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WTF is happening on Hexbear?
Removed by modHexbear's new head of operations just dropped, and their way of dealing with the fallout of their last struggle session is to hand bans out like candy to their concerned and disillusioned users while throwing out "epic" quips like insecure teenagers along the way coupled with their communication (and seemingly contempt) towards their own userbase which isn't helping their allegations at all and the revelations that were learned about Hexbear's moderators and admins from their most recent struggle session.
The last few days have honestly shaken my faith in Hexbear and their team and I hope the mods and admins at Lemmygrad are monitoring the situation closely.
to be fair that is pretty much textbook concern trolling. And understand the context of this was the height of the red state rush to pass anti-trans laws. There's no harm in positive affirmations like that
Right, but as in this exact situation, no matter how long a person was a known poster with no such opinions, horrible shit got leveled at them when they crossed the clique culture. I can understand why someone would think it's concern trolling, but again: known trans, autistic user asking a question. Transparent discussion is what was needed 4 years ago and not all that rabid shit, and here we see it repeated with the same culture today.
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"Did you hear? In eeeevil socialist Hexbear, people have to praise trans people in every comment or post, or they are sent to gulag on sight!"
Lmao are you for real?
This shit is why we had those threads too. It really fucking makes the weeds stick out. And maybe friendly fire happened sometimes, and unfortunately for Gribbli's friend it was a strongly negative experience, but look what happens when some comrades are confronted with it. That's why TC69 had a cult of personality. Because she has a point.
Look, I don't really have a stake in the particular disagreement here about affirmations, but the one thing does not follow from the other here. People don't deserve a cult of personality because they are right about things sometimes. That's how you get literal cults. Even figures who have contributed an enormous amount to the global struggle of liberation, such as Mao, Lenin, Castro, they still don't deserve a cult of personality. They just deserve respect for their contributions and it makes sense to look at what they did that worked to see how it can be applied to a modern day context, within a person's specific locale. And depending on where you live, it might make sense to honor them as a representation of liberation and the ongoing revolutionary struggle. But no one, living or dead, is above criticism and people who are right some of the time are also wrong at times too. Some of the most effective revolutionaries can still make terrible decisions.
Resist putting people on a pedestal in "great person theory" style. People can in very rare cases be symbols of an example to live up to, but in the day to day, they are still normal human beings. It's healthier to elevate a process or technique as exemplary and maintain people's humanity as something realistic and grounded. A cult of personality perspective would have us rejecting hand-washing if it came out that scientists who figured out germs were terrible people. I think of that satire article "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point". Whether someone has good ideas sometimes or does good things sometimes, does not necessarily mean anything about what they will do going forward. We are human, not a computer program. There are computer programs that can predictably do the same thing each time they run. Humans just aren't built that way and we will never be industrial factory-grade machines, no matter how much we get dehumanized and portrayed that way.
You're right tbh
It rarely came up and ofc this being Hexbear it's tangled in like 7 layers of irony and sincerity, but the vibe I always got was that "TC69 thought" was beyond criticism and everyone who did have something to say in response was either in the group of transphobe wreckers who got purged by her (based, good (that they got purged)) and anyone left from that time who still remembered it, besides the """"legends"""" about her making everyone read based books, had stopped challenging it cuz of the aforementioned dogpiling
Until today, now it seems TC69 has stepped down again, deleted her account, and her partner has been banned and people are talking about it and criticising her in the YET-ANOTHER megathread
Wild day in niche bear-themed web forum history, the TC69 cult of personality has fallen?
I hope all this shit is entertaining to the Lemmygradians at least lmao
I just hope you get a resolution that is to the benefit of hexbear users. 🙏 I know for some people, these places are a serious part of their lives, no matter whether it involves some shitposting too, and I wouldn't want that to get messed up by mismanagement or irony poisoning or whatnot.
Same here, ty
Had one of our just-unbanned users drop a rly heartfelt reply about how the site helped her realize she was trans and get through some rly bad times in her life and it upset her a lot to see the behavior of some of the admins
It's rly silly drama but the site has legit helped people
Okay I gotta log off fr now, am tired and this is starting to loop back around from upsetting to hilarious lol, bad state to be in for sincere talking and I spend enough energy on this
Edit: Post I mentioned is here if you wanna read: https://hexbear.net/comment/5618885
Rest well!
Pal that was a joke.
Huh? What about the context of that post sounds like joking to you?
