Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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.)
We need a word for when they make up a guy who doesn’t exist and then get mad at him.
Pretty sure that’s a strawman.
Since this is the solo version, strawmasturbating
Straw-onanism
Oooh that’s good
I mean, I think the relevant difference is that rather than trying to argue against a weak opponent they’re trying to validate their feelings of victimization, superiority, and/or outrage by imagining an appropriate foil.
It’s a straw man that exists to be effectively venerated rather than torn down.
I think I might be missing some context here. Granted without context I’m pretty sure that strawman is still the right word.
I think “making up a guy to get mad at” is already an idiom as is.
You’re not wrong!
Drilling down, it’d be nice if there needs to be a way to capture the level of intentionality involved.
Ben Shapiro starts out with malice afore thought when makes up a guy, because he has a propaganda quota to hit. That’s a strawman.
A rationalist’s guy is an emergent phenomenon that arises from their cultic milieu (sometimes). They run with that misaprehention because of “smartest boy syndrome” and then you can’t tell em anything.
I guess keeping in theme, “vibe replying”
it’s kinda hilarious how close “steelmanning” (as practiced by some) already is to this, but probably not far enough to be usable for that purpose on its own
Had the same thought. -manning implies an ongoing conversation, rather than something to describe a lone weirdo spiraling about a fantasy.