We've seen an uptick in people posting dunks in here that belong in dunk_tank, as well as low-hanging fruit that gets removed from or isn't allowed in dunk_tank anymore. For context, rule 8 of dunk_tank:

Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this.

There's a reason that dunks are cordoned off to their own comm, some users rightfully don't want to see reactionary nonsense all the time, even if we're making fun of the person who said it. /c/cth is a general-purpose comm but it's NOT for posting some random nobody asshole twitter user's bad takes, the absolute best course of action to take when you see that stuff out in the wild is to either directly shit on them yourself, or ignore them and don't give them more attention.

From this point on I'm going to be more stringent about moderating this. I get it, it's fun to dunk on the libs and the blue checks and the frothingfash and that's why we have a whole dedicated comm for that. Any post that's obviously meant to be "hey look at this piece of shit, let's laugh at how bad their opinions are, upbears to the left and emojis in chat" belongs in the_dunk_tank. And any super low-hanging fruit doesn't belong on this site, period (see TDT rule 8 above). We have better things to do with our time than give unearned attention, time and energy to low-follower-count nobodies yelling into the void.

Thanks for your discretion comrades, stay sicko sicko-jammin

edit: as others have pointed out, /c/shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml is a good place for any and all dunking content not allowed here. Post that ragebait to our comrades at the 'grad, they'll make good use of it. Also, per rule 9 of TFT dunking on fediverse users is still explicitly allowed so it's still open season on those in our own backyard.

  • buckykat [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    This is an entirely predictable result of the addition of the bad rule 8 to the_dunk_tank

    • booty [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      The purpose of this comm is literally to quarantine all of the "finding an idiot to get mad at" posts. This rule change is gonna make the rest of the site worse.

      -ElGosso, 30 days ago on the dunk tank rule change post. Hm. Must be a psychic. Only explanation.

    • Infamousblt [any]
      ·
      2 months ago

      I called it too and asked for a quarantine zone for those kinda posts but was denied. LET US HAVE OUR SLOP

      • buckykat [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        This conviction the mods seem to have that "[dunking on] super low-hanging fruit doesn't belong on this site, period" is weird and bad

        • BountifulEggnog [they/them]
          cake
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          Also "low hanging fruit" are posts not a lot of people have seen, while I guess the "high effort dunks" are posting whatever garbage Elon and jk have been up to because they have more views. Seems backwards to me :shrug-outta-hecks:

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
            ·
            2 months ago

            "I saw this and now you have to see this too" is not a good reason for posting. People don't need to see every bad take on the internet.

            • Greenleaf [he/him]
              ·
              2 months ago

              And the cousin of that one: “I got into an argument with a lib on Reddit so here’s our chain of single upvote comments, please tell I won the argument”

              • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                ·
                2 months ago

                Exactly! That's the type of thing that should be clear is banned.

                There's gonna be a middle ground between there and "moderately famous poster" that's gonna take some figuring out, but even just trimming that and things like 15-like YouTube comments from someone with a couple of subscribers, random anonymous racists arguing in the comments of a local newspaper article, things like that.

            • BountifulEggnog [they/them]
              cake
              ·
              2 months ago

              "I saw this, thought it was a funny bad take, and am now sharing with other people who will laugh at this fool" is usually my thought. I imagine the same is true for other dunk tank posters?

              now you have to see this too

              No one actually has to view the dunk tank. They can block it, scroll by, whatever. I scroll past a lot of posts. Hextube gets pinned all the time, but is of no relevance to me. Other comms I've blocked all together 🤷

                • booty [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  So a popular type of post many hexbear users like is no longer allowed on Hexbear at all? Why?

                  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    2 months ago

                    A coalition of site mods and the admins came to a consensus. It's no longer considered permitted content on the site.

                    It's a done deal, there's no point in crying over spilled milk.

                    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      It's a done deal, there's no point in crying over spilled milk.

                      its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in posting.

                    • booty [he/him]
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      A done deal can be undone, especially one which has effects on the site as a whole and was made without input from the site's community as a whole.

