Lately Iāve been seeing posters here express some form of the sentiment that Hexbear has fallen from its previous heights of glory and now we post amongst the ruins of greatness. This is not a response to anyone in particular, and I donāt want to call anyone out. In fact, it seems to be a normal human tendency to romanticize the past. But Iāve been here since the beginning and want to provide an alternate view.
1. Hexbear just isnāt like it used to be.
This is one I am particularly suspicious of, since people started posting this after the site had been around for a couple of months. Before that they posted about how chapo.chat wasnāt like the old chapotraphouse subreddit. If the good olā days ever existed, they always seem to have been just prior to the current moment. If anything the site culture and vibe have been remarkably consistent since its inception, for better or worse. Faces have changed, people have come and gone and sometimes come back again, but Hexbear remains.
2. People used to be nice here and treat each other as comrades. Now there is just a culture of shallow dunks.
Seriously? Be for real. Iām not going to deny that we love a good dunk around here, but letās not pretend that this is a new phenomenon. Itās a big part of the culture around here that predates the site and even arguably even the subreddit. You can be free to like it or not, criticize it or not, say its productive or not, but its definitely not a new development. Thereās always been a lot of love and mutual support, but also a lot of vicious arguments intracommunity arguments here. If anything I think thereās less of this now. The early posters would laugh at what passes for a struggle session around here these days. The VCJ struggle session seemed at the time like it might legitimately end the entire site.
3. This site had the potential to be a place for organizing and building something rather than just posting.
This one is an interesting counterfactual. From the beginning there was no clear agreement on what the ultimate purpose of the site would be, and there were definitely people who saw the site as having revolutionary potential. There were also people who saw it as a place to hang out and shitpost among comrades and were skeptical of its potential for organizing. Over time, I think itās become clear that weāre closer to the latter than the former. Iām okay with that, personally, but more than that I think itās worth considering why despite having a lot of smart, determined people on the site, organizing never really materialized, or if it ever had that potential in the first place.
4. People used to post effort posts and stuff and now its just a bunch of shitposting.
Itās always been mostly shitposting. This is one of my first comments on this site. Itās hard to say if there really used to be more effort posts or not, but whatās stopping you from writing an effort post if you feel like Hexbear needs more of them? Iām doing it right now, and so can you.
One thing that really has changed is that we used to have more comrades actively working on developing the site. Hopefully more people will step up to do that (not me though because I canāt code).
In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been. Enjoy your time here without worrying about whether it measures up to some imagined glorious past. If thereās something you feel is lacking, step up and contribute it. This site is nothing more or less than the sum of our contributions.
- Hexbear just isnāt like it used to be.
Does anyone actually miss how Hexbear used to be? Iāve been here since day one, and most of my memories of the first twelve months or so are of endless drama, Kerryposting and people being awful to each other. Remember when people hated the mods so much that a lot of people called for āmod electionsā, and then the mods called it a ācolour revolutionā? That shit was ridiculous. People on hexbear are really good to each other now compared to the chapochat days. Look at any of the trans threads, mental health threads, self-improvement comm, anywhere in the megathreads.
personally my favorite memory was the vegan war because holy shit was it easy to dunk on carnist arguments, I was like fuckin Lebron James for an entire week until the mods had to shut it down because we were too powerful
Oktherebuddy
This site was extremely aggressive and full of constant fighting and struggle sessions in the early months. The people who couldnāt just accept that this isnāt Reddit and your fellow posters should be given the benefit of the doubt either mellowed out or left and I think this place is better for it.
It was filled with infighting forā¦ a lot longer than that i feel
When I first found this site back in 1999 by opening Netscape Navigator and typing āCan bears have more than five sides please?ā into AltaVista, it was perfect. I think the Y2K bug hit this site particularily hard.
hexbear was better when it was a bbs
Eh it was really at itās peak back in the 70ās when it was an underground zine. It turned downhill fast when itās main editor got kicked out of the scene for creeping on little girls - It was a different time!
Pshhh, everyone knows that we were at our prime when we were the main delivery service for Yippie activities to be coordinated without USPS surveillance
- This site had the potential to be a place for organizing and building something rather than just posting.
