this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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.)

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[–] self@awful.systems 14 points 20 hours ago (7 children)

everybody’s loving Adam Conover, the comedian skeptic who previously interviewed Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender, organized as part of the last writer’s strike, and generally makes a lot of somewhat left-ish documentary videos and podcasts for a wide audience

5 seconds later

we regret to inform you that Adam Conover got paid to do a weird ad and softball interview for Worldcoin of all things and is now trying to salvage his reputation by deleting his Twitter posts praising it under the guise of pseudo-skepticism

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Of all the people he could choose to sell out to, he chose Worldcoin???

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago

Personally I’d choose bitconnect. Bitconneeeeeeeeect!!!

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 4 hours ago

you must understand

Sam promised me all the eyeballs I could eat

All the eyeballs

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think I ever had a vibe-check as successful as this, literally never heard about the guy, said he needs to be shoved into a locker based on vibes, an hour later he searches for his own name to respond and gets hammered in replies for supporting The Big Orb. Just a quintessential internet moment.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 1 points 3 hours ago
[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I suspect Adam was just getting a bit desperate for money. He hasn't done anything significant since his Adam Ruins Everything days and his pivot to somewhat lefty-union guy on youtube can't be bringing all that much advertising money.

Unfortunately he's discovering that reputation is very easy to lose when endorsing cryptobros.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 4 hours ago

"just"?

"unfortunately"?

that's a hell of a lot of leeway being extended for what is very easily demonstrably credulous PR-washing

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 9 hours ago

He looked in the mirror and wept, for there were no more things to ruin.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 14 hours ago

Hey, it costs a lot to coif up that hair.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Fuuuuuuuuuck. I used to watch that guy.

[–] self@awful.systems 7 points 20 hours ago

me too. this heel turn is disappointing as hell, and I suspected fuckery at first, but the video excerpts Rebecca clipped and Conover’s actions on Twitter since then make it pretty clear he did this willingly.