If so, what are some misconceptions or seldom known facts?
I have an account on Hexbear, I also mod their [email protected] community, which has been growing steadily. It’s always wild to me to read what people think goes on at the site because, in my engagement with folks, it’s clear that everyone is just someone trying to get by in this crazy world we live in. All this talk about “tankies” or whatever, is pretty “online” behavior, and Hexbear often appears to me the least online by comparison. Sure, we’re active on the site, but I don’t get the sense that many people are wildly active outside the site, many people have negative views on most social media and have no interest in it.
The other thing that people never seem to notice is just how active our [email protected] community is, and just how generous the users can be. There is a real sense of community on Hexbear that I struggle to find on the wider internet. That probably has a lot to do with the relative size of the user base.
The term “tankie” exists independently and prior to the popularization of the internet
The resurgent use of the word “tankie” is a very online anti-communist pejorative, akin to “commie,” “pinko,” etc. I have heard the word “tankie” maybe once in real life.
I do browse. I agree with them on many political issues, and yet I can’t seem to get along with any of them. Why does it seem like they are all such assholes?
Just lurk there for a while. IMO, biggest misconception is that they’re omnicidal lunatics. They have a lot of in-jokes and bits that seem incomprehensible and border on unhinged to an outsider, and sometimes they kinda lean in to the perception. But if you spend enough time there you realise they’re very intelligent and deeply empathetic people. The “unlimited genocide on the first world” rhetoric is an expression of frustration rather than actual intent.
As far back as I can recall, there have been at least two types of internet forums.
There are ones where dumb people go to pretend to be smart, and there are ones where smart people go to pretend to be dumb.
The problem with the ones where smart people pretend to be dumb is that eventually it attracts actual dumb people. Then the forum dies.
Which one is .ml?
Yes.
they’re very intelligent
Lol
Browse the news mega or other serious threads. Not everything is a joke post, though there are many of those.
Literally something I’d say like 12 years ago.
If they’re deeply empathetic people, then why do so many of them support the Ukraine invasion and want them to roll over and give their country away to Putin?
This is covered in another thread on this post if you actually want to know. I suspect you don’t, and just want to post gotcha arguments in bad faith.
gotcha arguments in bad faith.
Pretty much sums up all of hexbear here.
I did come across someone’s explanation that they think Putin isn’t a bad guy just because he invaded Ukraine but that argument doesn’t really hold any water with me. I suppose the last hexbear users that i interacted with who wished death upon me for once again pointing out their lies and disinformation were also extremely empathetic? They’ve been defederated from most of lemmy because they’re super empathetic people too? Do you think people actually believe this stuff?
the least propagnadized lemm.ee lib has logged on everybody
Because Ukraine isn’t part of the first world, they do still want unlimited genocide against the second and third world.
Wholesome “every single motherfucking one of you should fucking die in a meat grinder because I’m very upset at what Rachael Maddow told me in 2016” moment
Here’s an idea! If you have so much empathy for them, take their place! Spare someone kidnapped off the street against their will the horrible death you want them to suffer on your behalf! You’re the one braying for blood, you go spill it.
This is not what “so many of them support” and I know you cannot source a popular post to prove otherwise because it doesn’t exist.
Hexbear oppose Putin, they just also recognise Ukraine and NATO also behave very shittily, sometimes moreso. There’s a recognition that the west have gleefully egged on this war at the expense of innocent Ukrainian/DPR/LPR/Russian civilian lives.
I am not joking when I say that I have seen evidence of the Ukrainian government wanting to destroy the Russian Federation than I have seen evidence of the Kremlin wanting to destroy Ukraine.
They have empathy for people outside the usa empire. Its not something a western supremacist like you would understand. Did you, for example, know that the people outside the usa empire are real humans? Because when I was a liberal, I didn’t.
I accidentally subscribed to one and it was filled with tankies acting like they were the true and righteous moral bastions of society while espousing blatantly ableist ideas and pure wishful thinking rewrites of history. I left and blocked that community.
