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.)
Anyone got “open software dev slander” on their 2026 bingo cards?
Transcript
I hope that this thing with “AI” has taught everyone that software developers are overall an awful bunch and they don’t have our backs, and that they’re much closer to the managerial class than actual workers.
And the idea that anybody who earns a wage is a worker is nonsense, the old divisions between white collar and blue collar are firmly in place. Boundaries being negotiated, indeed, yes, but not gone.
This guy clearly has some deep thoughts to air out…
https://sunny.garden/@librarysquirrel/117185341657385932
Honestly, it reads like a massive self-report, as it’s coming from a straight-from-uni second-year history PhD. Oh, you’ve noticed people tend to talk more about things that make them sound righteous rather than complicit? Probably also from people in your field. But it surely doesn’t affect you, as you’re so aware of the problem and working on being one of the good ones.
is the “managerial class” in the room with us right now
i’m not gonna pretend to be the communist understander, but the idea that capitalists would pay workers to work against their own class interests (and against other workers) is a feature of capitalism
fortunately the account (that i never interacted with) has my account blocked, so i couldn’t make them angry by pointing out they’re engaging in typical intelligentsia behaviour of assuming that only heavy industry workers are workers.
I don’t really agree with the second part, but the first part rings true. It seems to me that most software devs are arrogant assholes who think they are the shit because they know some javascript. As it stands now, I would have to think for a long time about whether I consider the collective work of my profession in the last few years a net positive for the world.
i’m not a fan of military industry, but that doesn’t make me claim the workers there are not proletariat.
I really don’t get that angle by the original poster. Plenty of people who are firmly in their worker category are genuinely awful people who vote against their collective interests as if it where their religion.