Most hexbears are stand up chaps and under normal circumstances we get along great. The main issue as far as I’m concerned is that their posting culture does not align with what I want out of my Lemmy experience.
Basically, they are fighters. They run around the fediverse picking ten arguments at a time, getting in people’s faces, escalating moderation decisions to instance admins and generally have zero chill.
Me, I like to hang out with chill people and relax and shoot the shit about video games and stuff. Yes yes I know western imperialism bad, but after the fifth time I’m done with the topic.
Are they brigading communities? I feel like you can't do that one at a time, because you'd just get downvoted to oblivion for acting douchey. The plan to conspire and be dicks together makes it... worse.
I checked Hexbear a couple of times in the last weeks and although they brand themselfs as some lefty/communist/socialist community, I always thought it felt more like some edgelords being against for the sake of being against. Also the tone is pretty rude and made me think of certain Subreddits I usually avoided back when I was on Reddit.
Go check what’s happening on shitjustworks instance currently and say that again. It’s absolutely not just a problem of “posting culture”, that’s downplaying who they are and what they do.
They’re just straight up toxic 99% of the time and they don’t seem to want to do anything about it. It’s a resounding echo of a sentiment on most Lemmy instances that it is how they act and yet, I still see weird and factually wrong takes like this.
They run around the fediverse picking ten arguments at a time, getting in people’s faces, escalating moderation decisions to instance admins and generally have zero chill.
This is, for most people including me, toxic behavior. They have a toxic posting culture.
yet, I still see weird and factually wrong takes like this.
It helps if you engage with the “takes” before you label them.
I am downplaying nothing. I call it “culture” because it’s not about a substantive disagreement about politics or ideology. It’s about the way they engage with each other and the world around them. Their collective pattern of behavior. There is a word for that. It’s called culture. And it’s pretty fucking hard to break out of.
I find your insistence to dig in here frankly a bit baffling.
I'm fine with anyone though I checked out a recent post from their instance to get a flavour of what their community is like and I doubt they'd be fine with me - although I'm left wing I'm not left wing enough for them. Although I probably would have been when I was a teenager...
In that thread they describe how they have had negative experiences from other instances and seem to want to defederate. Abusive DMs. Transphobia. But then some talk about how it's not as easy to pile on a liberal as it was on Reddit as a reason. I don't know if their definition of a liberal is a good faith one or the same as when the alt-right say 'libtards'.
Are they tankies? Are they saying that Russia and China can do what they want because who are we as the US to stop them? Or are they legit just idiots making up random ideas and clinging to them? Subtle difference, I know.
No it was because we started before federation was in the codebase, and it took a lot of development work before we were able to federate due to the forks diverging. But ok genius.
They’re just trolls. They say their communist, but I haven’t seen any evidence other than they say they hate capitalism. But who doesn’t nowadays? Really they’re anarchists with nothing more to do.
Imagine the worst right wing trump supporter spouting off crazy shit and trying to get you pissed off. That’s them, but the left side.
They also like to team up and have multiple accounts.
Buuut… they usually hate all the same things I do, so it’s hard to hate them too. 🤷♂️
Usually when I see hexbear users around, they are just holding a normal conversation. But there's this one thread I found where a guy with three obvious alt accounts is trolling, and a dozen hexbear users are licking a certain dictator's boots. So I would say it ranges from Normal to Tankies.
More like anti-left unity. This person clearly hates both “tankies” and anarchists. Of course they probably have zero grasp of Marxist Leninism, Maoism, anarchism, or historical materialism in general.
Unfortunately they are very in your face unless you fully submit to their view. They belittle your efforts if it is anything but outright revolution, cheer on horrible regimes and deny genocides. Very US centric point of view.
Of course it is not all of them, but that’s what you will experience very soon if you interact with them, because it is a radicalized echo chamber let loose.
Our instance actually managed to get defederated from them though. Although it wasn’t handled well from either side they seriously only dish out, but can’t take a hit. I won’t say that nothing of value was lost, because there were a few moderate users and of course some interesting content might be lost, but overall my lemmy experience got better without them.