The cult of personality thing is a joke, there is nobody here with a cult of personality around them. The point they’re making is that this isn’t just a ritual where you turn your brain off and praise __, like multitotal’s 1984 comparison, but that praise comes because the thing is correct and people are understanding that on their own.
I'm gonna need the original poster to confirm it's a joke, not a secondhand read because I don't see anything joking in the tone of it and I've seen at least one other comment that also implied putting this person on a pedestal.
I think it was my comment, and no it was not a joke. You can kinda see the results of this...idk following? Reputation? here in this thread. I don't know why a not insignificant amount of hexbears seem to believe TC69 is beyond reproach. Legit all the people I saw arguing with her and getting banned were upset about the apparent transphobia in the mod team.
It wasn’t your comment.
My apologies then.
On hexbear people must record themselves clearly and loudly proclaiming "I love my trans comrades" before posting. This recording is checked automatically to make sure it's new and it's a bannable offense to use the same recording twice. It is then verified manually to make sure the recording is clear and loud enough. This is done for every post or comment that is submitted. There are petabytes of storage used just for all the "I love my trans comrades" recordings.
Great tagline potential tbh
Next paragraph
LMAO!
Thanks for proving my point better than I ever could.
I scrolled past those threads without interacting and faced absolutely no consequences or criticism for it. There was no expectation to engage, just that you don't engage negatively.
I get the feeling they want to engage negativity
Yeah as much a shitshow everything today has been the way people talk about or criticize TC69 speaks volumes about their intent.
Like mfers we are all very well versed in reactionary dogwhistles. Yall can't just try to slap red paint on them and think you gonna fool us.
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I aired my complaints about TC69 and her fans here but don't get it twisted, the posts weren't mandatory. The original issue I mentioned was a misunderstanding resulting in a dogpile of a cool person who didn't deserve it, and the causes are not unlike what occurred in this most recent struggle session.
I never said you said it was mandatory, and I didn't mean to imply it. I was merely stating how a daily thread on "I love x" (whatever x is) is a bit weird, that's all. If the hexbear people had a daily "I love communism" thread I'd still think it's weird and I would still think it's mandatory. The pledge of allegiance isn't mandatory, yet the vast majority of kids/students/people in America do it. Why? Standing up for the anthem is not mandatory, yet everyone does it. Did you see the reactions when people didn't stand for the anthem in America? For me it is the same thing. Many things in life are not mandatory but as I have come to find out, they are expected of you.
There is no daily thread, there is no expectation, and unlike the pledge of allegiance, you can’t look around and see people sitting down. Someone not posting in a thread doesn’t necessarily mean anything and I dare you to give me one example of anyone facing anything for not posting that they “love [their] trans comrades” ever in the history of the site.
That is exactly the same argument people use when one tries to explain to a native of a colonialist/imperialist country what it is like to experience discrimination in their country. Btw, I am not making any assumptions about you, I am talking about your argument. They always ask "well, can you prove it? give an example!" and it's like, you can't really prove it because it isn't anything written down or a physical thing you can take a picture of. It's a feeling among people and one that people have, it's what you feel hanging in the air.
Let's ignore the "daily trans thread", here's a different example.
If you see a username on a website for months, that username sometimes writes things you agree with etc., and then a new username comes. You're more inclined to trust the username you have seen around for months, aren't you? If someone asked you who should be a mod, you'd pick the username you know better. If someone asks you why, you'd explain it "I just know that person" or "I know them better". And that is what it is about, knowing someone better.
As you, correctly said, not posting in the thread gives no information at all. But posting in it, signals to you that that person is pro- whatever you are pro-, and from then on you know the person a bit better (we're assuming honesty and genuine expression here). So if ever a time comes when you have to choose, either vote for, or take a side in an argument, or help, or whatever, and all things being equal, it comes down to the fact that you will choose the person who you've seen posting in that thread over a person who you haven't.
It wasn't mandatory. I was there.
Except it isn’t. This is all spun out of your head. Try giving the slightest bit of evidence for your point that participation is de-facto mandatory.
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I’m not behaving like an unhinged zealot, I’m asking you to give evidence of what you’re saying, because what you’re saying is wrong.
Me not pointing out that your arguments are nonsense is proof you’re right because nobody is arguing against you, but if I do so I am showing the cult-like tendency of attacking disbelievers. It’s all very simple really.
You’re deflecting. And no, saying something is “cult-like” doesn’t prove it’s “cult-like.” Actually a pathetic attempt to flip the conversation.
Your whole attitude towards me from the start was negative and confrontational. I expressed an opinion and you said I should delete my account, called me an idiot, questioned my mental faculties, and then shouted at me in all caps. what kind of response did you expect?
