Want to wade into the sandy 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.)

  • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    The company, valued around $4 billion at its peak, sold its intellectual property and other assets two weeks ago for $39 million.

    What the fuck happened here. How did a shoe company get so high and how on earth did it lose 98% of its value? Were shoes really big during covid and then the demand disappeared, wtf

    • ulf@mastodon.nz
      3·
      17 hours ago

      @V0ldek @sansruse
      The shoes are/were good. I wear them daily now. Every librarian I know in New Zealand wears them to work, a quick poll in my wider development team at work had 80% of the people wearing them that day and 90% owned at least one pair.

      My guess is someone convinced the founders they could break into the US market and become billionaires, so they took on debt and VC funding and were crushed under the repayments when it didn’t work out.

      If they’d been happy making good shoes, taking home a million bucks a year and staying a profitable business in NZ, I think they’d still be doing that.

      Greed mucks everything up…

    • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
      5·
      1 day ago

      @V0ldek @techtakes

      Bro we all run on tank tracks these days, we’re all absolutely crushing it in the workplace Bro shoes are so pre-AI, you can’t grow forever all the way to upload heaven on a sole

      (Pops another Special K)

    • WellsiteGeo@masto.ai
      3·
      1 day ago

      @V0ldek @sansruse
      Didn’t you read the 4th or 5th volumes of the Hitchhikers trilogy? Where the Golgafrinchan’s (?) economy went through the “Shoe Event Horizon” after the B-ark left, and the survivors took flight, very literally. Built a 5km tall statue of DentArthurDent throwing a teacup, and nested in the teacup.

      All predicted. Techbrodudes making reality match (published) history.

      • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
        2·
        18 hours ago

        The Golgafrinchans shipped off the B Ark and then died of a plague (book 2). The Shoe Event Horizon happened on Brontitall (radio series) or Frogstar World B (book 2).

    • Kofi Loves Efia :verified:@mstdn.social
      3·
      1 day ago

      @V0ldek @sansruse
      There was a big consumer migration from brick and mortar to online. All of the people who thought themselves the smartest people in the room just knew that would last forever And that the trend in growth would never stop. “Line go up forever!”
      The line did not got up forever, and in 22-23 when there was a return to brick and motor many online businesses were hurt from Amazon to online shoe retail.