If so, what are some misconceptions or seldom known facts?
I have an account on Hexbear, I also mod their !parenting@hexbear.net 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 !mutual_aid@hexbear.net 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 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 have a Hexbear alt. I use it, ironically, when I don’t want to talk politics, or if I want to keep up with the news, as the News mega is very useful.
A lot of people hold contradictory views about it, or think it’s some hyper-toxic space, but in my experience its less toxic than most other instances on Lemmy and gets into far fewer arguments. I love using the games comm and other hobby comms.
I also run a Capital weekly reading thread there, though momentum was hurt by the debacle a few months back regarding domain name.
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’ll repeat a comment that I said once about hexbear:
I can feel a deep fire burning in almost all of Hexbear’s comments, quite different from most communities that just whine without purpose.
They are more of community than the rest of Lemmy.
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.
Literally something I’d say like 12 years ago.
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.
Removed by mod
Browse the news mega or other serious threads. Not everything is a joke post, though there are many of those.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
that hexbear supports the entirety of russia. a lot of times i hear stuff like “they don’t actually care about queer people since they support russia”, which is a gross oversimplification of their views. they hate russia’s reactionary politics.
this misconception i think comes from the war in ukraine, in which if ukraine wins, they get to join nato. hexbear considers nato to be an imperialistic organisation that holds power towards a large portion of the world, and therefore, anything that opposes it should receive support, albeit critical.
that hexbear supports the entirety of russia
“critical support” means supporting it critically. literally meaning don’t agree with all of what they do/are/stand for. its impressive how focused the haters are on strawman.
I think that has a good chunk of libs that see “Critical Support” and think that you support that soo much that is doing double damage…
A lot of people have a purist attitude to politics. “Critical support” is a vital part in understanding these positions of Hexbear and others, that one can support a side of a conflict and still be critical of it. Geo-politics isn’t a simple binary. No two groups will perfectly align, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see mutual lines of benefit despite their disagreement. For example, just because someone supports Ukraine doesn’t mean they have to defend everything their government does, such as supporting the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. It would be absurd to assert that! Similarly, it would be absurd to tell the communists still crying about 1989 that they support the entirety of the capitalist Russian Federation, the same RF that destroyed many of the gains the USSR made for both countries by enabling oligarchs to loot the place and plummet life expectancy.
God forbid a sovereign nation can choose its partners…
Always very annoying listening to dipshits for whom history began in 2022 lament on how Ukraine’s sovereignty was violated and they should be allowed to align themselves without interference. Just as long as they don’t align against the west in which case you perform a violent coup on the behalf of neo-nazis who begin campaigns of ethnic cleansing.
But that didn’t happen doesn’t matter.
There is no scenario where a country can unilaterally help themselves to the internationally recognized territory of another. That this simple truth is even in question to you entirely dismisses any point you are trying to make.
Russia has no claim in any way shape or form to any territory that is not currently internationally recognized as theirs, doesn’t matter if the country was in the SU, Warsaw pact, russian imperial sphere, has russians living there, has russia feel “encroached upon”, or any other imbecilic pretense apologists like to bring forward. It isn’t theirs.
Usually when you post beneath a comment it’s understood to be a reply to that comment, which doesn’t seem to be the case here because you’re completely talking around everything I said in the comment above.
Speaking of imbecilic though, what’s your point at all? “You’re not allowed to do the thing you did fait accompli because it’s against the rules I made”
Baby brain.
That this simple truth is even in question to you entirely dismisses any point you are trying to make.
I don’t need to engage with you over this. We fundamentally disagree on a moral absolute.
Burgerland occupies Hawaii and part of Cuba just to name a couple of places, but sure it’s defending sovereignty of a nation where it overthrew the legitimate government in a violent coup. 🤡
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE STATES GUYS, THE STATES
Fuck them, i have no love for them either.
The states is literally running a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine, but yeah we’ll just ignore that important context because it doesn’t fit with the narrative you’re peddling right?
Well can Eastern Ukraine?
Because as a “sovereign” nation, Ukraine is an amalgation nation of two bordering existing countries of which the partner organisation NATO’s sole existence in question is to be enemies with one of the two bordering countries and thus used deadly violence to suppress any dissent from its Eastern half.
This is in stark contrast to the US full-scale invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and further invasions of Libya, Syria and Palestine which WERE sovereign nations, where no such dilemma took place.
Bush’ full scale invasion of Iraq was based on lies.
