Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 14 April 2024 - eviltoast

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

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.

  • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    7 months ago

    HPTMOR is so obviously and unequivocally terrible that I can’t help thinking I must be missing something significant about it, like how it could be scratching a very specific itch in young people on the spectrum.

    As always, all bets are off if it happens to be the first long form literature someone read.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      At the time, I rather liked the first half of HPMOR, because I thought it was going somewhere and it was taking the piss at Harry Potter. I also enjoy fiction where people aren’t idiots for sake of the plot, so I was enjoying a bit of deconstruction of that.

      And then it just… Stopped the story and spun in place for what should have been the second half of the book and turned into drivel that takes itself very seriously.

      I may have even told people to read it. I’m so sorry.

    • mountainriver@awful.systemsEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      I think when most people say a culture product was good, they mean that they were entertained. I found it entertaining way back when. Looking back at it now, I’m not sure why. It is objectively awful.

      Thinking about it, I think it’s a combination of:

      • Due to real life stuff, I wanted to be distracted and entertained (I binge watched and read a lot of material of questionable quality at this time)
      • Fanfiction, so large suspension of demands of any formal structure and logic
      • Fanfiction of children’s fantasy books, so another large helping of suspension of disbelief
      • I started reading just as it was wrapping up, so binge reading and then moving on (only to then 10 years later finding out that it was a cult recruitment tool, like finding out you had been to Scientology seminar, enjoyed free snacks and just missed all the cult recruitment going on)

      I also think stories happens to a very large part in the mind of the reader/listener/watcher/player. So the story as perceived by me of ten years ago, or sailor’s coworker, doesn’t have to have much connection with what was actually written. That is also what I have noticed trying to re-read some of the sci-fi I read as a kid. The stories I remembered was much better than the ones in the books.

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        I mean I like the idea behind it is amusing enough – Harry Potter but magical science evil mastermind (he’s uh supposed to be a bad guy in the story right?).

        Everyone wants to read about that sort of stuff it’s why Death Note was so popular.

        But HPMOR just never really went anywhere with any of it and was too superficial and it’s only really interesting for as long as the reader fails to notice that.