For me it's been like a splash of cold water to the face, remembering just how fucked up 
tier liberal takes were, are, and will likely continue to be.
I'm sure there's downsides to complacency, but it was nice having some ground assumptions when going into a thread, like "society can and should be improved somewhat" or "the ruling class acts in its own immediate self interests and any other claims regarding their motivations are propagandized lies" or "climate change is real, it's bad, and it's getting worse," or more trivial stuff like "Tesla cars aren't good."
I'm sure potential comrades are out there and while it really is necessary to reach out to more people at some point (offline too, orgs especially, but while we're here, you know?), it's been sobering to realize just how far rightward mainstream "progressive" liberal thought really is on average. 
This site was slowing dying before federation. Federation breathed new life into this website, so it's good.
The site was doing fine before federation. We had had much longer and slower periods. This is just much more activity than usual.
the site feels more lively these days and I appreciate the influx of new users. most of the people coming into our threads in the last couple of days have been comrades, not libs. I think they all know to avoid hexbear threads now.