Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden 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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Qiaochu Yuan (no relationship to the man accused of soliciting a child) left his PhD program to become an āemotional coach.ā If his old tweets are any guide then Doctor, heal thyself. G. Duleba and Ozy picked similar careers rather than coaching a soccer team or teaching freshman English like most people who want to be teachers and mentors.
Edit / Ozy also does not like the PUA advice of Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max. I think this is less sneering at a stranger than sneering at someone Ozyās friends know and admire (Miller and Fleischman attend TESCREAL events).
It makes a twisted sort of sense that so many of them go into life coaching. In their hermetically sealed subculture of highly paid, socially inept nerds, it probably pays the bills to set yourself up as an authority on reading social cues.
This sort of stuff makes me feel bad for Ozy. After a decade pushing back against this shit the community still likes it.
Yeah. Iām not gonna spring for the paid subscription to read the whole thing, but if weāre gonna be angry at reasonable general-purpose life advice being melded to a toxic and hateful ideology and then put forward as a revolution in human thought and relationships, then I have bad news about the whole rationalist community.
Did you see the Brent Dill stuff today?
No, it seems to be on the Nazi bar? So Brent Dill now has a YouTube channel and gave a talk about sasquatch.
Some Vibecamp organizer tweeted that he organized a weekend event with young women and Brent Dill. He agrees with Scott Alexander that figures like Curtis Yarvin are sexy and attract women to your events!
A vibecamp peson replied with screenshots of a chat with with Dill where he claimed that during 2014-2018 he was living in a rationalist group home and had his expenses paid in exchange for serving as an āemotional support domā for a barely-legal person who had had sex with housemates while under 18, and that drama inside the house lead to the accusations against him (reminder, Dill confessed to doing some very disturbing things to much younger partners on his blog).
Yuan tweeted in response:
There is a 2 hour 39 minute YouTube video called āThe Legend of Brent Dill: An Outsiderās Perspective on the Human Sacrifice Rituals of the Rationalist Cult.ā I aināt watching that.
Can we just take off and drop a small asteroid on Oakland?
āCome to our event where men cut their toenails in publicā
a precise ukrainian drone might be a safer option
A lot of people want to know if the Law of Armed Conflict has a āwicked advisorsā or āmisogynist influencersā clause.
this is just PUA bullshit right? Oh akshually women are ATTRACTED to ādominantā men, dangerous men, bad boyz, anyone who challenges this is just too woke to admit the truth
Iām extraordinarily reluctant to take the guyās description at face value. It seems ripe for that thing guys do where a crowd thatās 1/3 women becomes āmostly womenā in their perception. But even taking it at face value, what the Hell, you know? Heās holding an event that self-selects for women who are vulnerable to predation and puts them in harmās way. āProtip: to get more feminine energy at your events, advertise it to alcoholic women and hold it at a brewery!ā
When I read rationalist descriptions of other peopleās psychology I sense a certain amount of contempt for them (because they are not Rational and of course cannot understand themselves as well as the rationalists can understand them). In this case, the silly woman who doesnāt understand why her expectations are being defied. Maybe it isnāt meant to be contemptuous, but thatās how it comes across to me.
I dunno, it does read like fiction. Like one of those billionaire romance novels, actually.
Scott Alexander literally says this before his story about āHenryā the patient who beat his fifth wife because she objected to him cheating with the ex who had left him after he beat her:
/s And male rationalists would never, ever hang out with an edgy scary person like Yarvin, Sailer, or Vassar for the thrill and bragging rights! Only teh fe-males would do such a thing. /s