this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

clueless and enthusiastic (often overly so), getting real into something but often at the lower end rungs

aiui the term it started its life as a description of people who’d get real into weapons, but only at the grade you can buy in mall mass retail. never dug into the history tho

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 6 points 19 hours ago

I feel that strip mall dojos where you were ostensibly taught some very mainstream belt-based martial art like karate or TKD (or straight up make-believe stuff like ninjutsu) but were essentially glorified daycare should figure somewhere in the history of the term.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

It also comes from a mall cop (a very USA sort of concept) who was extremely afraid of getting shot at his job (more so than regular cops at the time) and who overreacted massively and wanted all kinds of weird gun attachments iirc. Sadly this paranoia is something that the US cops also suffer from now. Causing everybody to suffer.

E: wow I had misremembered how crazy the story was.