If you’ve heard of Chapo Trap House that’s them. If not, most of those kids/idiots/trolls are the type of terminally online fake leftists that give other leftist a bad image in general. They were so ridiculous Reddit got tired of their shit and banned them a couple years back.
Yeah they immediately took over Conspiracy and consolidated the hold on Conservative. Made me really sad as conspiracy used to have some incredible rabbit hole posts. Then one day it was just TD all over again.
When the sub was put on probation, the post Reddit cited was justifying violence against slave owners. As far as I can tell, you just made up that they threatened Reddit admins.
There were other things that went down to get them on probation. I can tell you’re gladly defending them though. Which is ridiculous so have a nice day.
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” (Among survivalists, or “preppers,” as some call themselves, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stands for “Foolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.”) Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Spez pretty openly fantasizes about owwning slaves
The_Donald was dead amd had migrated to a non-reddit forum a month before the ban. It was typical “both sides” bullshit from a dude who always uses the kiddy gloves with fascists while throwing the book at any leftists
Seeing the ban coming, they financed and suffered alpha and beta of the Lemmy platform we all enjoy. Then, they chose to become the most GLBTQ+ friendly destination on the internet.
As it’s always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
Their shit isn’t convenient or comfortable. It’s not easy to understand. And, I fucking love them for it.
edit: Lazy coders need choose a randomized target value and timing or be a moderator to avoid detection by the user. Perceiving is easy when your code is trash. Ask for help from an industrial engineer.
That’s the whole point of an echo chamber yes. You can say whatever you want without being challenged by other viewpoints and make anything seem plausible.
but they are linking a lot of outside sources. That’s what I mean by “backing their claims up”, studies about covid, about the ukraine war, about Israel, it’s not just someone making a claim and then everyone is nodding along.
What I am saying is they were able to completely upend the way I see the world and you just can’t do that by claiming thengs and linking to some other claims you make.
You seem to have lost the thread of this conversation, but this is how it started. Hexbear admins and mods definitely control who is allowed to post in Chapo Trap House, and related communities such as the_dunk_tank, even from instances other than Hexbear.net.
I was on lemm.ee when I got radicalized, all my life Ive been exposed to people claiming all sorts of things. I was a pro-NATO pro-Ukraine anti-ussr anti-china average reddit lib that they were able to convince otherwise.
It’s surprisingly easy to backup horrible ideas, but that shouldn’t be your only concern. You also need to think about the morals and what happened last time it was tried.
The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.
There’s much to learn from Stalin. But, advocating his authoritarian means is a bannable offense there just as they are in any meritable leftist forum. They tolerate a minority of revolutionaries ideologically leading the lumpen as it’s a historically very well-supoorted position. But, that doesn’t extend to physical force as that’s also a historically very well supported position.
It’s much easier, convenient, and comfortable to demonized them than understand them. They even provided proactive assistance when many were deciding if they should defederate. They voted internally for defederation to defend their community from the medicrity of the masses.
If not enjoying the image posts of young Stalin as some sort of brilliant maverick is mediocrity, well, so be it. They are clowns, and their beliefs structure is just like trump claiming he “loves the gays”
Young Stalin is where the good stuff is. It’s his implementation of those idealistic principles that’s unethical.
The rest of what you’ve said is strawman. Most important is the implying that they’re all of one mind. Diversity of ideology is perhaps their greatest strength.
As it’s always been, they cope with the horrible events with satirical, sarcastic humor. And, in the middle of that will be a well-reasoned, nuanced, and quite serious post.
Oh yes, they are so funny, misunderstood, thoughtful and nuanced thinkers.
The comrade in it actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for your moment!
Yes, please read what the .ee admin says about where the bigoted users originate and the actions of the hexbear mods in response. It certainly speaks for itself.
But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.
I’ve never seen this - not just from that instance, but literally anywhere on the internet, even back in the forum or bb days. But I’ve been looking for something like that for years, and I’d be interested. Do you know of any specific examples of this happening?
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.
There are three relevant things to say about hexbear.