Ableist ideas? Where? Report those, ableism is a bannable offense on Hexbear. Yea, there are a lot of Communists on Hexbear, same with a lot of Lemmy, so that makes sense.
I used to have an account. I was an old /r/chapotraphouse user before it got shut down.
A dipshit admin got mad when I referenced ridiculous drama that reflected badly on how the site was (and probably still is) being run, insisted to me that it didn’t happen, banned me before I could even post a link or screenshot demonstrating it happened, purged my entire comment and submission history (mostly news and longer pieces I found interesting, nothing even remotely rule breaking or controversial) then proceeded to monitor the creation of new accounts to ban any usernames similar to mine as soon as they appeared.
All of the exact behaviour that would have been endlessly made fun of for being so extremely online and extremely pathetic on the old subreddit.
That admin/mod who did that is now also banned and their posts also purged lmfao. Hexbear in a nutshell.
When someone is banned, their posts are automatically deleted, it’s not some crazy admin obsession to ‘purge your entire history’.
This story does appear to be “an admin abused their power to ban me, then that admin got banned for being caught abusing their power”. Which is not uncommon in online communities.
When someone is banned, their posts are automatically deleted, it’s not some crazy admin obsession to ‘purge your entire history’.
Nope. That’s not how it worked at the time. I even still have screenshots of being able to see banned users posts still there from around this time. My comments specifically showed “removed by mod”. I just checked and I can still see a post by an alt I made shortly after being banned (which was then also banned shortly after). So no, banned users did not have their posts automatically deleted.
This story does appear to be “an admin abused their power to ban me, then that admin got banned for being caught abusing their power”. Which is not uncommon in online communities.
That is not remotely what happened. The person in question continued to be a mod for some time. Their eventual banning had nothing to do with what happened to me or others.
There were multiple mods and admins acting this way around this timeframe against many users on the site, so they’d all have had to ban themselves for the same behaviour.
Edit: Actually, now checking again, and the mods account in question doesn’t even have the banned indicator, so I think they may have just deleted their account.
Damn what a shitty admin
You have 4 removed comments before the ban, the rest of your history is still very visible in your profile, so they didn’t purge your account, they removed a few comments, which is why it says, “removed by mod”. It’s funny reading your removed comments. The downvote removal is looked back on as a pretty good change. I’ve not used the site when it had downvotes, but frankly, I like that they’re gone. I don’t even know what the “main” issue is, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. The site has never struck me as a “Chapo” site, even though I know that is its origins. I’ve listened to the Chapo pod before, not for me, honestly. Frankly, seems that separating from the Chapo brand was the right choice.
Anyway, 4 years is a long time to hold a grudge.
You have 4 removed comments before the ban, the rest of your history is still very visible in your profile, so they didn’t purge your account, they removed a few comments, which is why it says, “removed by mod”. It’s funny reading your removed comments. The downvote removal is looked back on as a pretty good change. I’ve not used the site when it had downvotes, but frankly, I like that they’re gone. I don’t even know what the “main” issue is, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. The site has never struck me as a “Chapo” site, even though I know that is its origins. I’ve listened to the Chapo pod before, not for me, honestly. Frankly, seems that separating from the Chapo brand was the right choice.
Yes, it’s been few years and I hadn’t checked. I thought it had been purged entirely.
The main issue at the time was the general way admins/mods approached every issue, often in the most aggressive and hostile way imaginable and causing lots of unnecessary drama. Downvote removal and the name change of the site were part of a larger, fantastically absurd saga in which nothing was being handled well. With downvotes for example, where it was announced that any opposition to them being removed was innately transphobic, then trans users criticising this approach, only for said trans users to be banned for pushing back.
Anyway, 4 years is a long time to hold a grudge.
Not really “Holding a grudge” when I mention something directly relevant to the thread that asked about Hexbear accounts. It was just a bunch of absurd bullshit that’s part of the very dumb lore of hexbear.
