this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

This is great, they think it is a 4d chess(*) move they pull on people. They think it both outs people who take offense and preselects your friend group for people you can convert into neo-nazism. And anybody who takes offense gets to look like a crazy person and leaves.

What actually happens is that people don't always react to your slurs directly but certainly talk among each other, this will close doors for you and cause people to deprioritize you as a friend. You will just get invited less and 'forgotten' by people (unless they suffer from the geek social fallacies, but geeks do talk to each other about those), you will get the reputation as the n-word guy, and people will warn others about you, like you are a broken stair. It also creates a culture of shittesting your friends and regularly testing your friends to see if they match up with your ideals or are 'good friends' is a very toxic way to instill paranoia in yourself and reduce the amount of friendships and professional opportunities you have. So I'd suggest he carries on with it, ow sorry 'his friend'.

*: it is 4d chess, in a sense that he made up his own rules, they are way more complicated than needed, don't actually add anything compared to normal 2d/3d chess, and by playing a different game than the rest of the world you are actually just making illegal moves which ensure people will not play with you anymore. Confusing a social game for an intellectual game.

E: forgot to ask, who is this dweeb again? Answered my own question: Ow wait it is Putanumonit

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

you forgot the last stage of the evolution,

you'll later find out that people were talking about you, your actions, your words, and that being ghosted was in fact the consequence of your actions, and then you'll have one last opportunity to turn it all around

  1. do some self introspection and reconcile what actually happened vs what you intended to happen, and decide that it is in fact possible to create relationships without trying to meta discomfort them for your purposes specifically

or

  1. wokeism is the reason, so this time you need to be even MORE obnoxious, to filter people out who would talk behind your back even strongester! (repeat from the top of your flow)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It also creates a culture of shittesting your friends

btw, remember how Duncan Sabien wrote about how cool it was to casually hit people playing "punch buggy" without prior agreement, because his good friend Brent Dill convinced him it was good to do

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I do not, or at least I don't always remember specific names. (I also forgot who the guy was who had this epic LW style breakup with his gf, that was a legendary post), but yeah that is a bit toxic. In a way it reminds me of the 'strong men create bla bla times' memes and the fremen mirage of how acting like barbarians creates a tough character which can conquer your local Rome equivalent "sir, this is a Wendies, and if you hit our server one more time you will be banned". Prob also related to early open source techbro 'say whatever you want with no filters' culture, which even Torvalds now realizes was a bit of a mistake. A bit of Survivorship bias, if only there was a community of smart people to teach others about biasses. ;).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I do not

this amazing post

‘say whatever you want with no filters’ culture

aka ‘say whatever I want with no filters’ culture

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I've played this game nonstop since grade school. I’m currently a 32-year-old man living in a liberal coastal city, and when, out of sheer reflex, I gently tap a friend on the arm and say “blue punch bug, no punch back,” the response I often get back is moral outrage.

... [cut out the part where people explain to him why they think this is fucked up] ...

And sure, one response might be to dismiss that as a symptom of over-the-top coastal liberalism and just chalk it up to social justice culture, or whatever.

But the thing is, those three-or-four-out-of-ten people are smart. More than that, they’re good.

Ah yes, this feels like 'my kids went no contact with me suddenly and they refuse to tell me why!' (for people not in the know, they kids have told their parents why over and over again, and they refuse to accept the reasons, there are entire forums filled with people like this).

From his own description:

Duncan Sabien is a writer, teacher, and maker of things. He loves parkour, LEGOs, and MTG, and is easily manipulated by people quoting Ender’s Game.

Ender's Game... ow god. (I could go into a rant why that is a pretty dangerous book for badly socialized nerds but I will not, there prob are articles out there which explain the way this book manipulates the reader into thinking sociopathy is fine and vastly overreacting is fine and shouldn't be blamed on the sociopath). (It does fit, him being a fan of Enders game and not getting why non-consensually involving people around you in a punching game as an adult is fucked up).

And another edit: Ow my god. "What's it like to have sex with Duncan?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

And another edit: Ow my god. “What’s it like to have sex with Duncan?”

now that's what i call a memetic hazard

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ender’s Game… ow god. (I could go into a rant why that is a pretty dangerous book for badly socialized nerds but I will not, there prob are articles out there which explain the way this book manipulates the reader into thinking sociopathy is fine and vastly overreacting is fine and shouldn’t be blamed on the sociopath).

