idk, I’ve seen all the hype around hexbear users being obnoxious around Lemmy (including our own instance debating blocking the instance, followed by several of their members brigading the thread true to form)… but I’ve explored the communities on the instance itself and even subscribed to some of them like mutual aid, gaming etc, and those that I’m watching are actually just normal people doing normal things if more left than some other similar groups. In my experience it isn’t “all” hexbear users, because that would be a dumb generalization.
There are some assholes on that instance to be sure. Show me one that this isn’t true of. I’m glad our instance didn’t block them because I now get to decide for myself. I block communities and/or users if they’re a problem for me. I think that’s a good way.
Yeah it was, but it was only a few individuals. It wasn’t the entire population of the instance. I do sort by All quite a bit and honestly I don’t see much of note from any one instance other than weird porn or niche meme communities that I block individually as needed. I just nuke communities and individuals that annoy me.
Where are people seeing this hexbear and lemmygrad content? I use the Thunder client with a lemmy.world account. I don’t have those instances blocked but never see anything from them. Is it because I created my account on lemmy.world?
The majority of instances defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad.
I think if you have an account on such an instance you'll never see anyone or anything from them (correct me if I'm wrong).
If your own instance is not defederated from them, then you may see the odd hexbear or lemmygrad user or community, but since most instances have defederated from them, that also means that the communities hosted there won't have hexbear or lemmygrad users in them.
Likewise, if you are not defederated from them, and find a community hosted by an instance that is also not defederated from them, you will almost certainly see troll comments from hexbear or lemmygrad.
I hope that's somewhat clear.
Basic mental health config for a non tankist user of Lemmy is to block hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml instances first. Then, any user from there that you will see calling nazis anyone who don’t think like them.
I almost left Lemmy thinking it was a tankist shithole before understanding the pattern.
Then it gets back to the average former-Reddit techie activist, which is still pretty left.
Haha. And you decided to waste your mental energy to try and call me out. Two questions
Do you feel better about yourself?
What were the circumstances of the ban?
Edit: no response, so I guess I’ll enlighten you (and anyone who is interested)
The first ban was because I said something along the line of “Can we stop trying to normalize the use of the word ‘tard’”
The second ban was because I said “Putin had no reason to invade Ukraine”
And the third was along the lines of “I like having civil conversations with people with opposing views because it might give me info I didn’t know about and I might do the same, and if you talk disrespectfully to me, I talk disrespectfully to them”
Just revelling in the fact that the first thing you do after your ban is running to the most lib instance looking for reassurance that it’s the ebil tankies who are crazy
Well, banned for having mild opinions on US politics and then getting defensive when someone called them a genocide enabler. Sounds like hexbear did them a favor. If only the right-wing loonies were so quick to ban people who disagreed with them instead of setting up a big slide to draw them further in.
You’re looking at the lemmygrad ban where they got banned for saying that the opinions about US politics held by a person whos country is being exploited by the US don’t matter.
More the fact that they got detailed replies but their best counter in that whole thread where the two replies where they quickly google some shit and paste the first results and provided no thoughts of their own.
Those replies are terrible. The one with all the news headlines is peak hexbear. “Ukraine isn’t a utopia, therefore it’s a dystopia”. It’s a classic example of black and white thinking, while they conveniently ignore all of the Zwastikas on the side they’re cheering for.
I will not define insanity or who is or isn’t, but hexbear users’ stances and opinions tend to be missing nuance as one often do when one is terminally online and mostly form opinions based on the reverberations of an echo chamber.
They do occasionally have a golden meme, though. But the amount of shit coming from there got too tiresome, and I could only look past so many genocide denials before I ended up blocking the entire instance.
They’re not insane, they’re just victims of tribal thinking like the rest of us. Very narrow worldview reinforced by the others around them, bashing outsiders, thinking “they” are smarter than everyone else. Mostly, they see themselves as good and everyone else as bad, which isn’t very unique among humans either. I don’t think hexbear is worse than anywhere else.
I have to disagree with your last sentence. I do my best to treat people on the internet like I’m talking to them face-to-face. It’s the least that people deserve.
You can do these things while talking face-to-face with somebody.
Calling a whole bunch of different people with different opinions than you, that you don’t all know, “insane”, seems to me like you feel you are smarter/better than them.
Would you insult and belittle people in person? That’s what I’m referring to. You give them an opposing view and they go insane. I don’t care if they have a different opinion. Their opinion doesn’t impact my life. But if some of those people talked like that to people’s faces, they’d probably get punched
The times I went there with differing opinions I never got insulted. They think their views are right and (sometimes) mine wrong. They also shared their reasons and tried in their way to educate me. They have their own culture over there that is more rude/direct than normal, but it’s certainly possible to speak normally to them.