                    • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      It's a done deal, there's no point in crying over spilled milk.

                      I think all the discussion on this is dumb but also this is pretty silly, a rule change on a web forum is not irreversible

                      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                        ·
                        2 months ago

                        It's not irreversible. We're just not going to reverse it. We decided to trim back on one of the most unhealthy things on the site over a month ago and most users seem to be in agreement with the change. We don't plan on reversing course over a handful of people who are frankly overreacting about the severity of a rule change on a small shitposting forum and calling the messenger a nazi.

                • buckykat [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  Well, I'll subscribe to that too, but lemmygrad posters are more serious, less fun and that comm is drastically less active than TDT

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            2 months ago

            Right. Seems kinda backwards if the criteria is "low hanging"

            i-think-that the numbers below a post do not actually affect its dunkability.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, but it should cool off after a while. I'm sure that now both comms are going after the low hanging fruit posts the posts will just wean off.

      • FourteenEyes [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        What is wrong with low hanging fruit anyway

        It's not like making fun of reactionary losers is important work or anything

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          shrug-outta-hecks They belong better in some of the Lemmygrad lib showcase comms. I've seen too many posts on here and /r/trueanon that are just random nobodies saying deranged things 4 years ago. I don't mind it too much and it's ultimately not dissimilar from the approved posts, but it's extremely reddit energy to be dunking on low hanging fruit from trolls.

          • FourteenEyes [he/him]
            ·
            2 months ago

            So ignore them and let them settle to the bottom of the pile with all the other poor engagement posts

            • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
              ·
              2 months ago

              So, what you're saying is to defeat bad posts in the marketplace of ideas, rather than to use political power to do so?

              • booty [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 months ago

                Why do we have to "defeat" bad posts at all? Hexbear is a site where a significant portion of the posts are bad on purpose. We have an entire comm dedicated to posting the worst posts we can come up with. Title: I farded, body: hehe is a completely valid Hexbear post. In fact, it's probably been posted multiple times already.

                We should be "defeating" posts that are racist, ableist, transphobic, liberal, etc. We shouldn't be "defeating" posts that are bad, that's what this site is for

                  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 months ago

                    Your application of your political ideology to how you think the site should be run is incoherent enough that being facetious in that fashion doesn't work.

                  • booty [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 months ago

                    Maybe if you could articulate an actual reason that you've chosen one particular genre of hexbear post to bully people with your mod powers over, I would be more open to laughing at your jokes. As it stands, your communications here just sound lifeless and corporate and make it difficult to entertain any humor involved.

                    • OrionsMask [he/him,any]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      2 months ago

                      "The mods are bullying people." Hexbear gets so dramatic when faced with the prospect of doing something else with its time rather than scraping through and being dragged down by the absolute dregs of humanity.

                      • booty [he/him]
                        ·
                        2 months ago

                        Why do mods want to insert themselves into how I spend my time, and why do you care enough to express your support for that?

                        • OrionsMask [he/him,any]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          2 months ago

                          Because I think that dunk posts are actually kind of toxic in general. They're fine in moderation but so often they're "here's this horrible thing that I saw someone online do or say, and I'm going to post it here for everyone else to see, and we're all going to get depressed by it and use some of our finite emotional bandwidth for the day on it, despite the fact that we can't do anything about it."

                          Prime example: Just yesterday I learned on this site that people make (CW: zionazi demon shit)

                          spoiler

                          Palestinian bombing montages to rock music

                          and it actually just straight up made my day worse. I didn't want or need to know that, it doesn't make my life better in any way, and now I have to just live with this disgusting and horrible fact.

                          If this rule prevents shit like that, I think it's a net good for everyone in a multitude of ways.

                          • booty [he/him]
                            ·
                            2 months ago

                            If you don't like the kinds of posts that the dunk tank are for then you can and should block that comm, not tell everyone else that no fun is allowed and threaten to ban them

                            • OrionsMask [he/him,any]
                              ·
                              2 months ago

                              Like I said, dunking is fine in moderation, but to quote someone else in the thread, I don't need to see every bad take on the internet.