For what purpose when you know I don't have any? I don't go on hexbear, I did just recently to see all this drama, so I'm not gonna be able to give you any evidence because I am basing my impression on posts that may not be indicative of the wider community and on the comments of others.
OK, I'm happy to accept that. I am wrong, you are right. But it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I won the victory over myself. I love Big Brother.
Just one response with the semblance of a correct point. What did you expect when you got a response to your original comment explaining why it was wrong and decided to smugly misunderstand it and continue digging your hole with awful arguments and bad info?
Can you get out of your Orwell irony for one second? You admit you know nothing about the site, and yet use irony to deflect from admitting you’re wrong. I’m not asking you to submit to anything, you’re not in a dystopia, you thought there were daily threads where users were expected to say something and there weren’t. There never were. And no “we were always at war with Eurasia” nonsense. Just stop.
Not to be insulted for one. I made a general comment about a whole website, and here you are insulting me personally. Did I insult you? Did I say "hexbear, and especially robinn_"??
I decided to misunderstand it? Misunderstand implies one didn't understand something, saying I decided to misunderstand makes no sense because you're saying I understood the point but chose to interpret it incorrectly, and that's a different accusation entirely.
I said I was wrong. Wrong about it being a daily thread.
My insults are actually very straightforward and not revenge for being insulted in the first place. I insulted your intelligence because your replies are unintelligent.
I think your misunderstanding is a product of your needing to be right alongside poor reading comprehension. You decided to be cemented in your beliefs rather than take a closer look.
Lastly, check the chronological order and what comments you’re replying to. Please don’t keep replying to me, it’s the same thing over and over again.
I know, because I never insulted you.
Perhaps they are unintelligible, but I don't think they are unintelligent.
Yeah, and you ran a perfect campaign for me to do so, calling me a "fucking idiot" from the first response. But I am the one who should just take insult after insult, do what you want me to do, all so I could in the end agree with you. No. I won't do what you tell me.
Kinda hard to do when my inbox is being bombarded by people from the place that is totally-not-a-cult.
Hi. As someone that is no longer on the admin team but was in favor of TC69 stepping down after all this, you just sound like you're trying to mask transphobia behind a critique of a single user. The memes about TC69 come from the fact that she was the one that spearheaded the pronoun tags and the removal of downvotes to combat transphobia, both of which resulted in massive struggle sessions and ban waves that ultimately made the site better, now this situation is different but no more volatile than any previous upheavals. No investigation no right to speak.
People were literally downvote brigading any tans-positive post anonymously before we made it so that admins could see who the driveby downvotes came from to take action. That led to the removal of the downvote altogether which has had a majorly positive impact on the site as a whole, so there is a reason she was trusted and well liked when she returned.
You wouldn't accuse me of being transphobic if I posted in that thread. Why do you have to assume that just because I don't engage in your liberal performative rituals that I am against whatever that ritual is about? And then you also say "posting in those threads isn't mandatory". Yeah, if you don't want to be considered a transphobe.
IRL, I've both educated people on trans issues, pronouns and advocated for removing transphobic people from spaces. So that's why the accusation feels like an insult rather than a judgment on me or my behaviour. Feel free to go through my entire post history on lemmygrad and find something that can be construed or interpreted as transphobic.
I read her 1-2 recent posts on hexbear and she doesn't sound like a good person to me, she sounds egoistic. I wasn't there to see the hexbear cultural revolution and start of the golden age, I am not claiming to know everything. I gave my impressions on Hexbear in a thread on Hexbear. Or wait, was this one of those "I love Hexbear" ritual threads? Dammit! I'm terrible at reading social cues.
Which person are you talking about because I was referring only to the I Love My Trans Comrades posts that you seem to have some sort of issue with hence the accusation.
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That is your problem not ours or our comrades who feel validated by such posts.
Wtf do you mean by this? What language do you not use and why don't you simply adopt new words into your vocabulary? As an ML surely you have done so in the past. All this just comes off as excuses for bigotry. Hell every single one of us is always adapting our language as we learn new words and concepts this is a really weird and honestly sus argument.
Also quite fuckin insulting to use being ND as a shield.
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I don't give a fuck about whatever you think about hexbear I am calling you out for the fact you are using this drama to voice your transphobic concern trolling.
Damn almost like this is the intended use case for federation....
That doesn't prove your point though, if anything this proves his point...
Those threads never FORCED you to post in them, but they sure did bait a lot of people to poke their heads out to out themselves. It was like flytraps for misogyny and transphobia.
