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 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 soo 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.)
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 weāre doing historical ones but rationalist stuff is fair game
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/
I think Yudās āethical solutionā to pedophilia will always have a place in my top ten of maximally unhinged shit Iāve ever seen on LW.
(The whole thread is a doozy.)
this post is so mentally damaging that seeing it here two years ago is one of my most vivid sneer memories
https://awful.systems/post/694102
So much psychic damage (and also /r/brandnewsentence material) in that threadā¦
edit: Thatās not the alluded Yudās solution btw
edit edit:
Man rationalists from back when they didnāt worry about being youtube-ready were something else.
Also amazing how he, who wants to teach others rationality, writes a post like that which such an obvious flaw. (How do you know you can trust the sign? What stops people abusing this by writing signs themselves?)
Sadly I misremembered and this one wasnāt from LW but Iāll share it anyway. I think I had just finished reading a bunch of the āMost effective aid for Gaza?ā reddit drama which was like a nuclear bomb going off, and then stumbled into this shrimp thing and it physically broke me.
source: https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-best-charity-isnt-what-you-think
Discussion here (special mention to the comment that says āDid the human pet guy write thisā): https://awful.systems/comment/5412818
Scottās Reactionary Philosophy In A Nutshell comes to mind. Also, donāt forget to plug it here once the pilot is up somewhere. Count me as very interested.
I will! @odiumsymposium on bsky in the meantime
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 (e: ah seems the site doesnt show the comments, change the ones it shows and they turn up): 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
Does Anissimov count?
Oh man, Iāve found the old LW accounts of a few weird people and they didnāt have any comments. Now Iām wondering if they did and I just didnāt sort it
It wasnāt on LW proper, but Yud endorsing a pedo science-fiction book as ābasically Safe For Workā has to be up there.
https://awful.systems/post/2972738
Also PrimalPolyās dating advice:
https://awful.systems/post/67
ooh finally Iāve got a second podcast to listen to other than BtB