                  • booty [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 months ago

                    then block the comm and leave us alone? "i don't like this kind of post so mods need to remove it and ban people for posting it" is baby shit

                    • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      pigpoop

                      i already did but surely you understand that my blocking a comm because i think it's a bad idea and bad for the culture doesn't change my opinion on it. and that my ability to block it doesn't have shit to do with my pointing out my position as a contradiction of your argument.

                      • booty [he/him]
                        ·
                        2 months ago

                        and that my ability to block it doesn't have shit to do with my pointing out my position as a contradiction of your argument.

                        first off, you didn't articulate any such position. you just said that you don't like the badposting comm.

                        second, who cares whether you (or the mods) like a certain comm or a certain type of post? since when does that matter? how many more types of posts are just going to be arbitrarily, randomly, unilaterally banned by the mods for no articulable reason?

                        • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]
                          ·
                          2 months ago

                          my "some of us" was plural, and "against" is a fair bit stronger than "don't like"

                          the only baby shit i see here is your crying about the mods' decision.

      • BountifulEggnog [they/them]
        cake
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Is the fruit somehow higher if the person has more followers? I honestly don't understand.

        A post is higher effort the more eyeballs the original had?

        • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, part of the problem with these rules is that there's no good way to draw a line between what's low-hanging fruit and what's a legitimate target for hexbear dunking. The rule relies on the mood of the mod present at the time of posting.

      • buckykat [none/use name]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Surely everyone will stop posting the posts they like to post because the two comms those posts best fit in ban those posts

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yeah? We had people posting casual transphobia and casual racism here in the early days, heavy moderation put an end to that. Obviously bad posts and bigotry aren't comparable but you get the idea, moderation is like cyberbullying but with institutional power; and if we've learned anything from the posting wars it's that bullying works.

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            2 months ago

            That's not really comparable. Racism and transphobia are actually bad and ideologically opposed to the ideals of the site, making fun of bad opinions but with numbers that are too small under them is not. Getting rid of people who post racism and transphobia is a good thing to do, but are you actually suggesting banning low-hanging-fruit-dunkers?

            • FunkyStuff [he/him]
              ·
              2 months ago

              As I said, it's not about the morals of the behavior, just the behavior itself and the fact that moderation will inevitably tone it down. And I don't think bans make sense for rule 8, but do you think people who post random twitter screenshots to the dunk tank are gonna keep going after their 36th consecutive post gets removed?

                  • buckykat [none/use name]
                    ·
                    2 months ago

                    You seriously want to ban people for posting dunks you don't like? This whole campaign against "low hanging fruit" is silly.

                    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      2 months ago

                      I don't want to have to ban anyone for anything, no mod here does. If someone is just going to keep spamming the whole site with content that keeps getting removed, then yeah. They'll likely catch a ban for spam.

                      • buckykat [none/use name]
                        ·
                        2 months ago

                        dunks on posts that don't have the right (arbitrarily and secretly defined) numbers under them are not garbage

                          • buckykat [none/use name]
                            ·
                            2 months ago

                            So the dunk tank should be empty and all posts that once went there should go in !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml instead? Because you, the mods, have consistently refused to actually define what "low-hanging fruit" even means. When I raised this point a month ago in the rule 8 announcement thread on TDT, mod replaceable told me he would do "a vibes based analysis on every post" which is clearly a joke, but also clearly not actually an answer.

                                • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                                  ·
                                  2 months ago

                                  As other people have mentioned both here and when rule 8 was announced, different platforms have different levels of engagement so what's considered "notable" is going to have a differing level from site to site.

                                  I don't know that we've drawn out like more specific thresholds for different sites but I know we're still working on getting the feel for it.

                                  Famous, household names like major celebrities or sports players are obviously going to be allowed, as are political figures like senators, congresspeople, heads of state. There's a sort of moderate level of notability we're still figuring out, but a good sort of guesstimate area is whether a person has passed milestones like having a wikipedia page, passing 100k subscribers on YouTube or being talked about in newspapers of record, being a leader in an organization of note. Things like that are a good place to start.