I would genuinely delete your account. Your smugness is so embarrassing. How did you miss the point this obviously? To reiterate what they said, people are not “expected” to publicly affirm anything. They aren’t told to do anything. There is no requirement to post that you “love your trans comrades” like in your Orwell slop. But all this really is no clearer than:
What they are saying is not that not posting about “loving your trans comrades” is some indication of treachery, because that isn’t a statement in itself, but that people voluntarily enter these posts and go off against trans people and this weeds them out.
THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION, IN FACT THE SECOND POINT YOU QUOTED FOLLOWS FROM THE FIRST!!!
Luckily you don't have that power. phew
Please don't feel embarrassed.
keyword: daily. I already compared it to another social situation where something is also not mandatory, but it is expected.
So the thread was a ruse, feigning a daily ritual to provoke those who don't belong in revealing themselves, all the while the ritual's true purpose was obvious for those in the know. Totally not a cult. You're so knee-deep into it though that you don't see it, I'm trying to give you an outsider's perspective. Forums that aren't run on the logic of a cult just remove transphobic posts and warn/ban the person who made them.
It's true I didn't say "I love my trans comrades" today and got banned 20000000000,0000,00,00 trillion times! 😱😱😱😭😭😭😭
spoiler
I am joking and it's hilarious that I even have to clarify that
Hexbear went woke 😞
Wow, another cult member.
I'm one of the people telling you you're wrong. I'm also one of the people TC69 just banned, and I taunted her publicly after she deleted her account. I have a 3 year grudge against her for fucking over the hexbear vegans.
You're still wrong about this.
Wait tc69 fucked over the hexbear vegans?
Now it all makes sense
I know who tc69 is now
I know whose accounts the wrecker accounts are
Its all that one user who got banned for being rabidly anti-vegan
If you're thinking of
Catradora_StalinismHelltakerHomosexual, I really don't think they're TC69, but they are the mod some users are accusing of being the wrecker (an admin said they know for a fact this isn't true)."Fucking over vegans" was banning all discussions of veganism outside of their comms and removing all the VCJ mods. Frankly a lot of the userbase probably agreed with these decisions but I strongly oppose them.Edit: more accurately, HelltakerHomosexual is being accused of being the wrecker and also of being banned user Catradora_Stalinism. An admin stated that they confirmed Helltaker is not the wrecker. I don't have a strong opinion on whether either of these are true.
Its the only thing that makes sense to me though
With this assumption there would have to be only one culprit
TC69 isn't particularly anti-vegan, she just decided to take action against us instead of addressing the sitewide issues. Again I really don't she's the same person.
That's OK. I get to be wrong sometimes too, as a treat.
Lmao come on, you can't be serious.
Our recent struggle session has nothing to do with the bizarre 1984 narrative about trans people that you're trying to push.
No one is forced to say shit. We just usually ban transphobes who are actively shitty towards people who are pro-trans.
It's starting to look like that's why you hate us?
I always feel bad when I was agreeing with someone initially and then they just kind of dig themselves deeper and deeper and start saying less and less coherent stuff and it makes me realise they were probably masking some really uncool shit and I fell for it. :(
We were just talking about this with the mods, it's incredible how hard it is for people to just say I am sorry and do a tiny bit of self crit. I had just done so as I had just got off work and wasn't taking it seriously enough how bad shit had gone off the rails in the previous 8 or so hours.
I was just like "oh shit sorry my bad that sucks I need to investigate this" and then we were cool. And I get it, untangling niche communist shitposting site drama is for the most part an annoying waste of time (if you are not a moderator of said community and thus literally obligated to do), but like you can just ignore it. If you want to engage with a subject you must investigate it fully. As a comrade instructed me in that same instance I referred to apologizing for, NO INVESTIGATION NO RIGHT TO SPEAK.
Yeahhhhh...same. Think I'll actually log off this time, too much weird shit happening.
Never said they were.
I never said I hate you, what a silly inference.
It is not expected. You claim it is. Stop being an overly semantic debate bro get your transphobic ass back to Reddit.
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Lmao. You keep digging that hole. I'm calling you a transphobe because you have a problem with us banning people who attack pro trans statements.
My friend in Christ, you are doing the equivalent of going to somewhere that is gay friendly and loudly shouting "I can't believe you're forced to kiss dudes here!" At the first sign of dudes kissing.
