Has anyone else noticed how prevalent Hexbear posters have suddenly become? Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda. That or getting all excited about trolled libs. The way they tell it, you'd think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Not to mention, their info on the Fediverse observer is either straight up wrong or there's some serious botting going on. According to that, the instance is less than a month old, yet somehow they already have one of the largest, most active userbases, along with far and away the most comments of any instance.
Seems to me like Lemmygrad on steroids. Considering we defederated from them, seems like a no-brainer to block Hexbear as well.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
I promise most of us are nice people and fairly easy to get along with. We're just very... tired of certain narratives and ideas and dont have much patience for them. I honestly think some of my comrades can do a bit better at remembering the human here, but its also understandable why they dont have patience for certain things.
So I initially was super off put by hexbear when it started showing up. But reading through this thread, and your comments, I feel differently.
My main thing is the "own the libs" type narrative because I considered myself a liberal. I didn't want to feel attacked while trying to expand my view. But reading through these I think that's because Ive always defined myself as a "liberal" but I think I just conflated that word with "left"
Based off a lot of what I read here, I actually am considering joining the instance because I do agree with the sentiments and I do want to educate myself beyond what I've been taught in the very flawed US public school system and the headlines I'm fed daily.
Thanks for your responses.
Also, can you explain pbb to me because people were talking about the nuance of it but it just looks like some shitty pig balls to me.
A lot of people do this, I used to do this. Its basically the linguistic norm in America. Back when I was an Obama liberal, it was because I thought he supported my social democratic values (Berniecrat, basically) that I held at the time because he was good at pretending he did. And I definitely thought I was "the left" then. I've moved left from there since then. But I do absolutely identify with your position and why people saying "dunk on libs" might be offputting to someone who has always thought that liberal meant left. But yeah, by Liberal we mean the original definition of the term, "person who supports capitalism".
Eehhhhhhh I'm going to disagree that there's much nuance to this but I dont totally know the history of the emote lol. Maybe someone else does. I think its just something people use to respond to outright fascist opinions (which sometimes, there is an unfortunate crossover between the opinions of a centrist liberal and a fascist, which is where the saying "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds) comes from. But there's literally a post in our instance right now calling for people to chill a bit on using it and use it only when someone REALLY deserves it.
Also, thank you for keeping an open mind and being willing to learn new things.
Lib successfully owned
We say "own the libs" specifically for this reason. It's never alone, and always followed up by dozens and dozens of good faith posts and responses that attempt to peel back the "liberal" facade. Owning libs isn't owning people, it's getting people to abandon the fence and actually come to terms with or reveal their ideological positions.
The two options are either "oh shit, you're making good points and I'm going to pay more attention" and "fuck you, we need more genocide". Without fail we either convert fence sitters or force fascists to reveal themselves.
Hexbear is the Thing test for Lemmy instances. Which is why you should be weary of any instance that defederates us. Especially because the reasoning of "oh were niche" is bullshit seeing as how we have an active mycology comm and I've never brought up a topic there that didn't have people engage with me.
The fact that we're so ideologically consistent and coherent and have diverse interest groups is what scares fash. Because we can come into your Warhammer miniature comm, talk circles around you in your own topic and also call out the fact that you painted a panzer division emblem on one of your Repulsor models and then drag you out of the community kicking and screaming.
That's cool, and we would be happy to hang out!
Oh, and we don't just do politics, we have comms for music, movies, literature, random memes, and all sorts of things
It's almost like we're just normal people lol