Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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 facts of Awful youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

  • slopjockey@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    Ā·
    5 months ago

    What do normal people - people who donā€™t pay for twitter, or sneer at rationalists - think of Twitter atp?

    Went on to Twitter (my mistake) after seeing Inside Out 2 because itā€™s the latest kidā€™s movie to feature [trope that I found passe that I canā€™t figure out how to spoil inline] and I see a post on my feed from ā€œHBD Chickā€.

    And Iā€™m like okay, that has to be ā€œhappy birthday, right?ā€. Nah, her third retweet is creamy porno redux.

    Just like all the other right wingers and embarrassingly enthusiastic neoliberals and occasional Musk fans, I donā€™t follow her or anybody that follows her, thereā€™s literally no connection or personal interest.

    I feel like the post Elon shift is really understated for how bad the siteā€™s gotten. Like I see more people talk about how Instagram reels is racist than I do about the average twitter replies section. I know a lot of left leaning people fled for bluer pastures, but Iā€™m surprised you donā€™t see more buzz about it from regular, non-power users.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      Ā·
      5 months ago

      First of all, most of my ā€œnormalā€ acquaintances never used Twitter anyway.

      Most of the ones that did just quit when it got weird and dominated by useless suggestions and creepy ads.

      I had one friend last week in a group chat go ā€œTwitter is so racist nowadays innitā€, to which I said ye, why you still using it, and he responded ā€œyouā€™re rightā€ and stopped.

      • gerikson@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        Ā·
        5 months ago

        Itā€™s pretty amazing that this so-called genius spent $44B on a company without apparently knowing anything about how the market it operates in (advertising) actually works.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          Ā·
          5 months ago

          I assume some PR departments of potential advertisers saw that and went ā€˜lower the twitter spend more!ā€™, Iā€™m imaging the Futurama joke where Fry talks to investors while stock price tally is running live behind him.

          • gerikson@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            17
            Ā·
            5 months ago

            Twitterā€™s main issue is that itā€™s not really very big. It wasnā€™t big even pre-Musk. If you have the choice between advertising on a really big social network (Meta (=FB, IG, Whatsappā€¦)) with a functioning trust & safety team and ad brokers who take you seriously and donā€™t accuse you of being woke, and one which has way smaller reach, no T&S to speak of, and whose owner can use his outsized influence to call your CEO a pedo whenever the ketamine kicks in, the choice is clear.

    • gerikson@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      Ā·
      5 months ago

      I wish I knew any normal people so I could give input.

      Personally my Twitter pre-Elon was pretty curated. I never really ā€œgotā€ a big part of it unless it spilled over in other channels (I never heard of ā€œBlack people Twitterā€ on Twitter, only from Buzzfeed or similar). I also disengaged from US political Twitter hard after the 2016 election. So itā€™s possible I could still be using it and swearing over bots etc. without being overly affected, but I locked my account as an act of principle shortly after he took over.

      • carlitoscohones@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        Ā·
        5 months ago

        Same here - I had a very small universe curated for myself. I didnā€™t leave immediately, but when I did, there were a whole lot more weird ads and bots and stuff in my feed. I think that I only ever saw prĆøn once, and I was actually shocked that it even existed on Twitter.

    • slopjockey@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      Ā·
      5 months ago

      Note: all the talk I mention is online talk. Nobody in my irl life talks about social media dynamics ever, thank GOD

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        Ā·
        5 months ago

        Only time non-online people I know IRL talk about it is when they ask me the most basic of basic stuff.