this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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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.

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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 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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[–] rook@awful.systems 12 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (3 children)

I know it’s terrible being a drama gossip, but there are some Fun Times on bluesky at the moment. I’m sure most of you know the origins of the project, and the political leanings of the founders, but they’re currently getting publicly riled up about trans folk and palestinians and tying themselves up in knots defending their decision to change the rules to keep jesse singal on site, and penniless victims of the idf off it.

They really cannot cope with the fact that their user base aren’t politically aligned with them, and are desperate to appease the fash (witness the crackdowns on people’s reaction to charlie kirk’s overdue departure from this vale of tears) and have currently reached the Posting Through It stage. I’m assuming at some point their self-image as Reasonable Centrists will crack and one or more of them will start throwing around transphobic slurs and/or sieg-heiling and bewailing how the awful leftists made them do it. Anyone want to hazard a guess at a timeline?

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Well, they're already using "waffles" as a transphobic slur (irony poisoning speedrun any%), so it's really more of a question of which transphobic slurs they'll escalate to next.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

And all this because she simply could not shut up. Which seems to be one of the oldest, modding a large community rules.

[–] rook@awful.systems 11 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Nobody ever seems to learn the “never get high from your own supply” lesson. Gotta get that hit of thousands of people instantly supporting and agreeing with whatever dumbfuck thought just fell out.

You absolutely don’t have to hand it to zuckerberg, but he at least is well aware that he runs an unethical ad company that’s bad for the world, has always expressed his total contempt for his users, and has not posted through it.

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 10 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

whenever there's a huge scandal he listens to his PR people, keeps his mouth shut, then goes on a media tour where he lies his ass off in exactly the same way at each stop. it's that simple and yet almost no other tech people can do it

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 17 hours ago

You absolutely don’t have to hand it to zuckerberg, but he at least is well aware that he runs an unethical ad company that’s bad for the world, has always expressed his total contempt for his users, and has not posted through it.

Its an extremely low bar to clear, but I'll begrudgingly hand it to him for being one of the few tech CEOs who didn't actively limbo under it.

[–] self@awful.systems 8 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

here’s a good summary of the situation including an analysis of the brand new dogwhistle a bunch of bluesky posters are throwing around in support of Jay and Singal and layers of other nasty shit

here’s Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, getting called out by lowtax’s ex-wife:

here’s Jay posting about mangosteen (mangosteen juice was a weird MLM lowtax tried to market on the Something Awful forums as he started to spiral)

Anyone want to hazard a guess at a timeline?

since Jay posted AI generated art about dec/acc and put the term in her profile, her little “ironic” nod to e/acc and to AI, my guess is this is coming very soon

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

This doesn't include her blurb about, "are you paying us? where???"

But weren't there a multitude of people clamoring for a Bluesky subscription service from the get-go? Out of recognition that this situation was one of the potential failure modes?

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

But weren’t there a multitude of people clamoring for a Bluesky subscription service from the get-go? Out of recognition that this situation was one of the potential failure modes?

Even beyond that, the Twitter refugees came to Bluesky because they wanted a Nazi-free successor to Twitter. Most of them would've happily pitched in to keep the site alive whilst goodwill remained.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 9 hours ago

Bluesky wanted to be Nazi Twitter, then Elon purchased Twitter and stole their market.

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The question on getting paid might give credence to the rumors that they’re running out of money and won’t make it (user-growth wise) as an ad platform. Which, lol and also lmao.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 4 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, I can't see that they're doing anything besides burning runway. It's probably shortly going to become cliche to say, "glad I never made an account there," but, welp, glad I never made an account there

[–] rook@awful.systems 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Huh, didn’t know about the guy behind tangled.org (Anirudh Oppiliappan) being a waffle enthusiast too 🫤 Just visited his bsky profile, and he’s enthusing about a “decentralised accelerationism” post by jay.

I hadn’t really seen the point of the tangled project (I’m not sure what atproto brings to version control) but I was interested in an ecosystem around the jujutsu vcs stuff. I guess I won’t find that here.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

ok plz explain what "waffles" means in this context

[–] rook@awful.systems 11 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

TL;DR: It’s all a meme-poisoned bluesky circle-jerk involving transphobes and people who desperately want transphobes to think they’re cool.

The link from self to mcc’s bluesky thread sums up this stuff with references, but to attempt to summarise the summary, there’s a tweet from the depths of time (2017) that says

Twitter the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted. You can say "I like pancakes" and somebody will say "So you hate waffles?"

Bluesky ceo jay graber uses “waffles” as shorthand referencing this post, and whipped it out when asked about bluesky’s ongoing unwillingness to do anything about noted transphobe jesse singal, who has since posted about how much he loves waffles.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 21 hours ago

jfc

Thanks for taking the time to expand