There is:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820084522/http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link.

I read a ton of SF but Card always passed me by. I tried to read a followup/sequel/fixup called Ender's Shadow years ago and couldn't get through it.

BTW another big series I could never get through was "Thomas Covenanter" or something, although it was fantasy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The main character commits rape because this isn't a real universe anyway. You made the right choice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I think I remember reading about that. Ick.

I also remember reading on the back of the book that the protag would 3 times be offered to stay in the Land and be cured, or something, and 3 times reject the offer. Way to spoil!

This is a pretty good takedown of the series (and other shitty plot devices in SF/F): https://news.ansible.uk/plotdev.html

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Huh. That post doesn't appear in the archives, as far as I can tell.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

I keep coming back to this. I've been thinking about the internal monologue that necessarily had to happen to get here.

"Speech taboos exist."

  • normal reply: "Yeah, words only have meaning due to baggage; some words carry heavier baggage, making them taboo in ordinary conversation."
  • this fucking guy: "Words shouldn't be taboo; that's irrational."

"People end associations and friendships based on word choice."

  • normal: "Not hard to imagine."
  • TFG: "There is literally no reason to end a friendship over word choice unless the other person doesn't let you use slurs in casual conversation."

"The best way to get to know what ideologies someone subscribes to is by dropping slurs in conversation."

  • TFG: "Yes, and it's really important to test the ideologies of strangers in the most flippantly casually offensive way possible, which doubles as a great first impression. You will look alpha as fuck by using slurs."
  • normal: "Huh, haven't had an intrusive thought like that in a while. Where'd that come from?"

"It's ok to say the n-word as long as you don't think about race at all and never with any negative sentiment."

  • TFG: "Yes, this is the extent to which CRT needs to be taught in schools. Then we can teach rationality and run IQ tests."
  • normal: "OK I really need to see my therapist; maybe it's time to try Wellbutrin."^1^

1: this post not sponsored by wellbutrin

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

I think it’s great when assholes enthusiastically identify themselves. Saves me time. MAGA hat? T-shirt with some kind of bigoted “joke’? A shit-test from this moron? Thanks for letting me know that you’re not worth any effort at all!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

it certainly is, my dude. it certainly is

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Had to google shit-test, apparently it's a PUA term, what a surprise.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For those that don’t want to look it up and are ok with a potentially incomplete version:

Apparently it’s when someone (in PUA context, a woman) says, does, or demands something disingenuously to see how you react to it. My guess is that there are PUA doctrines about how to react and detect this sort of thing.

As is a PUA framed thing, it’s probably a way for someone to dismiss any boundary setting behaviour as gaslighting, which is ofc fucked.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is how I understood it, when women 'shit test' a man it is to see if he is an alpha or not. It is an absolutely toxic mindset which will lead to weird dudes interpreting absolutely normal behavior ("hey Bob, it is your turn to do the dishes as agreed" "No Sarah! I will not do the dishes, you do it you ") as shit tests. When men do the shit test it is to show how alpha and not constrained by social conventions they are. or something like that. To show the value of their genes to the women.

But yeah, it is pretty bad that the LW-community has taken up these kinds of terms.

(Edit: changed the wording a bit here, for some reason I started my first sentence different than I wanted to start it, my bad, I meant to explain how the concept is gendered (at least from how I got it, and yes pua stuff is very hetro), no idea why I messed up the start).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Every day I learn something new and terrible, thanks internet.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

it's what you're here for!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Awful/Sneerclub - the original memetic hazard.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@Architeuthis I had to google PUA term, but it al makes sense now.

@dgerard

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

LW always had a bit of a toxic PUA problem, if you are a bit familiar with hbomberguys youtube (and if you are not, you can just stop reading now and save yourself the time), you might have heard of his 'what is it with you guys and skulls' joke, starting from him mocking the weird Davis Aurini guy he actually had a LW account for a while. Sure he was not active for long, but he was active at the start, the rot goes quote deep in LW (seems a lot of the Aurini LW stuff has not been scrubbed), but they always had a weird fascination for PUA stuff, that is also why Scott ~~wrote~~ published the anti-heartiste faq (the who? just a neo-nazi pickup artist, well known enough in the LW community to need an anti-FAQ (and yes he stole his name from the bdsm book Story of O. Very clever, he read a book).