Itās a place to go when something happens in the world and you need a sane evaluation of it, either found and posted or talked about in a comment. Thatās what it is
Hence why Iām here every day
Iāve been here since the r/cth days and imo this place is about as good as itās ever been. There was a 1-2 month period right around the start of federation where it became 100% dunking on idiot libs 100% of the time, which got a bit tiring, but I think things have stabilized and this is a basically good place to hang out online. Honestly Iām really happy with the state of the fediverse in general, Iām enjoying mastodon & lemmy more than I ever did twitter or reddit. We did it! We fucking did it! We built a real actual place to hang out online that doesnāt just feed into some VCās pockets! And all we had to do for that is do what we do best: posting (and a lot of unpaid work on the part of people building & maintaining the infrastructure lol).
Mastodon, like Tiktok, inexplicably becomes good if you stick to images of pics of wildlife, zoos and landscapes etc
People are funny things. Change too much and theyāll say youāve jumped the shark, change too little and youāre accused of being stale and outdated.
Honestly, I think we have a good number of silly and serious posts. Although I do want to start making more effort posts.
I think the problem with using Hexbear to organize is the danger of being doxxed. It can make it hard. I think more posts about union tactics and organizing, how to spot feds etc etc would be welcome.
This site does do good though. Particularly when we get together and donate money to our struggling comrades. I think what we do does help people, even if itās not much.
If people want to get more serious I welcome it though, theres always a good reason to help people get some real praxis done.
Like you said, this site has survived so many crazy things. I doubt itās going to die anytime soon. Hell, Iāve been here long enough to remember that people have been crying wolf about the site since day one, lol.
I am just here for the vibes.
the_dunk_tank is a bad concept for a subbear and I wish it wasnāt so prominent.
The internet is a communication network with billions of people connected to it. Of course somebody somewhere will say something stupid on it. Every day. You shouldnāt pay attention to it. It also amplifies people who deliberately voice shit opinions for views.
Good sense says focus on quality instead of deliberately wallowing.
People were already posting those takes here, the_dunk_tank is around so people can unsub
Itād be fine if it was people who mattered, or people we thought were on our side, or exceptionally bizarre and verified to not be trolling. Showing some random Redditor is an Epstein-defending paedophile isnāt really useful to see.
Somewhat contrary to my other post in this thread I actually think the dunk tank is an important place for people to learn. Putting colossally bad takes on display for folks to mock and tear apart is a great way for some folks to learn. Maybe they have a similar take and can see why that take is harmful. Maybe they didnāt know they had a take on something and seeing a bad take get obliterated can help them form a good take on it.
Also itās just important for anti capitalists to have a safe space to vent. We canāt safely vent in society most of the time so itās important for us to have a place to blow off steam sometimes too.
Maybe they have a similar take and can see why that take is harmful.
Well, Iāve also seen it happen a few times where someone makes a dunk post about something and any actual criticism of it is flushed out by shittons of weird memery, because posters are more concerned about following the correct line than having takes because of actual reasons. Itās not even remotely common, I think Iāve seen it maybe once or twice total, but itās a concern.
I think the dunk tank could use a threshold of importance
Not a bad idea tbh
It should be used exclusively to get mad at official Anthony Blinken tweets.
The dunk tank is a containment sub like fakenews is. It sadly still spills over into other Comms at times.
In the effortposting post I made this point and I think it stands for basically any cultural quirks we have here aside from maybe our more deeply held ideologies. This is a really small site - according to the stats in the side bar there are less than 1000 visitors per day. I would love to see what the daily comments per user distribution looks like but I suspect the median is close to 0. This means that the site is just really suceptible to noise. Small numbers of users who do particular things like effortposts can become part of the ācultureā even if itās really just like 3 people. When a couple of those people get tired of doing it and leave then things are no longer āhow they used to beā.
I think this applies to more than just effort posts. The ācultureā is going to change pretty rapidly in some cases because itās not really a culture. It seems like a culture because our view as an individual user is zoomed in but in reality itās just a handful of people doing a thing and they might stop doing that thing at any time.
On point 4: I do think effort posting has reduced and part of the reason for this is that the biggest people that were previously doing it couldnāt stop being fucking dickheads to anarchists.
I loved Joey Steelās posting for example but they just couldnāt stick to the non-sectarian rule and for that they got the yeet. This is just one example but it happened to others too.
I donāt see a solution to this, short of alienating large swathes of people that should be our comrades despite ideological differences. The non-sectarian line must be maintained.