There was recently an incident where a dormant admin account came back, took one side in an argument, and banned everyone who disagreed. And banned everyone who called that out. And tried to hide the bans behind some stupid “they all asked to be banned” smokescreen. Wrecking with admin access.
Purge your dormant admins, instance owners. You’ll never know whether someone comes back years later with a grudge.
They’re just fine. Our views don’t always align but I’ve found suspending disbelief is very different from believing.
I have some hexbear communities turned off in my feed, but I have subscribed to some also. Lemmy is growing but it’s still a small community. Sometimes, I want to see posts on a niche topic and I’ll take what I can get.
Huh. First time I saw this post, I figured it was bait. I’m pretty sure I was subbed to a couple communities on hexbear. Occurred to me today when I encountered this post again that I’d not seen any hexbear content for a while. Turns out my instance has it blocked. Not sure if it’s for technical reasons or moderation reasons. Does that go in the mod log or somewhere?
My instance also blocks both Lemmygrad and hexbear, even though Lemmygrad doesn’t really do trolling
hexbear is just fine. the “problem” with them is that they are leftists. same with lemmygrad or to a lesser extent lemmy.ml
i predict some people will hate a lot on them here, but you should simply just go talk to them, ask, and decide for yourself what you think of it.
What a crock. They’re “leftists” in the same way that MAGA people are just “free thinkers.” I can’t say I’ve ever even see a hexbear user make any leftist comments or points of view. From what I’ve seen, they mostly push Chinese and Russian government propaganda under with the facade of being ‘communist’ (again never have I seen any mentions of actual communist economic philosophy from any of their users just anti-western, pro Russian/Chinese government talking points).
i’m literally seeing they say leftist things all day every day.
for some reason i knew this thread would derail very quick.
You knew it would derail very quickly because that was your intention with your previous comment trying to paint these people as if they’re a bunch of innocent victims being marginalized for being ‘leftist’. They’re not victims, and they’re not leftist. They’re the same people you would have seen hanging out in /r/The_Donald or 4Chan ten years ago, who only leave their cave to stir up crap, spread disinformation, and brigade others, only now they’re cosplaying as leftists on a new platform.
I’m not surprised that you’re pleased with Trump as him, Putin, and Xi are all birds of a feather who want to control all the power and wealth of the world. These sure don’t seem like the type of icons communists would flock toward if you ask me.
They’re the same people you would have seen hanging out in /r/The_Donald or 4Chan ten years ago, who only leave their cave to stir up crap, spread disinformation, and brigade others, only now they’re cosplaying as leftists on a new platform.
Is this AI generated? Hexbear was around before the Lemmy fediverse even existed. They were on a forked version of Lemmy without acitivitypub for the longest time. If their sole desire was to brigade, isolating themselves doesn’t seem the way to go. Also, they were the first large Lemmy community so who is really brigading, the new people from Reddit or them?
We also know where they were close to 10 years ago it was /r/chapotraphouse lmao
Also, about half their community is trans. Do you really think so many trans people are Trump fans?
Authoritarian leftist things.
A lot of people on non ml/grad/hexbear instances are both anti-authoritarian and leftist, so they see hexbear as just as bad as capitalists in terms of being pro-opression
Hexbear has plenty anarchists. Left unity is a strictly enforced rule and has like 20 dedicated emotes.
That’s a weird take, Hexbear is obviously a Left Unity instance, and there are plenty of Anarchists on the site. To me, people who think like this really need to hone in on what exactly their objections are with “Authoritarian Left” thought.
“Authoritarian” is a meaningless descriptor. All states are authoritarian, what matters is which class is in control and thus exerting its authority. States controlled by the working class are demonized in the west as uniquely “authoritarian” because the corporate owners of the media cannot freely act as they please in the markets of “authoritarian” countries.