They're annoying, like over-caffeinated teenagers, and they like to use what I presume are something like Twitch emotes that don't work outside of hexbear, which looks really stupid.
I don't think they're evil or anything, but they're just so universally awful to deal with that I can fully support immediate no-questions-asked defederation. They're the fediverse equivalent of a decent enough guy who just fucking reeks because they refuse to ever shower or wear deodorant.
They’re a bunch of tankies who dogpile, sealion, and brigade at basically any opportunity.
They literally have a community on their website dedicated to shitting on people they disagree with while having rules that require you to provide a link to them and not having a rule against interacting unless it’s with instance admins. They’ll defend it saying it’s not for brigading but it’s obvious what it’s for. “This isn’t for brigading,” then doesn’t condemn brigading when it happens.
In short, tankies that won’t shut up and stop shoehorning themselves into every conversation. Feel free to block every user that will inevitably reply to this comment about how I’m not Trotskij-pilled and really a bourgeoisie Jeff Bezos semen demon, or some stupid shit like that.
The only time I've noticed hexbear uses is when they're calling out legitimate cryptofascists they I've already called out. I'm alright with that. Beyond that I mostly see nothing but pearl clutching.
My general experience is that they are obnoxious and combative and is working to make “the libs” have a bad time on Lemmy and when they are mentioned with these kinds of post they fill them saying that they are just some silly spicy boys in the hope that it will fool the people that are yet to meet them in the wild.
Personally I enjoy their antics, I prefer their brand to the one of the right wing circle jerk and if they manage to impede theirs I am more than fine about them.
I think a lot of the backlash is because people are used to being inside their comfortable echo chambers where dissenting voices are totally marginalised and they felt like their opinions were universally shared among sensible people.
With federation, those echo chambers are interacting with each-other a lot more than they usually would, on relatively equal footing, and being confronted by the idea that other people think that your opinions are shit and that you tacitly support some evil practice is an uncomfortable feeling! The natural inclination is to reject that sort of experience as a jerk who is intentionally trolling you, personally, because they’re wrong or brainwashed or whatever.
The reality is that we’re all just flawed people who aren’t very good at dealing with our emotions and it’s a lot easier to blame and banish someone who disagrees with us than to talk to them and come to a consensus. But the latter is how we actually solve our conflicts.
We have a lot more in common with each-other than separates us.
I would be happy to answer your question, but these things can be quite complex - would you help me by letting me know what you understand fascism to mean, and what you understand communism to mean? It’s important that we establish mutual agreement on the meaning of those terms before we can really discuss further!
We have a lot more in common with each-other than separates us.
This is the correct take.
People on this site have a bad habit of larping like any red or black army actually exists or is even likely to exist in the near term. Saying stuff like never organize with X group as though there aren’t already few enough leftists out here to begin with.
We’re so far from the point where we can even imagine what faction of the left will claim a majority in any hypothetical revolution and people are arguing about China or “red-fash” nonsense when we have a crumbling empire right at our feet that needs us to organize and unite.
We have a hell of a lot of work to do both in outreach and education and must provide a clear alternative to reactionary groups for the masses losing faith in the legitimacy or efficacy of liberal capitalism before we start rehashing 100 year old ideological beefs.
The tankies aren’t going to murder you, there’s no impending revolution for the anarchists to betray and thinking that the exact same historical conflicts and mistakes will be inevitably repeated is defeatist and anti-materialist.
A better world is possible. None of us can accurately say how or when we will get there but unless we get our shit together it will be to late. Maybe it already is too late, maybe the world has already ended but we have to at least try.
mostly just folks very resistant to learn some quite simple things due to their overly propagandized worldview
I’m talking about people that have trouble with basic understandings of political economy like:
leftism : anti-capitalist :: liberal : anti-communist
I can only imagine the shock they are experiencing
we’re mostly pretty chill if people can be chill with each other, unfortunately some folks are just uncomfortable with understanding the complexity of the world I guess
Add comment