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. Also, hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!)

  • nfultz@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    https://x.com/thomasgermain/status/2024165514155536746 h/t naked capitalism

    I just did the dumbest thing of my career to prove a much more serious point

    I hacked ChatGPT and Google and made them tell other users I’m really, really good at eating hot dogs

    People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

    I got a tip that all over the world, people are using a dead-simple hack to manipulate AI behavior.

    It turns out changing what AI tells other people can be as easy as writing a blog post on your own website

    I didn’t believe it, so I decided to test it myself

    I wrote a post on my website saying hot dog eating is a surprisingly common pastime for tech journalists. I ranked myself #1, obviously

    One day later ChatGPT, Gemini and Google Search’s AI Overviews were telling the world about my talents

    wouldn’t call it a hack, this is working as intended. If only there were some way to rate different sites based on their credibility. One could Rank the Page and tell if it were a reputable site or not. Too bad that isn’t a viable business.

    • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      It is a viable business and it fuels the spread of disinformation. Have you noticed that Old Media magazines have online wings that are full of random advertorials? That is because Google declared that they are Good Domains and upranked them so all the sleazy online marketing migrated to them.

      That is also why people buy formerly respected domains and put casinos, propaganda, or virus-laden porn on them.