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.)
apologies for just linking to my own bsky post but I’m lazy: https://bsky.app/profile/scgriffith.bsky.social/post/3m4qjnkeyls23
tl;dr I’ve gotten a bit suspicious that “AI users will be genocided” posts on reddit are a nazi op
not outside of the fascist playbook to claim that they are the real victims. The example that comes to mind is the myth of white genocide, but also literally any fascist rhetoric is like that.
It’s well trodden ground to say that genAI usage and support for genAI resonates with populist/reactionary/fascist themes in that it inherently devalues and dehumanises, and it promotes anti-intellectualism. If you can be replaced by AI, what worth do you have? And why think if the AI can do it for you?
So, of course this stuff being echoed in spaces where the majority are ignorant to the nazi tilt. They can’t and don’t understand fascism on a structural level, they can only identify it when it’s trains and gas chambers.
It’s been a while since I used Reddit. Is the thesis that subscribers to ChatGPT will be rounded up and killed? By whom? For what stated reason? It sounds like a weird inversion of victimhood, considering the number of GenAI user (even if they’re just casual users) and the massive money and hype around GenAI by companies and way too many govs.
frankly that’s the most detailed I’ve seen it get. usually it’s more like this
this is weird. My first thought is that it’s just another vector of normalization for the idea that people who are afraid of and Post about genocide or other forms of discriminatory violence are not to be taken seriously. By putting a variety of insane victimhood appropriating subcultures into the internet milieu, it allows people to ignore what’s happening (and what may be about to happen) in the real world, where groups of people actually are subject to fascistic violence.
That is my thought as well. It’s like the “you call everyone you disagree with a Nazi” argument from the 90s and 00s - discrediting attempts to call out fascist and genocidal ideas creates a lot of cover for those ideas to spread without being appropriately checked. It helps create a situation where serious and respectable people can keep arguing that things aren’t that bad all the way until they get pushed onto a cattle car.
Probably one part normalisation, one part AI supporters throwing tantrums when people don’t treat them like the specialiest little geniuses they believe they are. These people have incredibly fragile egos, after all.
curious, that art style in that reply strongly matches the image I saw on this toot drifting by in my timeline earlier
I haven’t touched image generators and idk how different their products are, if at all. but I think of this as the default AI “illustrated” style. very low on detail outside of the objects of focus, heavy line work, flat, rounded, muted colors
A lot of it looks like it was pissed on.
jfc
@gerikson @techtakes It’s classic DARVO gaslighting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO