Discussion
We need to find a better term than “gas town” syndrome for that break in reality people have when they convince themselves that having countless “agents” at their beck and call will let them perform miracles and “build” like gods
Not specific to coding either
On a related note, as I browse I keep running into newsletters and blogs I used to follow who used to be at least performatively critical of "AI" but are now all-in as true true believers.
@cwebber @datarama @baldur @glyph in addition... i also came up with this term 'lyssanetic' a while back (see also my pinned post). though it is a reframing: lyssanetic refers to the property of LLMs to *cause* some degree of detachment from realitiy in their users, not to the detachment itself. also note how this phenomenon isn't a binary state, but a process that can be very gradual, moves at different speeds for different people, and seems somewhat nondeterministic in nature (note how the latter actually makes things *worse*: it means we can find examples where someone was +- fine using it, and wrongly come to the conclusion that we can replicate that when using it).
that being said, i also very much like 'vibe sickness', since it expresses a similar thing, but doesn't need a giant explaination every time.
@baldur I kinda like “gas town” as the term because it’s really funny-sounding and makes these people sound like they just joined some Flatulence Fraternity, which is in some ways apt.
@baldur I've been referring to that phenomenon as "Steve Yegge and his polecats", which is probably not what you're after. Agent sickness, maybe?
@baldur I feel like a lot of formaly reasonable people adapted "agentic coding" in mid 2026 with the latest models. Which really made mu unsure if i souldn't at least give it a try.
@baldur I liked "vibe-sickness" but maybe that designates a milder version of this syndrome ?
@baldur I find it curious how a couple „critics” turned into believers around the time Anthropic went for IPO.
@baldur another term might be good, but "Gas Town" will do, 'cos nobody who saw Yegge at this stuff will ever forget it
@davidgerard This is true. That shit-encrusted tyre fire was nothing if not memorable.
And a note related to that:
“Why did you stop following them if they hadn’t fallen into the ‘AI’ trap yet?”
Because the “AI” turn is almost always preceded by a steady increase in fascist dog whistles.
@baldur : As if fascist dog whistles, by themselves, were not a good enough reason to stop following and supporting someone. And instead, just walk right out of that Nazi bar.
@JeffGrigg @baldur I like extreme metal. Thrash, doom, death, and black metal. If it has severe distortion, double time and incomprehensible vocals, I've likely listened to it at some point.
I bring this up because black metal, in particular, is infamous for being a festering hive of Nazi trash. Far from everyone in that scene is a Nazi, of course - there's the entire subgenre of RABM (Red and Anarchist Black Metal) which is explicitly left-wing, and there's also what is best described as "apolitical in the sense of boring centrists who like to sing about devil worship, Ancient Mesopotamian war crimes, and eldritch horrors from beyond time and space".
But there are Nazis, and anyone who claims there isn't a significant Nazi contingent in the black metal scene is either 14 years old and extremely naïve, or a Nazi liar. And this means that if you don't want to support Nazis, you get used to doing a bit of internet sleuthing. Nazis are well-aware that they're widely despised (yes, also in the metal community), and they usually don't throw in Nazi lyrics unless they've already resigned themselves to only being listened to by other Nazis. So there are little online networks and resources of antifascist metal fans who compare notes, because even if you don't think listening to music by Nazis will make you a Nazi (I don't!), you don't want to buy concert tickets or merch or whatever if you know that the money will end up in Nazi pockets.
Anyway.
This is what FOSS is like now, to me. The exact same skills I built up 25 years ago in the extreme-metal scene are suddenly applicable to software. This is both incredibly weird and incredibly disturbing.
@baldur This seems to be the end station of what @cwebber called "the vibe bobsled". I've also seen "vibe sickness" applied.