this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.

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

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (5 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 hours ago

Good video overall, despite some misattributions.

Biggest point I disagree with: "He could have started a cult, but he didn't"

Now I get that there's only so much Toxic exposure to Yud's writings, but it's missing a whole chunk of his persona/æsthetics. And ultimately I thing boils down to the earlier part that stange did notice (via echo of su3su2u1): "Oh Aren't I so clever for manipulating you into thinking I'm not a cult leader, by warning you of the dangers of cult leaders."

And I think even expect his followers to recognize the "subterfuge".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

liked the manic energy at the start (and lol at Strange not sharing his full history (like the extropian list stuff, and a much more), like not mentioning it is fine, the scene is set), and Chekovs fedora at the start.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

I like the video, but I'm a little bothered that she misattributes su3su2u1's critique to Dan Luu, who makes it very clear he did not write it:

These are archived from the now defunct su3su2u1 tumblr. Since there was some controversy over su3su2u1's identity, I'll note that I am not su3su2u1 and that hosting this material is neither an endorsement nor a sign of agreement.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

all of the subculture YouTubers I watch are colliding with the weirdo cult I know way too much about and I hate it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

oh no :(

poor strange she didn't deserve that :(

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Strange is a trooper and her sneer is worth transcribing. From about 22:00:

So let's go! Upon saturating my brain with as much background information as I could, there was really nothing left to do but fucking read this thing, all six hundred thousand words of HPMOR, really the road of enlightenment that they promised it to be. After reading a few chapters, a realization that I found funny was, "Oh. Oh, this is definitely fanfiction. Everyone said [laughing and stuttering] everybody that said that this is basically a real novel is lying." People lie on the Internet? No fucking way. It is telling that even the most charitable reviews, the most glowing worshipping reviews of this fanfiction call it "unfinished," call it "a first draft."

A shorter sneer for the back of the hardcover edition of HPMOR at 26:30 or so:

It's extremely tiring. I was surprised by how soul-sucking it was. It was unpleasant to force myself beyond the first fifty thousand words. It was physically painful to force myself to read beyond the first hundred thousand words of this – let me remind you – six-hundred-thousand-word epic, and I will admit that at that point I did succumb to skimming.

Her analysis is familiar. She recognized that Harry is a self-insert, that the out-loud game theory reads like Death Note parody, that chapters are only really related to each other in the sense that they were written sequentially, that HPMOR is more concerned with sounding smart than being smart, that HPMOR is yet another entry in a long line of monarchist apologies explaining why this new Napoleon won't fool us again, and finally that it's a bad read. 31:30 or so:

It's absolutely no fucking fun. It's just absolutely dry and joyless. It tastes like sand! I mean, maybe it's Yudkowsky's idea of fun; he spent five years writing the thing after all. But it just [struggles for words] reading this thing, it feels like chewing sand.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A shorter sneer for the back of the hardcover edition

How.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Dropshippers trying to profit out of his popularity/infamy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I can't be bothered to look up the details (kinda in a fog of sleep deprivation right now to be honest), but I recall HPMOR pissing me off by getting the plot of Death Note wrong. Well, OK, first there was the obnoxious thing of making Death Note into a play that wizards go to see. It was yet another tedious example in Yud's interminable series of using Nerd Culture(TM) wink-wink-nudge-nudges as a substitute for world-building. Worse than that, it was immersion-breaking: Instead of following the story, Yud throws the reader out of it by prompting them to wonder, "Wait, is Death Note a manga in the Muggle world and a play in the wizarding one? Did Tsugumi Ohba secretly learn of wizard culture and rip off one of their stories?" And then Yud tried to put down Death Note and talk up his own story by saying that L did something illogical that L did not actually do in any version of Death Note that I'd seen.

And now I want potato chips.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

🎶 If I had a Death Note / Ya da shinna shinna shinna shinna gamma gamma game / All day long, I'd namey namey names / If I had my own Death Note 🎶

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Murderer on the Roof

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

Sorry Yuds, Death Note is a lot of fun and the best part is the übermensch wannabe's hilariously undignified death. I guess it struck a nerve!