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 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.

last weekā€™s thread

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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    1 day ago

    one of the most annoying things about writing for a US audience is theyā€™re fucking illiterate and alluding to books confuses them

    wanna grab editors by the throat and go ā€œJUST WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE EVEN DOING IN HIGH SCHOOLā€

    actual example from today: ā€œwho the hell is Fagin never heard of himā€

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      20 hours ago

      So cards on the table here, Iā€™ve never actually read Oliver Twist. But even neo-google is able to point me at enough useful details to get enough of a gist to follow it.

      And thatā€™s assuming you donā€™t pick it up from Wishbone, the animated talking dogs version , or the muppets parody that Iā€™m sure exists somewhere.

      • Jonathan Hendry@iosdev.space
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        10 hours ago

        @YourNetworkIsHaunted

        I never read it but somehow absorbed bits from the ambient culture. Might have watched a version at some point.

        Age may be part of it. Iā€™m 53. Perhaps Oliver Twist stuff was more visible in US culture in the 70s and 80s than it was later.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      Reading books in US high school was an exercise in frustration. There werenā€™t many books assigned, and not a lot of them vibed with me. Most of my classmates did the minimum reading they could get away with (and this was before cellphones were everywhere).

      Also I once read through the entirety of the Lord of the Flies before the first quiz on it and so got a quiz answer wrong because I got mixed up due to remembering stuff that happened later in the book which Iā€™m still bitter about.

      • blakestacey@awful.systems
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        22 hours ago

        Our AP English teacher marked down everyone in our class for failing to identify a quote that wasnā€™t in the translation of Lā€™Etranger that we all read. She refused to give our points back even after I brought a copy of the French original and showed that the translation in our edition was correct when hers was not.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      Imagine being afraid of allusions to classic literature in your own native language.

      Itā€™s fine to miss a reference. I do it all the time and make my friends do the same. Not getting a reference is not a punishment to you, itā€™s a bonus to those who do get it.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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        1 day ago

        thatā€™s what got me: this guy was pissed off someone referenced Fagin at all, the crime of making the bozo feel uncomfortable at missing something by not reading