So the sneering club encountered something that seemed to threaten their status. HPMOR came along and was critically acclaimed by mainstream authors despite not (then) being dark and gritty, and it was by an outsider. my best guess is that RationalWiki started out as a Sneer Club targeted on homeopathy, and then they decided that since they were such funny and incisive skeptics they ought to branch out into writing about everything else, like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.ĭark Lord Potter (I infer) aggregated as a Sneer Club targeted at Harry Potter fics they considered inferior, mated with a self-conceptualized elite fanfiction forum for properly dark, gritty, adult HP fics - the most elite HP forum on the Internet, or so they considered themselves. Bullies, in a word, people who are powerfully reinforced by getting in what feels like good hits on Designated Targets, in the company of others doing the same and congratulating each other on it. Sneer Clubs (I expect) attract people with high Dark Triad characteristics, which is (I suspect) where Asshole Internet Atheists come from - if you get a club together for the purpose of sneering at religious people, it doesn't matter that God doesn't actually exist, the club attracts psychologically f'd-up people.

There's a standard Internet phenomenon (I generalize) of a Sneer Club of people who enjoy getting together and picking on designated targets.

Rationality pinker review