It is not a serious instance. Or at least not completely serious; they’re mostly there for memes, funposting, “I know that feel” etc.
So they’re less like the meeting room of a communist party than like the bar where those communists hang out and drink beer, after the meeting is over.
I feel like this is often misinterpreted, as HB users say something that is mostly a taunt and others interpret as actual argumentation. And it also tends to attract younger users, who… well, behave like young people?
Even if not a serious instance, they’re serious about their views. Your typical HB user is communist, antifa, vegan, anti-cop, and interprets things in a very specific way. They’re rather transparent about it.
And, because of #1, they aren’t really willing to spend their time entertaining anyone’s counterpoints. It’ll be interpreted as sealioning or similar.
Hexbear was already its own thing before federation. As such it developed social norms that often conflict with the norms typically found in the rest of the Threadiverse (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed etc.)
For example, even if Lemmy as a whole is prone to intrusive political discussions, HB users tend to do it far more. Because they’re used to an environment where this is typically taken as OK.
When it comes to dealing with HB users here, my advice is the exact same as dealing with other users:
if you don’t like what someone is saying (because it’s idiotic, obstrusive, or whatever), block the person for some peace of mind.
if you’re consistently uninterested on the content coming from an instance, block the instance.
Is there something in the name requiring people to support fascism if it wears the right color?
Do some people fighting fascism (aka antifa) go overboard? Yes, certainly; that’s bound to happen with any movement, group, or cohort.
For example, someone might miss the target due to witch hunting, or adopt an “ends always justify means” mindset, or even conflate “non-suporter = enemy”.
However. By implying that “antifa is fascism wearing a different colour”, like you are doing, you’re showing to not understand the obvious difference between
individuals following an ideology grounded on xenophobia, nationalism, racism, militarism, censorship, suppression of your individuality by force, more often than not sexism, homophobia and transphobia; and
individuals who don’t want the shit above to transform their lives into living hells, including some willing to use force to fight back.
This conflation between both groups is not just immoral. It’s worse - it stinks stupidity and similar filth from a distance. As such I’m not wasting my time further with you, go chew some grass.
Plenty HB users are authoritarian. I disagree with them in this; however I don’t think that both things cancel out, given the fascism is orders of magnitude worse than authoritarianism alone.
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.
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.
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.
I normally search search by “all” when scrolling and I’ll see one or two posts from there. I haven’t really figured out all the technicals, but I see posts from all instances
It might vary from app to app, but there are usually options to toggle between Local and Everywhere for “All” content, if you want to see just what is on your own instance versus all other instances yours is federated with.
No, I find socialism and markets to be a capitalist compromise that still breeds wasteful middlemen. More regulated middlemen, but still. Communism is an economic framework, not a governmental one.
For sure socialism is a step up from cpaitalism, but I don’t think it’s enough.
Thats… kind of the opposite of socialism. Socialism, at least the ideal form, is when the ‘workers hold the means of production’, with no figure heads. This is closer to authoritarianism, with a charismatic leader commanding people to do things.
See this just reads as a complete misunderstanding of what communism is. The word Communism is derived from the word Commune, in which there is traditionally no standard power structure. Too much red scare propaganda. To me of the most prevalent feelings of authoritarianism in my life has been the boss/underling dynamic in the workplace under capitalism.
I’m pro communist economics and pro democratic governance. There is a reason the movement here in the US is towards “democratic socialism”, because they are two separate facets of a country. The governance (democratic) and the economic (socialism).
I’m not sure if you are saying what i said (that someone in charge sending his minions to harass someone is closer to authoritarianism), or him is a misunderstanding of communism.
I definitely should have used the word “communism” in my sentence, but since he used socialism, I didn’t want to change the subject from socialism to communism.
Being from Canada, and a huge proponent of social services and crown corporations, I’m definitely a socialist myself.
Nothing you’ve said seems objectionable, I can’t imagine what set them off.
Do you consider the party apparatus of say, Cuba, where every position is elected and has instant recall, and their last constitutional referendum passed with 90%+ approval, to be democratic?
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.