The US media is more than willing to praise Batista, Pinochet, even Hitler until later on, as long as they work with US Capitalists. Meanwhile, any country that attempts to assert its own sovereignty is immediately demonized and/or crushed via militant means.
What made you think I thought the US isn’t authoritarian?
Authoritarian means the government deciding what people can do or say beyond preventing actual harm to others, or causing harm to their subjects to promote the government’s interest to the detriment of the people.
Overthrowing other governments is imperialism, not authoritarianism - I’d define thr latter as largely internal, exceptions being eg. Singapore’s laws applying to Singaporean citizens and residents even when they’re outside of Singapore.
I never said you didn’t think the US was authoritarian. My point is that western media portrays other countries as “authoritarian” if they don’t play along with US economic interests, and will portray brutal dictators as defenders of democracy and freedom if they do play ball.
In the final analysis, “authoritarianism” is a matter of perspective, what matters is which class is exerting its authority, as all existing states are class states.
Those are called enlightened centrists and moral relativists, friend.
Lmao, what?
angry thought terminating noises
Not wanting to lick the boots of either the government or corporations makes you a centrist?
That’s news to me
Hexbear oppose Putin while frequently talking about theory and communist philosophy. There’s barely a single popular post that doesn’t at least reference leftist theory. You clearly are just talking 100% rubbish.
My bet is on you having been banned there for being some form of ass. Just because that seems to always be the case.
I was forced to “talk to them” when they were still federated and it was horrible. It’s totally fine to have a political opinion, but it’s another to turn every comment section into a warzone. Even responses to random memes would somehow turn into a political debate and due to their high user count and black and white thinking this quickly turned into them attacking anyone who disagreed even slightly with their views. Hexbear were making sure that anyone who isn’t a tankie had no reason to be on Lemmy because they’d be haunted every time they’d share their opinion.
I’m all for having a normal exchange of thoughts, but this is like sitting in a room with 90% extreme leftists and getting swarmed and called a stupid lib the moment you dare to introduce some nuance. I’m still more left wing than probably 70% or 80% of the Netherlands and yet I’d relate better to the average center-right voter than to these nuts
black and white thinking
What is an example of Hexbear “black and white thinking”?
The problem I have with hexbear leftists is the same that I have with all the other ones and it is because they are all talk and no action.
They are the only instance I know of with an active mutual aid comm.
I know for a fact that they’ve housed many trans people. They also had a shipment of grain with with their logo on it in Gaza. Pretty dope.
That’s a big bag of wheat. Did they send a big spoon to go with it?
What size is “big” for wheat bags? Itcs 25kg, so about the same as dirt bags, IIRC.
Only the biggest spoon.
How the hell would you even know if they’re “no action”?
Me and some other hexbears meet weekly and provide free food to our community but we never post about it online. Idk, just feels wrong to brag about it or constantly bring it up so this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it on lemmy
You have no idea what people get up to on the otherside of the keyboard. It’s silly to think people would chronicle everything they do on a Lemmy instance
Idk, just feels wrong to brag about it or constantly bring it up so this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it on lemmy
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging and normalizing productive behaviors, like actions and reading theory. I’ve seen some communities normalize the whole “you’re just an armchair posting online!” as a counterargument, or take digs at how they think most of the community don’t read any theory. And I’ve seen a touch of the second on Hexbear, esp. when some bears visited Lemmygrad during the domain registration issue.
I don’t brag about my antifascism and org work on Lemmy, but I really should start, to be honest. It’s the little things behind the scenes that people don’t realize gets done. Just make sure you’re careful with what information you share, because fash could be looking.
Fash is looking, and cataloguing.
is the same that I have with all the other ones
If I’m included in there, I don’t post online about actions I take because I can legally get fired due to my volunteer work in a socialist political party, and some of the community actions I have taken involved dozens of arrests. So I have good reasons to avoid disclosing info and getting dox’d.
I suppose this applies to many others.
