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.
Last week's thread
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Don't expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase "decisive victory" when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: "If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it's a decisive victory. He has the mandate ~~of heaven~~ of the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!"
after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame...
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.
LLM Use cases:
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 here in Canada our prime minister (who's no fan of Trump) used the word "decisive" too. I think at least some people are using the word because they know it's what he wants to hear. It makes my skin crawl, but I can't argue there isn't a logic in trying to maintain some power over him with flattery
The sheer speed and consistency with which America's institutions have rolled over if not enabled this kind of authoritarianism once it was backed up by fascist populism has been probably the most disheartening element of this whole election cycle. We've seen the NYT's quiet but inescapable embrace of transphobia and the transformation of the megacorporations fully into vessels for the personal interest of the shareholding/investing/billionaire class. The judiciary was pretty openly packed with loyalists during the first term, and the senate has been lost for, in retrospect, a very long time. It just seems like they've found the right buttons to push to make every single organization that was theoretically supposed to protect us from this kind of regime either stand aside or actively embrace it.
I feel like there are echoes of so much of what we talk about here that come into play here. It's the disastrous consequences of the rot economy and shareholder supremacy not just undermining the tools that could have otherwise helped organize against this but also destroyed even the vague cultural distinction between the political interests of a company and those of its largest shareholders. It's neoliberalism reflecting the rationalist's inability to acknowledge that values are not downstream from facts along with the growing influence of the exact illiberal ideologues that we've tracked for years. I just don't feel like any of that recognition translates into concrete actions I can take to try and keep the people in my life (or even in this community) safe, or at least safer.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted I think I feel similarly. Things are pretty dire in Canada, too. Right-wing populism is polling very high, our media landscape is mostly conservative-owned, and our communities are fractured. I don't know what to do either, I've been feeling anxious and sick all week, but I think part of the answer has to be local, grass-roots community building, connecting disparate people together for empathy and communication, with minimal reliance on the institutions that got us here
I feel ya, having some real Cassandra moments these days.
I don't see them grinding us down, though.
@sailor_sega_saturn
Maybe it's one of those cliches like “bus plunge”
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) "he will win in a landslide" thing due to Scottbert.
Also it isn't? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so "none of those" won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I'd call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it's the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that it's the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump's victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say "the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as..."
considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is "we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president"
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said "in any sensible meaning of the word" and all. Sorry, I didn't mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO "decisive" is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
I see calling like Raegan's margin in 1984 "decisive"
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.