Never ask:
- a man his salary
- a woman her age
- a poster on hexbear what they really think of anarchists
I love my anarchist conrads aktually
Same
Honestly sick of walking into random leftist spaces and see people having incoherent rants about why every leftist they donāt like is a NATO fed liberal red fash tankie and get distracted and obsessed with random conspiracy theories about infinitely far away countries, instead of staying focused and on-mission with the huge number of things actually in our faces to deal with. Sure, HB isnāt perfect, but it is.
every leftist they donāt like is a NATO fed liberal red fash tankie
This would be an ad verbatim comment on this site if you removed the tankie and red fash part
Honestly the best solution to something like this is for anarchists to have thicker skin.
(Disclaimer so that mods donāt remove this post: Iām an anarchist myself)
Nah the issue goes both ways. Itās not just about thicker skin itās that any leeway on this topic is a slippery slope that will lead to immense struggle sessions and ridiculous very-online melodrama. Itās also the easiest thing in the world for wreckers to agitate through, both ways, and they know it. Anti-sectarian rules over on reddit are less about sectarianism itself and more about preventing the immense amount of wrecking that comes through it.
That may be true, but I take more offense to the banning of bmf than I do to their sectarian comments (have you ever noticed that they donāt engage with anyone, and have never replied to any comment? every one of their posts and comments is once-off). I even appreciated JoeySteel.
Personally, every now and then Iāll come out and say something about how rigid pyramidal power structures were carried over from feudalism to capitalism, and a successful and true socialist movement is going to have to ditch them. I think thereās a lot of constructive criticism to go around.
I think sectarian posting should be allowed, as long as itās high effort analysis and not deliberately trying to be antagonistic. I think that would encourage more dialogue rather than stifling it.
I think thatās just inviting an entirely avoidable drama outbreak that will 100% occur when the borderline between āhigh effortā and not is found and repeatedly tested by those that wish to deliberately see the drama happen because itās very funny.
Hexbear has fallen, billions must post
In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been.
More emotes now though, and theyāre categorized!
looks like anti-rate-limit-action threw some bricks into emoji-pickerās windows
I donāt understand this joke but I appreciate it nonetheless
Previously the bottom half of the emoji-picker wouldnāt show up, ever, because you used up all the HTTP requests the webserver would allow you to have (aka rate limit) just to scroll through the first half. At least, thatās what I think happened.
Oh thatās fun lol
Just to clarify, because maybe Iām doing something wrong, but the emoji picker canāt be accessed through apps like Eternity, right? I try to save posts with emojis for later use or search for them on the site but through the app if I want one, but Iād love to use the emoji picker if possible.
personally Iām waiting for the five year mark before I start whining about how this place used to be funny and epic but now itās cringe and full of newfriends
Just get the mods to ban all the posters who have been here more than a year and then you can say whatever you want! Whoās going to argue?
The one thing I would like to see less of is folks trying to bait others into getting themselves into trouble. We all have some problematic opinions or do or have done some problematic things somewhere. I know it. Not a single one of us is the perfect leftist from birth until now. Itās impossible. All we can do is our best, and sometimes someone is in a different spot in their journey of unlearning and relearning. Theyāre doing their best too just like you. They are on their journey. Theyāll get there just like you did and they could use the help. Stop trying to get people banned just to make yourself feel superior. Baiting is sectarian.
This isnāt to say we shouldnāt be trying to protect our community, we should. The people who are actively trying to push harmful shit or refuse to try to learn? Fuck em. Dunk on em all day. Remove harmful posts even if they come from a good place. Ban frequent harmful posters. Keep doing those things, itās important to protect the community. But baiting folks who are trying to learn or are trying to do the right thing into getting their posts removed or getting banned isnāt helping. Teach folks who want to be taught rather than try to tear them down. Lift each other up. This is a community that removed down bears in an attempt to drive more discussion (among other things), so stop trying to lead that discussion down a path thatās gonna get folks into trouble. If someone is gonna do harmful shit on the regular they donāt need your help, theyāll get themselves banned.
Trying to play Leftist Highlander isnāt helpful and will only result in nobody being on the site, because not a single poster here is perfect, so expecting literal perfection is entirely unrealistic and trying to hurt each other over it is childish.
Anyway thatās my 2 cents on the vibes lately. Watch as someone uses this post to try to bait me into getting banned. You wonāt be able to.
