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.)

  • aspragg@ohai.social
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    1 day ago

    @gerikson @BlueMonday1984

    Hypothesis 3: As some people seem to insist, “literally” has recently morphed into a contronym, and now it figuratively also means “figuratively”.

    …sorry, I meant it literally also means “figuratively”.

    …no, wait, that’s just the same thing. 🙄 It *actually* also means “figuratively”.

    (Really? People couldn’t find a better new word to provide emphasis than “literally”? What word do they want to unambiguously represent that concept now? Do they care? Ugh…)

    • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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      5 hours ago

      tom sawyer literally rolling in wealth

      but he never helps huck finn out financially?

      pretty shit story, mark

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      9 hours ago

      (Really? People couldn’t find a better new word to provide emphasis than “literally”? What word do they want to unambiguously represent that concept now? Do they care? Ugh…)

      Bit late to tilt at this windmill tbh. Prescriptivist pedantry is prohibited past puberty. This was decreed by Maximilian D. English (the D stands for dictionary) in 1727. I don’t make the rules (MDE does)

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      12 hours ago

      It seems really common for words for factuality to become intensifiers. I just used the word “really” as an intensifier, thought it really means things occurring in reality. “Very” had the same thing happen to it, as it originally meant “truthfully” (as in “verify” or “verity”). If I say something is “truly massive”, am I likely specifying the massiveness is not imaginary in some sense, or am I trying to convey massiveness beyond the lower bounds of “massive”? Is a “proper banger” of a tune distinct from an improper banger or is it just a highly bangerful banger?

    • blakestacey@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      What word do they want to unambiguously represent that concept now?

      “Literally, not figuratively”, said in a Sterling Archer voice.

      The use of literally in a fashion that is hyperbolic or metaphoric is not new—evidence of this use dates back to 1769. Its inclusion in a dictionary isn’t new either; the entry for literally in our 1909 unabridged dictionary states that the word is “often used hyperbolically; as, he literally flew.”

      Merriam-Webster