Want to wade into the snowy 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 so 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.)

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    Ed Zitron is now predicting an earth-shattering bubble pop: https://www.wheresyoured.at/dot-com-bubble/ so in other words just another weekday.

    Even if this was just like the dot com bubble, things would be absolutely fucking catastrophic — the NASDAQ dropped 78% from its peak in March 2000 — but due to the incredible ignorance of both the private and public power brokers of the tech industry, I expect consequences that range from calamitous to catastrophic, dependent almost entirely on how long the bubble takes to burst, and how willing the SEC is to greenlight an IPO.

    I am someone who does not understand the economy. Both in that it’s behaved irrationally for my entire life, and in that I have better things to do than learn how stonks work. So I have no idea how credible this is.

    But it feels credible to the lizard brain part of me y’know? The market crashed a lot during covid, and an economy propped up by nvidia cards feels… worse.

    Personally speaking: part of me is really tempted to take a bunch of my stonks to pay down most of my mortgage so it doesn’t act like an albatross around my neck (I mean I’m also going to try moving abroad again in a year or two and would prefer not to be underwater on my fantastically expensive silicon valley house at that time lol).

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      15 hours ago

      Considering how Musks businesses are being prepped up by just his force of personality and not any real proper business practices I’m not sure we should belief any predictions of doom. See also how cryptocurrencies are still a thing, and just the price of gold (which doesn’t really make sense re the actual practical usage of gold (the store of value in bad times thing doesnt really make sense to me, who is gonna buy your gold when the economy crashes? Fucking Mansa Musa?).

      I know a bit more about stocks and businesses (both due to education, a minor talent in it, and learning some of it for shadowrun dm purposes (yeah im a big nerd)) and all this doesnt make any real sense to me re the economic/business fundamentals.

      We should be careful to not turn into zero hedge re our predictions of the bubble popping (“It has accurately predicted 200 of the last 2 recessions” quote from rationalwiki), even of we all agree it is a huge bubble, and I share the same feeling that he is right on this. (See also how the ai craze is destroying viable supply businesses like the ram stuff (and more parts soon to come if the stories are correct))

      We live in stupid times, and a very large amount of blame should prob fall on silicon valley, with the ipo offloading of bags bullshit. (And their libertarianism for others socialism for us stuff (see the bank which was falling over which turned them all into statists))

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      My problem with this is that I don’t know what the actual spark for collapse would be. Like, we all know this is unsustainable vaporware, but that doesn’t seem to affect the market at all. So when does this collapse? People have been talking about the collapse for two years now. Is there anything that prevents the market from just remaining insane forever and ever in perpetuity?

      • antifuchs@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid (a classic quote typically gifted anyone who wants to “time the market”, but generally very applicable to anyone these days)

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        That’s exactly what I mean when I say I don’t understand the stock market.

        Like… how is Tesla stock a thing? I don’t understand it.

        • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
          7·
          1 day ago

          how is Tesla stock a thing?

          Edward Niedermeyer write a book to answer that very question (cheating on taxes + organize gangs of invested fanboys who suppress negative news online)

          Stock markets in the rest of the developed world seem less bubbly than the US market.

        • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
          4·
          1 day ago

          Because they’ll make humanoid robots that will conquer the world. At least that’s the current story.