                                  If it's a name you don't need to explain or you can reasonably explain why an individual you're posting is a notable person, that's a good start.

                                  • buckykat [none/use name]
                                    ·
                                    2 months ago

                                    So it actually has nothing to do with number of upvotes/likes/views, which is the ill defined, vibes based metric in the text of the rule, but is actually about notability of the poster, a completely different ill defined, vibes based metric? That's even more restrictive than the rule as written, which would seem to allow, for example, a post from some random jackass so long as it got an arbitrarily high number under it.

                                    • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
                                      ·
                                      2 months ago

                                      A level of fame is easier to quantify. Upvote counts and Facebook likes can climb to absurd levels from bot activity, like those 350,000 like "AI happy birthday injured babies" or posts someone shared the other day.

                                      It's going to be a little harder to quantify what level might make that post sufficiently worthy of note.

                              • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]
                                ·
                                2 months ago

                                But what's "few"? Where should we draw the line? Yeah, mods can pick some arbitrary number (as is often the case for these kinds of things, it's the problem of the lump!) but this is also more complicated because there are different standards for different platforms. Like, what number of views on a youtube video is equivalent to what number of upvotes on reddit is equivalent to what number of followers on xitter, etc.? And what about blogs vs news sites? It really does just end up being so blatantly vibes-based.

                        • sweet_pecan [he/him, they/them]
                          ·
                          2 months ago

                          your really fucking calling a jewish person a nazi over your fucking internet treats?? fuck off get a life.

                          • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            2 months ago

                            It's interesting how your account has made a grand total of 11 posts and comments in a year, and now you're here doing whatever the fuck this is

                            Seems very organic

                            • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                              ·
                              2 months ago

                              So now you're implying there's some kind of conspiracy against you? A cabal of people trying to "control the narrative?" The fact that a lurker is disgusted enough by your behaviour to comment on it should be a wake up call, but apparently you'd rather just double down.

                              • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
                                ·
                                2 months ago

                                So now you're implying there's some kind of conspiracy against you? A cabal of people trying to "control the narrative?"

                                jesse-wtf

                                • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                                  ·
                                  2 months ago

                                  Considering your comment earlier, the context of what you said looks fucking awful. Care to explain yourself?

                                  • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
                                    ·
                                    2 months ago

                                    The idea that I ever tried to make this about "a cabal of people controlling the narrative" rather than one specific individual is all in your head.

                                    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                                      ·
                                      2 months ago

                                      Ok good, glad to hear you're not doing nazi dogwhistles then. Though I think if anyone has stuff "all in their head" its you imaging sockpuppet conspiracies against you. Even if it were true, why bother? They had a point about getting too attached to internet treats, once you start accussing anyone who disagrees with you of being a sockpuppet, it's probably time to log off and touch grass. This isn't a healthy thing for a person to be worrying about.

                                        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                                          ·
                                          2 months ago

                                          Agreed about touching grass, but what you were saying was really weird, I should've been clearer with what I was saying, I was too accusatory there, I wanted you to clarify what you were saying. But I was way too combative there.

                                          • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
                                            ·
                                            edit-2
                                            2 months ago

                                            Same here. Sincerely sorry about that.

                                            My grandfather was a literal fucking nazi and an all round piece of shit, and I tend to overreact when I feel like I'm being compared to him. (Not saying you were doing that of course)

                                            I'm also not very good with words, especially when I get all fired up and start rambling lol. That's on me.

                                            • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
                                              ·
                                              2 months ago

                                              I totally get that, my family were pieces of shit too, and I get a knee jerk reaction anytime anyone compares me to them too. Glad we could sort this out, one of my favourite things about hexbear/lemmygrad, we can stop talking past each other and actually calm down and fix things. :)

                            • sweet_pecan [he/him, they/them]
                              ·
                              edit-2
                              2 months ago

                              lmao touch-grass simply dont be antisemitic, if you dont want to be told to not be antisemitic. no Idea why this is so hard for people.