Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting 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 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.
Previous week
New article from the New York Times reporting on an influx of compsci graduates struggling to find jobs (ostensibly caused by AI automation). Found a real money shot about a quarter of the way through:
You want my take, I expect this article's gonna blow a major hole in STEM's public image - being a path to a high-paying job was one of STEM's major selling points (especially compared to the "useless" art/humanities degrees), and this new article not only undermines that selling point, but argues for flipping it on its head.
Quick update: I've checked the response on Bluesky, and it seems the general response is of schadenfreude at STEM's expense. From the replies, I've found:
Humanities graduates directly mocking STEM (Fig. 1,Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5)
Mockery of the long-running "learn to code" mantra (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4 Fig. 5, Fig. 6)
Claims that STEM automated themselves out of a job by creating AI (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3)
Plus one user mocking STEM in general as "[choosing] fascism and “billions must die”" out of greed, and another approving of others' dunks on STEM over past degree-related grievances.
You want my take on this dunkfest, this suggests STEM's been hit with a double-whammy here - not only has STEM lost the status their "high-paying" reputation gave them, but that reputation (plus a lotta built-up grievances from mockery of the humanities) has crippled STEM's ability to garner sympathy for their current predicament.
I hate the fact that now someone might look at me and surmise that I do something related to blockchain or AI, I feel almost like I need a sticker, like those "I bought it before we knew Elon was crazy" they put on Teslas
"I learnt to code before this stupid bubble"
stolen from cohost but i appreciate the succinctness of "capitalism make computer bad"