Bush’ full scale Afghanistan invasion was based on searching a fugutive.
The full scale bombardment of Lybia was because the US did not like Lybia’s leader.
Same with Syria.
For Palestine, it’s Israel that wants to genocide the country.Don’t forget their unprovoked, full scale bombardment of Yemen
thus used deadly violence to suppress any dissent from its Eastern half.
The violence started when the Russian puppet president walked away from an EU trade deal that he literally campaigned on making, then cracked down on the resulting protests. Then an actual Russian created rebellion started. Calling that “suppressing dissent” is disingenuous as fuck.
Like it or not, the reality is that regions in the East of Ukraine were very much on record as supporting Yakunovych, and closer relations with Russia, for decades. There’s only one reason the Minsk agreements fell through, and it’s because they did not want to give eastern regions autonomous votes.
If the other half of your country coup’d your president, half-outlawed your language and ignored the political will of your half of the country, you might have a right to be upset and label that suppression.
Why would you lie about something that’s well documented, this isn’t reddit.
The greatest lie the west ever convinced itself is that trump is a Russian puppet, how many levels of American bureaucracy has to be compromised to even allow for this? Hahaha
Yanukovych. Try to keep up.
“it’s not suppressing descent if you accuse the people you’re supressing of being Russian agents first”
Thank you for that insight, senator McCarthy.
Ukraine population: overwhelmingly supports trade with eu.
You: CIA backed color revolution!
Russian soldiers: taking geotagged selfies in Ukraine by the dozen, revealing overwhelming Russian military involvement in 2014.
You: Nuuu, putin wouwd nevewww 👉👈
It’s a really convenient narrative based on the fallacy of homogenizing Ukraine. Let’s take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here’s the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here’s how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Either you’re intentionally spreading misinformation here, or you’re far too ignorant to discuss the subject you’re attempting to debate here.
Ukraine population: overwhelmingly supports trade with eu.
Reality is whatever I want it to be
“Suppressing descent is fine if you claim the population ‘overwhelmingly supports’ you”
Why even bother with elections at that point? Just claim anybody who wouldn’t vote for you is a RuSsIaN AgEnT
Support for eu trade was high enough that yanukovych campaigned on it. Are you saying that’s not true?
Also are you saying contracted Russian soldiers weren’t in luhansk and donetsk in 2014 and onward?
Yeah, they’re chill, idk. If you enjoy arguments and can handle some friction without breaking down, you’ll fit right in, I think. The only main difference I’ve noticed is that they’re a bit gayer than folks here, or at least talk about it more, and they don’t use obvious American propaganda/party lines as the framework to understand the world.
We did a census a while back and literally like 1/3 of the people were straight/cis
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 and decide for yourself what you think of it.
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 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”?
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 don’t even have any issue with anti-western sentiment but when you’re trying to pretend to be the ‘good guy’ while being Putin’s mouthpiece, similar to Trump, I’m going to call you on your bullshit.
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’m literally seeing they say leftist things all day every day.
for some reason i knew this thread would derail very quick, hence why i called op to see it for themself and at least get the idea from someone who isnt an anticommunist like yourself.
(also you gotta admit its pretty ironic that trump is uniting the whole world against the us empire while also destroying it from within)
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
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.
Hexbear has plenty anarchists. Left unity is a strictly enforced rule and has like 20 dedicated emotes.
“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.
Not wanting to lick the boots of either the government or corporations makes you a centrist?
That’s news to me
Lmao, what?
angry thought terminating noises
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.
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.
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?
Only the biggest spoon.
What size is “big” for wheat bags? Itcs 25kg, so about the same as dirt bags, IIRC.
They are the only instance I know of with an active mutual aid comm.
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.
How the hell would you even know if they’re “no action”?
most leftists i know have organized, wants to organize, or currently organize in a marxist organization. because thats pretty central to most leftist ideologies.
i understand that might be harder in the us, because its the epicenter of capitalism and all anticommunist propaganda, but thats generally kind of a strawman.
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?
A billionaire by any other name will have just as broken a dick.
This comment may be funnier than you deliberately intended if you don’t know the rumors…
thats ok, people are allowed to plan ahead for something they can’t do right this second, its hard work you need time and energy for. participating in politics doesn’t have the same barriers to entry as being born rich or with big genitals.
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!
This account’s instance federates with hexbear. Outside of politics and topics du jour, there’s little difference between them and you or me.
they’re pretty fun and very queer (both strange and rainbow)