I think all people deserve respect by default. Only through someone’s actions may the respect for them be rescinded. Calling a whole bunch of people something is just almost never correct and only furthers any already existing divide.
Yeah, no. For example once you join the Nazi party, you gave up your right to be given benefit of the doubt. I am not going to waste my time on a theory that maybe you are a good nazi.
Im going to link your conversation here, where people were giving you detailed responses and you just kept shrugging them off so others can judge for themselves:
Genocide vs. harsh words are also similar in kind and differ “only” in degree… but that still makes them pretty different overall! Similarly, over-eating to become a little overweight, vs. being massively obese like 500+ lbs (226.8kg), is again a difference in degree though not in kind (perhaps? or arguably is there a threshold where…?). Another comparison could be Lemmy/Mbin(/Sublinks/Piefed/etc.) vs. Reddit: different in degree… but both are social networks so should we say not entirely in kind?
The average behavior of people experiencing hexbear from the outside - i.e. who did not choose it intentionally - is objectively much worse, compared to an instance such as lemm.ee. Again, in degree, even if not in kind. (you can literally measure the effect quantitatively, e.g. by counting the number of complaints lodged against it, such as this post; it may not be as hard a science as physics, but then again, other than physics, what is?)
I agree. But is a statement like “everyone in hexbear is insane” helpful in any way at all in this situation? The only thing it serves is to further any divide and cause more hostility.
They’re not insane, they’re just victims of tribal thinking like the rest of us. Very narrow worldview reinforced by the others around them, bashing outsiders, thinking “they” are smarter than everyone else. Mostly, they see themselves as good and everyone else as bad, which isn’t very unique among humans either.
Absolutely yes. I should have clarified that I agree with your first several points:-). I only disagreed (somewhat strongly) with the last one. Definitely the “is everyone insane (except me ofc 🙃)?” is hyperbolic, and mostly venting, and I even treated it as being a silly / unserious wording, but also halfway serious in terms of seeking information and reassurance that the Fediverse is worth visiting, if someone is more careful where they tread.
Therefore, the OP is not doing the identical thing in reverse, imho, b/c OP is responding to the way that they were treated, which is necessarily not thought-out fully but rather a knee-jerk reaction. OP came to us for help in emotionally processing what(ever) happened to them, whereas people on hexbear.net continually act that way for years and years, plus actively resist any efforts to change (which OP hasn’t even had the opportunity to do yet, this post being mere hours old), which seems to me more than enough time for them to have settled and made a conscientious, intentional decision as to how they want to live their lives. So again, yes OP may have done something of a similar nature, at least similar in kind, but the fact that the degree differs makes all the difference in the world. Maybe?
As for creating division and causing hostility, definitely users of Chapotraphouse have been known to do similarly… but if you want to respond that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, then I will preemptively agree.:-) Except that the Fediverse has in the past allowed no distinction between communities - TheDonald (if one existed here) would be presented to a (especially new) user in exactly the same manner as e.g. No Stupid Questions (technically I believe that 0.19.5 introduced the allowance for labelling a community by an instance owner, though I am aware of zero communities so far that have used this feature, and many instances have not even upgraded to it yet - at least mine has not yet, though I see that yours has and more are catching up as time passes, maybe even most of the major ones at this point? so maybe there are such labels all around and I am simply not seeing them, though reports such as OP’s and lack of discussion about such makes me strongly doubt that). Except the former would be much more likely to ban you outright for asking a “stupid” question (in their eyes), since as we agree, they feel themselves to be the sole arbiters and conveyors of truth, and moreover, unlike you and I who are discussing this topic so politely (and even pleasantly?) here, are not open to any dissenting POVs (+ are much more likely to enact a full-on ban rather than mere post removal).
Fwiw, I liken it to porn. If someone wants that… then they should be allowed to have it - why should I try to block someone’s access to a contentious conversation, or impinge upon freedom of speech in any way? On the other hand, when someone else’s freedom to speak impinges upon MY freedom to not have to listen to such crap, especially when it blows up my inbox (for WEEKS and WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding!!!), that’s where I draw the line. That’s literally not what “freedom” means - except in their eyes, where they feel that they should be free to ban outsiders, but not for outsiders to block them in return. Put another way: we control ourselves rather than spew our thoughts uncontrollably onto someone, but so many people on certain instances do the opposite, since their culture has taken root to actively applaud that behavior. And yet, except on instances that have already banned hexbear.net (& lemmygrad.ml, and imho lemmy.ml as well, except no major instances do the latter afaik), new users are constantly exposed to that porn style of “contentious content”, which goes against Western standards of normal behavior, without any such warning messages. Thereby leading to posts such as OP’s, who was shocked to see it. As so many have been before, and so many will continue to be, unless something is done about it.
