I’d say it’s worse, they’re usually trying to imply that the people engaged in the activity aren’t sufficiently allied with their pet political or moral causes. If you engage with their tweet-sized sniping the conversation inevitably leads to “why aren’t they spending their time and resources addressing climate change/wealth inequality/poverty/etc.”

Such arrogance. It's funny that you mention climate change because this project is a non-negligible use of energy that is indefensible even in the context of advancing "pure mathematics." It's literally computation for the sake of computing more things that haven't been computed before. The only end result is that we can say we computed more things.

Case in point.

Thanks for the jab but you are wrong, this is not how I meant my question. I am genuinely curious, as someone who has benchmarked their computer with prime95 and is not particularly mathematically inclined.

"When people say that other people usually mean X when they ask something, they are just ascribing that motive to another person, even if it is not what the asker has meant."