Just like neo-reaction, pua stuff is an amazing rabbithole of toxicity to go down which has had quite the influence on our culture. Without heartiste (who if I understood everything correctly was the main intellectual (lol) driving force in that community after the game was released) there would be no Andrew Tate for example (and this also shows the neo-nazi and ephebophilic roots of the modern movement (There was a period most of them pointed back to heartiste as their thought leader, which is why the anti-faq was made, he was the steelman position to attack)).

What makes this heartiste thing worse is the fact (looked it up) that him being a raging racist was already well knowin in 2013, and the FAQ was written in 2014, but Scott still posted it and talked about heartiste "in a spirit of sincere collaborative truth-seeking". Introducing many more people to this toxicity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ah, davis aurini, a man after gamergate's heart.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

He is still around, and still doing the bald guy + weird suit + cigars/cigs + weird looking drink thing. And skulls.

But wait... what is that what my eyes spot? are those... pronouns? How the mighty has fallen.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

that certainly fits his pinned tweet

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

less "a fish unaware of water", more "a tapeworm unaware of poop"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I really like how he specifies he only does it when with white people, just to dispel any doubt this happens in the context of discussing Lovecraft's cat.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

good thing he basically doesn't think about race

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Something I’d like to investigate is this very right-wing phenomenon of defending granular “freedoms,” like saying slurs in public with strangers, or not wearing a mask during a pandemic etc.

The easy explanation as to why they do this so often is that the boot rwers lack the intellectual capacity to reason about what “freedom” really means and how it’s not a matter of being able to do whatever small atomic action that their overlords, the tie rwers, tell them is important. The thing getting in my way of believing this easy explanation is that it’s kind of heartbreaking to think people can be that stupid.

RE: boot and tie terminology: see here

[–] elmtonic 9 points 10 months ago

I really like this question, I couldn't possibly get to the bottom of it but here's a couple of half-explanations/related phenomena:

  • The simple desire to own the libs. They understand what freedom and personal responsibility is, but also really, really want to DEBATE ME BRO with someone that they don't like.
  • Legitimate paranoia that one day somebody is gonna 1984 them, so they're morally responsible for constantly pushing social boundaries.
  • Virtue signaling, like the post alludes to.
[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like a great way to get assaulted, perhaps battered too. I guess it's cold comfort to know "hah, got 'em, they're so easily triggered" while sitting in a hospital bed recovering from a head injury, but it just sounds stupid to me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

worth it to own the libs

but also, that's why white people

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I'm just wondering how exactly he goes about doing this. Like if I wanted to casually slip the N word into a casual conversation (for... some reason) I'm not actually sure how I would go about setting it up?

Like, is he just randomly saying it at people to see how they react (which most normies rightfully would judge as very weird)? Is he using it to describe actual black people (in which case I feel like people dropping him as a friend aren't really doing it over "speech taboos", are they...)? Is he asking people "so how do you feel about the word 'n.....'?" Something else? My curiosity is piqued now.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He probably leads up to it the same way that a gay guy might choose to discuss his male partner with his coworkers for the first time. You spool out a boring thread of conversation (nominally related to the previous topic of discussion) just so you can work an on-topic sentence where you can drop the word that's been burning your brainstem since you met these people. In hindsight your coworkers knew the only reason why you even brought up that jerk who spilled coffee on you this morning is so you can tell them that your partner gave you his vest to wear today. But if you're this dudes totes not racist slur-slinging friend you're telling your rationalist friends that your "n***a" gave you his jacket. The worst part - in the second case - is that you can totally tell when somebody is shit testing you like this, they'll put way too much emphasis on the word that has to be heard..because it's the word that has to be heard.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

maybe this is like a generation gap thing but I don't think anyone I know would do the long winded coming out at work bit you describe

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Yeah, it's been ages since I've heard anyone be that indirect about it... and if one is being indirect, the point is to minimize the reaction, not deliberately provoke one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Given the context, the runway probably begins with quoting some scientific racism statistics around IQ or crime rates or something.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What does "with white 3 tpot people" mean?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

TPOT stands for "this part of twitter" and is apparently a Rationalist splinter group.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

it's smol bean uwu neoreactionaries who realise Eliezer is cringe but still want to hang out with like-minded race scientists

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

this is the putanumonit.com guy, for added topicality. can't wait to see his writeup of the statistics on shit-testing with slurs.