I also would like to learn this. Since you people federated I’ve seen more posts complaining about how aggressive users of this instance are than I did from users of the instance. Yall do seem to think about politics (edit: and hate liberals) a lot more than the average user but I’m yet to see the ‘vitriol’
Edit: this is a genuine question. What bad experience is everyone talking about when they say hexbear is toxic?
we’re very active and have an anti-lurker culture + no downvotes, so if we see a bad take, we reply instead of downvoting and moving on. this leads a lot of people to get very animated and angry about us.
agreed! criticism and folding received criticism (even when it’s offered abrasively) back into your own behavior is essential. this was one of the motivators in disabling downvotes.
Early on hexbear really came out swinging and users were basically dunking on people left right and centre in lemmy.ml worldnews so that liberals would post something dumb, be prodded slightly by one or two users, then say something incredibly bad and have several hexbears dunk on them, then because of how active sort works their comments would be pushed higher up in the thread as would the thread into people’s feeds and then they’d get absolutely swarmed at that point.
Yeah, I can see why people who have curated their feed a certain way and have a certain style of browsing schedule (or especially a certain Brand of politics) would see us as this monolithic troll army that came out of nowhere while others would just be kind of baffled about what everyone’s complaints are.
I think it’s largely a disagreement about who is fair game as a target for aggression. Even the “I think everyone should be kind to everyone at all times” crowd has their own share of unkindness, because their concept of kindness tends to revolve around interpersonal nonaggression rather than an empathetic validation of people’s experiences and feelings. In my experience, this emphasis on politeness over validation enables a lot of abusive dynamics. But it’s also a lot simpler to enforce and provides a pretty “objective” judge of correctness of behavior. If you’re focusing on validating people’s feelings, at least in a public forum, you run into many more zero sum games where by validating one person’s feelings, you invalidate another’s. This requires a more complete worldview to create an agreed upon set of standards for how those decisions are made.
In our case, we sacrifice the validation of our reactionary impulses for the sake of making the space more comfortable for the more vulnerable among us. We see this not only as a righteous tradeoff but also as a cornerstone of the culture we enjoy here. The casual support of marginalized people goes hand in hand with the chill vibe when we’re amongst ourselves.
The inverse of this is that we are critical of others just as we are critical of ourselves. For most people, it’s the pushback against criticism rather than the criticism itself that causes the real friction. Ability to self-crit is paramount to thriving here, and it’s a skill that is generally taught in a very toxic way for most people in the west. Criticism is used interchangeably with deprecation, when targeted at others as well as the self. So we draw a distinction there between deprecation and criticism and do our best to take a step back.
I know we’ve been rowdy with all the federation discourse, but people often fail to see the distinction between us being aggressive in the face of bigotry, us being invested in criticisms we’re facing, and us not taking the situation seriously or respectfully. I’m not saying the latter never happens. But it’s much less common than the first two situations.
Boy howdy. I’m still changing how I speak, what, six years in to the great hexbear experience? I’ve mostly stopped using “stupid” and i’m trying to replace mental health words as insults as much as possible.
I think it’s in the same vein as all the handwave-y claims as the bigotry and hate that’s present on hexbear and lemmygrad. Nobody ever links a post, it’s just an oft repeated fable that somehow becomes “truth”. (Yes, I realise the irony in not linking to a post here, but I’m lazy and I’m sure you’ve seen them)
If you actually look through the modlog on blahaj.zone, some of the stuff removed for “bigotry” is like… what?
And not in an “I’m cishet and I don’t understand why this microaggression is a problem” sort of way. You can just tell it’s some mental gymnastics about our politics, but the exact steps are rarely clear, at least not to me.
Just as a clarification, our hatred of liberals is not the same as that of right-wingers. We hate capitalist ideology, not “wokeness” or something nonsensical like that. We are the exact people conservatives are trying to shit on when they say that.
A bit confused. Are we aggressive? Idk I try to not be aggressive
I also would like to learn this. Since you people federated I’ve seen more posts complaining about how aggressive users of this instance are than I did from users of the instance. Yall do seem to think about politics (edit: and hate liberals) a lot more than the average user but I’m yet to see the ‘vitriol’
Edit: this is a genuine question. What bad experience is everyone talking about when they say hexbear is toxic?
we’re very active and have an anti-lurker culture + no downvotes, so if we see a bad take, we reply instead of downvoting and moving on. this leads a lot of people to get very animated and angry about us.
