this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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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.

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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.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

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[–] rook@awful.systems 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Somehow I managed to mention the wordpress lawsuit on last week’s thread instead of this one, so let’s try again.

Matt Mullenweg, the wordpress(.)com guy and current owner of tumblr, tried to shakedown competing blog product WP engine (which builds on the same open source software that his company does) for 8% of their revenue (https://goblin.band/notes/9yjrc2logimd1tr3 h/t to froztbyte who was also on the old thread for some mysterious reason) or he’d say mean things about them at a conference where they were one of the sponsors. And they didn’t pay up, so he compared them to cancer.

And now they’re suing him.

https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2024/matt-mullenweg-wp-engine-debacle/

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mullenweg's the same guy who publicly harassed a random transwoman on Tumblr and had a general meltdown to the point where Tumblr staff had to distance himself from him, so I'm not shocked.

(That its Tumblr is the only thing that shocks me - you'd think he'd have realised its queer-friendly rep was one of the main things going for it)

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

wait are there non-queer people on Tumblr even??

I mean, it's the same company that didn't realize that half its traffic was porn, so it's on brand

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 3 months ago

I mean, it’s the same company that didn’t realize that half its traffic was porn, so it’s on brand

Granted, Apple's banhammer forced Tumblr's hand on that front (though Tumblr's complete failure on moderation did give Apple that golden opportunity).

(The whole debacle did lead to Newgrounds getting hit by two separate waves of new users - a minor wave in November after the NSFW purges kicked in, then a major wave in December after the porn ban was officially announced. I have nothing more to add, I think it was pretty funny Tumblr shat the bed that hard)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 3 months ago

Haha I saw it from new comments view, didn’t check the thread title

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

lol holy shit, he was barely getting started

shortly after the first posts, he (most likely personally, although remains to be seen) had the trademark usage page updated specifically to take aim at wpengine

and started making his employees do an astroturfing campaign on their private socials

and blocked wpengine from interacting with wordpress.org at all, by both blocking accounts and IPs

dude’s lost it. coming up soon, mass migrations off wordpress?

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 3 months ago

@froztbyte

Sounds like someone under a lot of pressure to raise revenue and not having much success.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 4 points 3 months ago

Hello Matt this is your lawer speaking