To add on to that, I would really like to see people being more welcoming of heterodox opinions. Iāve posted a few things that goes against the hexbear party line over the years, and a few users will interact and discuss on a polite level, but most are so caught up in them having the ācorrectā opinion that they never stop to interrogate what it is they believe and what lies at that beliefs foundation.
To give an example: I once said that unironic calls for genocide of white people was bad, and a lot of users called me a lib and mocked me for being offended. A few interacted with the post, asked clarifying questions where I had been unclear, and that was well and good.
I guess that might be more of a reading comprehension thing.I think cats should be allowed to stack rocks.
As long as the cats are indoors
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Yeah I recall seeing that, thinking it would be a good discussion, and just bailing out of the thread when it was just a wall of nastiness rather than anyone actually confronting the take and discussing it. I donāt really know how I feel about that specific topic and would love to see and participate in some discussion around it but am too afraid to say the wrong thing and get chased off the site for trying to learn and form a take on it.
I think the sort of behavior of tearing each other down for having a āwrongā take on something that could be an interesting discussion prevents the sort of effort posts folks say theyāre looking for. I know I stay far away from threads that could turn controversial because I know Iāve got some dumbass brainworms too and Iāve seen what happens if you accidentally expose yourself as an idiot. Again none of this applies to things that are clearly a wrong takeā¦like letās not engage in good faith discussion with terfs or nazis or anything, but there is a line at which we should agree someone is trying and we should work with them at that point rather than tear them down
Yeah Iāve had a few and they often leave me disappointed. I try to preempt these things by writing the general consensus of hexbear, before I write why I disagree with it, but you still get tons of users just regurgitating trite talking points which theyāve never looked into themselves.
Some people on here use āleftistā as an identity signifier that shields them from ever bettering themselves.
I once said that unironic calls for genocide of white people was bad
Accusatory posts about āwhite genocideā are never gonna result in anything other than toxic threads
Because the very premise itself is in bad faith, EVEN IF the user making the argument believes theyāre doing so in good faith
And the toxicity is amplified ten-fold when posts like that are made on a site that is (letās be real) majority white
Only three things have ever really annoyed me on this site (aside of course from the wreckers and libs)
The siteās knee-jerk takes on 40K lore
Certain āPOC-relatedā analogy arguments used as a bludgeon in certain āvegan-relatedā threads of all things (tho that was three years ago, and it couldāve been the work of wreckers)
And finally the persistent efforts of a small group of wayward souls to wokeify what I will diplomatically call ālight skin identitarianismā
Aside from all that, this site is a marvel of forum engineering
Whatās your take on the current state of 40k lore?
It seems to transitioning to a living setting (stuff actually happens), but itās starting to feel like they ran out of space in 30k and they just want to play with the primarchs to sell more fancy models.
This risks losing the last remnants of social satire that they hadnāt dustbinned yet.
Iām gonna be honest the social satire from the 80s is at this point in time the weakest element of the lore (aside from the Matt Ward garbage that still hasnāt been purged from the canon) the resurrection of Guilliman and his reaction to the imperium is the most interesting lore of the last ten years and is a decent examination of imperial folly and its long term consequences and is way better than the tired āhardy harr Thachter is an orkā stuff lefists treat as the pinnacle of satire
The 40K crime books are pretty good too with the more mature and subtle satire, especially one scene involving mutants being burnt alive that had a strong racialized element to it that made me wince (in a good way), the artistic risk made by that author pissed off some chudy fans so the direction is pretty good
Horus Heresy was hit or miss but Iāve been happy with the Siege of Terra series because FINALLY the writers appreciate the scale of the universe, plus damn good characterization
Itās time to let go of the 80s and accept the franchise on its own merits both good, bad and cringy
Those are good points, tbh I think my fondness for the 80s stuff is they actually took swipes at existing politicians. Imagine a franchise doing that now .
Iām like halfway through Abnettās Battle of Britain in space book, but it sounds like I need to check out the crime and SoT books. Iām a sucker for siege stories anyways.
the artistic risk made by that author pissed off some chudy fans so the direction is pretty good
People actually treating the books like literature is to be applauded, I hope the author continues getting black library gigs. It would be really cool to have a better BL author cover the Votann at some point. Somebody who knows how to write well could do some cool shit about <current trends> with a culture that worships a malfunctioning AI.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on the topic. Itās nice getting to talk warhammer in a chud free zone.