It’s almost like there is actual persecution of leftists in the world, as opposed to whatever these chuds online with their “Woke video game” spreadsheets call persecution.
most leftists i know have organized, wants to organize, or currently organize in a marxist organization. that includes myself.
Organizing and wanting to organize are two entirely different things.
I want to be a billionaire with a large dick.
I want to be a billionaire with a large dick.
Elon, is that you?
This comment may be funnier than you deliberately intended if you don’t know the rumors…
A billionaire by any other name will have just as broken a dick.
thats ok, people are allowed to plan ahead.
not having time, energy or money to pursue what they want is sometimes what radicalizes people in the first place.
You and the rest of the West, my friend, but there are only so many Congolese penises (ethically sourced, of course…) to go around!
How, exactly, does one ethically source a penis?
Huh? Take your commie concerns somewhere else!
The other “problem” is that they were their own isolated place for a while which had an attitude of just laughing at or insulting libs instead of engaging (which is perfectly fine for an isolated website, where liberal intruders aren’t welcome), and upon federation suddenly became the largest instance at the time and many kept up that same shitposty dirtbag attitude, like posting PPB or just telling people to fuck off in reply to pro-capitalist arguments. So they quickly earned a collective bad reputation as rude trolls.
an attitude of just laughing at or insulting libs instead of engaging
Patently false. The PPB only comes out when it becomes clear you’re debating in deliberately bad faith.
Honestly anyone in this thread talking shit should pony up their chat logs so their behavior can be examined. 100% you stuck the stick in your own bike wheel.
I have a lemmygrad acct, possibly. but I just browse via this one mostly anyway.
My other account is on an instance that federated with them, this one does not.
I’ve never had any major problems from them, just bad takes and occasional belligerence from specific users. But I also don’t seek out their communities.
I wish we were federated with slrpnk.net honestly. The integrations you have over there are really cool (dokuwiki, etc), and you’re all comrades in making, IMO.
Yeah I like some of the hexbear comms and sometimes participate. Vegan Theory Club is an offshoot of Hexbear after the great vegan struggle sessions of 2021 when my account there got banned. We’re mainly a two discord servers called Vegan Theory Club and Vegan Home Cooks and we launched the lemmy more recently.
Just wanted to say, I like the posters from Vegan Theory Club, it’s a cool place.
Thanks! We’re trying to do something that isn’t just open source reddit clone by making it about the things we are interested and our own content instead of just spamming vegan blog links and filling the instance with fluff articles like a glorified RSS feed. I’m glad you like the posts!
I think they’re fine except for their more ridiculous vegan coms
I’m subscribed to their tech, gaming, and news communities. They’re fine, I don’t care to make an account on their instance but nothing wrong with the Hexbear communities I subscribe to.
I had a burner account back years ago before it was federated with the rest of Lemmy.
I’d already well-passed the stage where I was spending more time online than doing actual movement building on the ground so the low-content and causal comms are too chatty for me to even bother. There’s also some underlying abusive moderation (at least there was a couple of years ago), but that’s something I’ve seen on everywhere from .world to .ml, this is volunteer work and beggars usually can’t be choosers, there’s nearly always someone on a staff team who just deletes things they don’t like. Purging that behavior is tough without a healthy mod culture and mods who care enough to start a fight.
On the other hand, there’s some good comms among the slop and they keep liberals from coming in every minute with dumb questions they could have checked with a single web search or just reading an FAQ, so that’s a huge plus (tourists can go to lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml with any good-faith questions). Their dev work is commendable. For the place that it is, it’s done alright for itself, there’s a decent foundation from what I can tell, which is especially hard for a big-tent socialist site to build given the conflicting worldviews and values that arise.
If so, what are some misconceptions or seldom known facts?
It’s pretty hilarious how many of them seem repulsed by /leftypol/. They’re remarkably similar cultures, just less PDFs and “read a fucking book” culture, less catgirls and no ironic slurs.