You're not expected to kiss dudes, you won't be banned for not kissing dudes, but if you loudly voice disgust every time dudes kiss, I'm kicking you out of the bar. That is not Orwellian or unfair, it is basic anti-harrassment policy.
Never said that. I literally wrote in a post that a website should delete transphobic posts and ban people who make them, but that I don't agree with the "affirmative ritual". Why are you being dishonest?
Yeah, okay, you're full of shit. You have had it explained to you several times by several people.
You accuse me of saying something, when I tell you I never said it, you say I'm full of shit.
Don't patronise me.
Mmhmm yup that's for sure what is happening
Glad we agree.
are you cis?
If I told you I was a trans black woman, would you think my argument was correct?
DEI accusations now?
You should sign-up for the strawman competition.
Did you take that photo recently?
Since I'm cis I would butt out of the conversation. I'll take your answer as a yes however and tell you to shut the fuck up about "rituals" or whatever that take place in communities (in this case trans community) that you're not part of. You have nothing to gain here, no valuable perspective to offer and no hope of understanding the ins and outs of a community you're not part of. Leave it be.
OK, lib. Thanks for proving my point about the thread being an affirmation of group belonging.
I don't understand. Is hexbear only for trans people or only trans people are allowed to be admins/mods/make decisions?
Below pedantry.
It’s not expected. There is no expectation that you must post daily, or ever, that you “love your trans comrades.” You compared it to another social situation, I asked for evidence posting in these threads is taken into account somehow like with that example and you said I was in a cult.
You’re quoting Gribbli for the daily point, but they didn’t literally mean daily. This doesn’t happen daily on like a schedule where you’re expected to post this, or even where anybody posts this. It happens often but if that’s your keyword, your argument is washed. You can access all posts on Hexbear, so tell me where this is posted daily.
It’s not a daily ritual. You know nothing about Hexbear and yet you feel like you can critique the site culture. You’re actually embarrassing yourself. No, the point of people posting that they “love their trans comrades” is both to show support and to make the site’s position clear and turn away/root out any anti-trans users. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
You’re an outsider times two. You’re going off the word of another outsider and extrapolating that to spin up this idea that users saying they love their trans comrades is some daily ritual that users will be rewarded for or punished for not completing. You have no clue what you’re talking about.
Now I feel kinda bad for airing old hexbear semi-drama. Really didn't mean for anyone to try to make a point with it, just wanted to state my own experience :\
Nah, you didn't do anything wrong. People are responsible for their own actions, not you.
You did nothing wrong
Well, I wouldn't know.
This is true.
Not a daily ritual then, but a ritual nonetheless.
Yes, it can be all those things and still be a ritual
"to show support"
"to make the site’s position clear"
"turn away/root out any anti-trans users"
Rituals are a normal part of human life, we have all sorts of rituals. That said, rituals on websites are weird.
I never said that. But I will bet you that people who are regulars in those sorts of threads look more favourably on each other. Why are we pretending like I invented the concept of feeling belonging to a group? What I am saying is not controversial. You claim I got it wrong, but then confirm my assumptions, and then you get angry about it.
I am sorry if the word "cult" rubbed you the wrong way, it was hyperbole, I didn't mean to insult anyone. Much like "daily thread" doesn't mean literally daily. I don't mean that you are literally in a cult. Hexbear seems to engage in rituals that strengthen group belonging, I am not making a value judgment wrong or right, I think it's weird and I don't like it.
No investigation, no right to speak.
Fair. That could have been the first response. But I guess you all had to get the insults out of you, I hope it was cathartic.
You are one smug piece of shit you know that right?
It is almost impressive.
Typical bully response.
Alright, you wouldn’t know anything about this. Then there’s nothing else to say.
I didn’t confirm your assumptions, I already responded to this. Call it a ritual if you like, I don’t care. Genuinely just semantics. The argument comes in when you say that it’s weird and you “don’t like it” (welcome back Kamala!!).
So? You could say that for any thread. People interact with each other and share viewpoints and form connections. How sinister!! This is not the same as what you said before. You now this.
Thanks for reminding me why I don't frequent hexbear much.
Elaborate
TC69 got a cult (which is overstating it given how rarely it came up) because she left and could become whatever people wanted her to be. Evidently didn't hold up to the real thing, she already deleted her account.
Yeahhhhhh wth
Did you have to reference your Hitlerite Orwell-slop to compare showing support for trans people to praising a dictator?? If you say it’s just the principle of being expected to “profess their love” of something, the principle doesn’t fit either, as clearly shown below. You’re such a fucking idiot.
Luckily for you, you won't be seeing me on hexbear.