So what I am getting at is that in large measure, what causes division and hostility is coming across such a thing unawares. If it were labelled, it would be different - e.g. if you clicked upon a post with an interesting title and a warning popped up “Warning: this community have chosen to voluntarily label itself as containing NSFW/NSFL “potentially contentious content”, please read this [external statement] before replying to anyone in it.” (and then had an option to not show again, when the user feels that they understand and don’t need the warning anymore)
But when you are just scrolling your All feed, as a day- or week-1 Fedizen, and suddenly come upon such graphic/contentious content… it can be more than a little jarring. So it’s not merely their particular style that is the problem, but rather (like porn) it is the infringement of that style upon the unaware users on the rest of the worldwide Fediverse.
I hope this further explanation was of interest to you:-).
Honestly my only issue with them is literally anyone who is not them is “an evil pro-genocide lib” (lib, liberal is like the biggest insult they can throw at you as it’s essentially the definition of their opposition.) Doesn’t exactly feel great to see an entire community see you as the absolute evil and everything that is wrong with the world just because you may not agree that an economy run by committee is the best way, or that an authoritarian “vanguard” is the right way to a better society.
If they’re all about workers solidarity and community then they should try to see us if anything as simply “ignorant” not stupid, not willingly aiding genocide, just lacking information that they could help share. Instead a lot of them are just vicious. There are some like Cowbee that seem like good people who want to help others understand their views.
Not all, but it’s definitely not for everyone’s tastes. Just block the instance and move on. Go to your user settings, blocks tab, scroll way down to instance, and put hexbear.net. You will still see posts from it and its users, but still that improves things immensely e.g. you won’t see communities on it anymore and you won’t receive notifications for when the people continue to respond to you weeks and weeks and weeks after some innocuous comment you made that they did not agree with hard enough and thus earned their undying ire.
I would rather in the future see such things be opt-in rather than opt-out… but then I don’t run an instance and this is what we have now.
Also most instances already defederate from lemmygrad.ml for the same reasons, but not yours so if you do it for hexbear.net then you should probably do it for lemmygrad.ml too while you are at it.
And then eventually, even if months later, you will find yourself doing this again for Lemmy.ml, for vastly reduced but again still similar reasons. That one will cost you some good communities, but is more than worth the cost imho to entirely transform your experience on the Fediverse, to have blocked the big three. Also some people add Midwest.social but I haven’t done that one yet. All of those call themselves “leftists” but more importantly somehow feel that their political beliefs entitle them to behave like jerks - not uniformly so but as you are seeing, definitely it’s a noticeable pattern.
The motto of the Fediverse: to stay sane, block early, and block often. To which I will add: you cannot control the entire world, only yourself, i.e. if it drives you crazy to see such, then curate your experiences.
Kind of annoying and disappointing that people won’t treat other people better
There, ftfy.
But also, that’s their right if that’s how they want to be… I suppose. It’s just that, again, I wish that it - like porn - were opt-in, or at least fucking labelled with a warning, rather than make each new Fedizen figure this out entirely on their own. Every single person that I’ve told about Lemmy comes back a week later with the same questions… did you know what all is on there? Places like Chapotraphouse are extremely special, but again, like porn, I’m not arguing that they should not exist, just that they be opt-in, possibly by labeling them. Not everyone wants to see random dicks in their All feed.
Many people playing “leftist” are this way, sadly. And <insert religion here>, and <insert country name here> as well, but my favorite example is “conservatives”… who despite both the name itself and the claim to want to return to “traditional” values, instead want to radically overthrow everything that has arisen for the past several hundreds of years.
It turns out that it is really, really, really hard to be truly honest with oneself, about whatever it is that we choose to believe.
That would work for some - hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml - but not for others, like lemmy.ml and maybe Midwest.social. At some point users need to start blocking on their own.
That depends on your client. Connect for lemmy shows a placeholder for comments from blocked instances. You can click to show the comment anyway or just blissfully ignore the high probability rage bait.
I actually like that implementation, because the obnoxiousness of hexbear users is context dependent. On posts about gardening and nolawns I’ll usually see what they have to say. On political posts, I usually regret reading their comments. So it’s somewhat nice to opt-in to comments on a case by case basis.
No need to delete posts here - it’s okay to be wrong occasionally, and anyway the wording here was ambiguous, and I had the same take as you at first until the explanation was delivered separately.