Most people can’t just move on when they see something that distrubs them, and I think it would be unhealthy for most to change.
agreed! criticism and folding received criticism (even when it’s offered abrasively) back into your own behavior is essential. this was one of the motivators in disabling downvotes.
Early on hexbear really came out swinging and users were basically dunking on people left right and centre in lemmy.ml worldnews so that liberals would post something dumb, be prodded slightly by one or two users, then say something incredibly bad and have several hexbears dunk on them, then because of how active sort works their comments would be pushed higher up in the thread as would the thread into people’s feeds and then they’d get absolutely swarmed at that point.
Yeah, I can see why people who have curated their feed a certain way and have a certain style of browsing schedule (or especially a certain Brand of politics) would see us as this monolithic troll army that came out of nowhere while others would just be kind of baffled about what everyone’s complaints are.
It’s like wasps leaving pheremones on a fresh carcass.
We just
Patron
saintof hexbear.He would not approve of the sainthood most likely.
Martin Luther, OCD icon 😻
The only people with bad experiences of hexbear are bigots and ideologically committed neoliberals.
I think it’s largely a disagreement about who is fair game as a target for aggression. Even the “I think everyone should be kind to everyone at all times” crowd has their own share of unkindness, because their concept of kindness tends to revolve around interpersonal nonaggression rather than an empathetic validation of people’s experiences and feelings. In my experience, this emphasis on politeness over validation enables a lot of abusive dynamics. But it’s also a lot simpler to enforce and provides a pretty “objective” judge of correctness of behavior. If you’re focusing on validating people’s feelings, at least in a public forum, you run into many more zero sum games where by validating one person’s feelings, you invalidate another’s. This requires a more complete worldview to create an agreed upon set of standards for how those decisions are made.
In our case, we sacrifice the validation of our reactionary impulses for the sake of making the space more comfortable for the more vulnerable among us. We see this not only as a righteous tradeoff but also as a cornerstone of the culture we enjoy here. The casual support of marginalized people goes hand in hand with the chill vibe when we’re amongst ourselves.
The inverse of this is that we are critical of others just as we are critical of ourselves. For most people, it’s the pushback against criticism rather than the criticism itself that causes the real friction. Ability to self-crit is paramount to thriving here, and it’s a skill that is generally taught in a very toxic way for most people in the west. Criticism is used interchangeably with deprecation, when targeted at others as well as the self. So we draw a distinction there between deprecation and criticism and do our best to take a step back.
I know we’ve been rowdy with all the federation discourse, but people often fail to see the distinction between us being aggressive in the face of bigotry, us being invested in criticisms we’re facing, and us not taking the situation seriously or respectfully. I’m not saying the latter never happens. But it’s much less common than the first two situations.
Boy howdy. I’m still changing how I speak, what, six years in to the great hexbear experience? I’ve mostly stopped using “stupid” and i’m trying to replace mental health words as insults as much as possible.
I think it’s in the same vein as all the handwave-y claims as the bigotry and hate that’s present on hexbear and lemmygrad. Nobody ever links a post, it’s just an oft repeated fable that somehow becomes “truth”. (Yes, I realise the irony in not linking to a post here, but I’m lazy and I’m sure you’ve seen them)
If you actually look through the modlog on blahaj.zone, some of the stuff removed for “bigotry” is like… what?
And not in an “I’m cishet and I don’t understand why this microaggression is a problem” sort of way. You can just tell it’s some mental gymnastics about our politics, but the exact steps are rarely clear, at least not to me.
I read a few pages of it just now. Mostly anti-communist nonsense, then the site stopped loading. Oh well, it was painful to read anyway.
Just as a clarification, our hatred of liberals is not the same as that of right-wingers. We hate capitalist ideology, not “wokeness” or something nonsensical like that. We are the exact people conservatives are trying to shit on when they say that.
deleted by creator
I do wonder what they think is the appropriate response to being called a bot or whatever is