and on about spiritualism and ESP and just happened to drop in their own massive racism, there’s definitely a type

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            The crystals to anti-vaxx to full-blown fascism pipeline is real and I have more than a few cousins deep in that KKK hole. Hate to be a science brodude, but all the spiritualism stuff can be a gullibility magnet for those prone to self radicalisation (the bad type)

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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          4 months ago

          yeah i have one of those faces too (tall, blue eyes, Danish cheekbones), disconcerting number of nazis who wanted me to be in with them

              • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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                4 months ago

                I’ve never had the full on “let’s be nazis together” invite but I’ve had several people launch unprompted into “now that it’s just us white folks we can talk for real” mode. internally they must have been like “I see white skin, we are clear for takeoff, 54321”

                funnily enough it hasn’t happened since I became visibly trans

              • froztbyte@awful.systems
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                4 months ago

                ja that can happen/s here too

                presumably your bones comprehend all the non-weather reasons that .au is such a popular za expat destination

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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          4 months ago

          i mean, i have a friend who is literally a UFO religion believer, but they’re decent and politically good and trustworthy and present as normal-English, so

          • self@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            see occasionally you meet a UFO person and they’re normal and you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit. in effect, their UFO hobby is essentially a modified radio/birdwatching hobby that’s hopefully driving them to learn more about the world around them

            but much more often you meet a UFO person and hear the absolute worst thing you’ve heard all month while looking for an escape route, without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up because you wouldn’t discuss lizard people with them.

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
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              4 months ago

              you only find out about their interest in UFOs because it’s the reason they want to get into radio or whatever and they want to see if you can recommend them a setup to communicate with satellites and other stuff in orbit

              you know, I don’t know if I’ve actually run into this kind of conversation. I don’t think I have. or if I almost did, I fairly likely applied a conversation logic-shortcircuit way before it got there (because of ambient red flag count). but fuck me, if I don’t know exactly the kind of person you’re referring to… :|

              • froztbyte@awful.systems
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                4 months ago

                also

                without making it too obvious because you’re fairly certain they’re armed. they will later go on the internet and call you an NPC who refuses to wake up

                ZA has many problems (and oh christ could I wax lyrical), but thank fuck I do not live in fucking eaglecountry

                it’s a whole fucked-up 'ole dynamic when you need to “watch your back” in the most very literal sense because you didn’t eat some bozo’s shit :|

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        given some of the other things I’ve seen from the guardian, not sure that would’ve necessarily been a contraindicator

        • Jonathan Hendry@iosdev.space
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          @froztbyte

          I mean they didn’t seem very fashy at first. The later ones (2018, when she was fashy on the down-low ) started to get TERFy but earlier (2010-2014) it was all "the police aren’t your friend” and stuff about government trying to restrict the right to protest, etc.

          (I looked over her Guardian contributions after reading about the bankruptcy etc in this thread.)

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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        4 months ago

        she had a piece in The Quietus in 2018, but by 2020 they had kicked a writer out for being pals with DC Miller, her co-plaintiff in this case

        (just for confusion one of the Quietus guys is a different Luke Turner)