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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this - this one was a bit late, I got distracted)
This is completely off topic I think but I need you all to see this, it's important on a spiritual level
This map is infinitely sneerable, every region you look at is somehow worse than the previous one, regardless of the order in which you do that.
Tag yourself, I'm Cracked Coast, population 17.
Ah yes Africa, the small country on the northern coast of Africa.
Kind of interested in the precise type of brainworms that result in Greece annexing Northern Epirus from Albania but think Thrace should be its own thing.
Unifying belgium and the Netherlands makes me think really bad things about the map designers. People who want that are either fools who dont know much about the region or white nationalist fascists. (They often also want SA included)
caucasus would be even bigger shitshow than it is now. no chechenia or ingushetia, but azerbaijan has now half of current armenian land + iranian province of the same name. that's weirdly specific and suspicious
Wait, do you mean new Armenia or Old Armenia? I'm not fluent in the region. But I'm sure Turkiye will be happy to surrender territory to Old Armenia after denying that whole affair for the last ~100 years.
someone needs to stop paradox gamers from interfacing with the real world
Isn't there a huge neo-nazi subculture around Paradox games, with weird mods and stuff?
As a bit of a map painter, Paradox themselves nowadays takes a pretty anti neo-nazi stance. And most public places do so as well (this was a relatively recent change btw, people didn't seem to notice just how bad remove kebab memes etc were). There is sadly the general undertone of 'ironic' far right meme culture which is pervasive in gaming. So that will always be a problem. So neo-nazis not so much, but people making jokes about genocide, and the high risk of your fave content creator suddenly going some weird anti leftwing/culture war rant which makes it clear he (it is always a he) knows nothing yes very much. No idea how much of these people are crypto-fascists or not, as the rest of the space does seem welcoming to trans people and women. (this is my view of the general paradox gaming culture places I have been into, I'm not denying there are neo-nazi groups into paradox games, they just don't seem to be overt or liked vs the general edgelord gamer types).
Yeah people who make maps like this seem to miss the whole point, borders are rigid, populations are fluid. And even paradox games seem to understand this with various mechanics. (which then tend to take a bit of a genocidal undertone (see the 1 culture speedruns)). E: anyway, due to the massive population in the benelux (30m) and the relative small weak neighbors, this is the best start on this map).
I like how the Spanish coast is in Africa. Also, Kyiv and Helsinki are their own city-states (or autonomous post-state administrative zones or whatever) but Rome, London, Munich, etc. aren't.
You missed the most beautiful city-state of OSTBREST
There is no Poland, which unfortunately tracks, historically.
I can see Denmark having Scania now, which is what a lot of the more racist Scanians have wanted since forever. But you can't just split Sweden (Sverige, Svea Rike) into Sweden and Svealand, which isn't even historically correct (it's way too big).
Also Ulster being 50% of the island of Eire is gonna work out great.
Sweden/Svealand is one of many examples here of "where do you think the name came from?" for neighboring regions. My favorite example of this pattern is probably Finland, though. Helsinki is it's own thing, and we get both Finland and Finnmark. Truly outstanding.
Why does the region around Armenia look so unchanged? Why is Transylvania in Ukraine? Italy becomes Romania, ok I've had enough
Not to mention that Romania (unrelated to the modern country) was an endonym for the Constantinople-led eastern roman empire, basically Greek for Roman-land.
So yeah, the closer you look the wronger it gets.
there are two transylvanias
Only feed the Transylvania you want to become.
To be fair there are lots of forests one can be on other side of in Eurasia...