A friend sent me a spicy enough meme and I thought "heh, they are ready for HexBear". So I almost sent them a link and then I thought "hold on, maybe they are put off by something, let's check"; so made the little mental exercise of trying to discover hexbear for the first time.
Good lord, there's too much terminally online shit, anybody sane would be repelled.
I lied there was no effort post
But what's the point of this place if not a niche forum for extremely online leftists? I'm not very online myself, but one of the reasons I come here is to learn about all the ridiculously online bullshit I'd never ever see otherwise! It's like being able to be extremely online without any of the downsides
You are totally right, is just the community is so cool I would love to share it with cool people stranded in shit communities where there are always a bunch of reactionary dipshits posting or commenting shit.
Exactly like what I found in r/chapotraphouse: a place that suddenly was mostly free of shitheads and made fun of idiots, made me laugh a lot and also taught me weird shit. A cool oasis.
Really r/cth showed me how fucking easy is to root out reactionary bullshit when you really want to get rid of it
Ppl have always had differing opinions on what the point of the place was/is. Whether it’s a pipeline or just a place to blow of steam. I used to be more in the former camp but now I think it’s fine if it’s just a shitposting forum, a little save room of the internet relatively free from reactionaries or liberal brain worms.
I think over time it’s kinda morphed more into the latter, and I think actually talking to people in meatspace is a better way to pipeline anyway. In my experience it’s way easier to change people’s minds or at least set them on the road for it irl, online people are just gut reacting to things.
Yeah I agree, I'd love for this site to become the pipeline r/CTH was, but until we have a connection to the rest of the internet, perhaps by federation, there isn't much of a chance that happens. And becoming less niche by moderating away content that is too online will give up a lot of the site culture for really not much gain besides maybe a few more people joining every month.
On the other hand, I am worried about the site just fading out of existence. We used to have about 700 active daily users, but now it seems we've dipped to around 500. We do need to a find a way to at least get marginally more people interested or else we might just die out. Perhaps we should all put more of an active effort into watermarking, spreading the word on lefty friendly websites, and using the hobby oriented comms much more often.
Is easy for a reddit user to land here and get it, but still really hard from someone not online to get into. Maybe is impossible, and probably for the better, for non-online people to get in here.
Maybe we should do what reddit does regarding default subs and have the less politically intense and less online comms be the biggest focus of the default page. So instead of coming here and immediately seeing threads about how all outdoor cats must die and how the DPRK is actually cool and good, new users will be more likely to instead see a thread about baking, or sports, or science. It'll all still be leftist in character, but it gives new users a chance to gradually adjust into the site culture.
Of course, there should still be a user option called extremely online mode that turns the default page back into its current configuration.
So instead of coming here and immediately seeing threads about how all outdoor cats must die and how the DPRK is actually cool and good, new users will be more likely to instead see a thread about baking, or sports, or science.
So first off this is a really funny sentence lmao. My thought is the sub wasn't like that and still attracted people that stumbled onto it. I wonder if hiding the more online takes would really make a difference
I think the subreddit had the advantage of being connected to reddit as a whole and as a result had orders of magnitude more people wandering into it. Those people had other interests besides politics, but they were already on reddit so r/CTH being niche wasn't much of an impediment. Here I believe we'll probably need to cater to more interests than just politics to attract more users.
It's like how a forum about [insert extremely niche hobby here] will attract a small, niche userbase, but a general topic forum with a bit of a focus on that same hobby can basically take in anyone. This is essentially how reddit, a forum that was originally pretty much just tech people, got so big via the subreddit system. I think right now we lean a bit too close to the extremely niche hobby forum side of things considering how our particular brand of leftism on this site isn't too common.
I'm not saying we need to get politics out of our video games and stop talking about twitter, but that we should talk more about our other interests and hobbies so people come here for the non-reactionary userbase and stay for the communities surrounding their interests.
That's much easier said than done of course, with such a small userbase to start with it might be an insurmountable problem. But certainly a little can be done here and there to keep the site from bleeding users faster than it gains them.
Yeah I agree with all that. Revitalizing the hobby comms would be good. I actually was thinking about trying to get a weekly event for the anime comm, so maybe I'll get back to planning that
I haven't really fleshed that idea out too much besides what I just said, so maybe I'll do that later after putting some more thought to it.
Right now the hobby oriented subs are pretty dead though, so it seems to me a change to the algorithm alone wouldn't help much. It'll probably take some changes to the site as well as a large concerted effort by our already small userbase.
I was just saying the same thing lol... I'll try to work with the other libre mods to figure something for c/libre
No idea.
Yesterday I was browsing some facebook leftist shitposting groups and the memes felt so different from here or reddit, good shitposts, but different thing. Like fb shitposters and reddit shitposters were totally different people. Weird.
I dunno man I think my shitposts are about as low hanging as you can get
How could I possibly be more lame?! I can't do it comrade!
Idk, I was greeted by a header with an orangutan saying it thinks it made a poopie. Seems pretty obviously leftist and welcoming to me
Yes, I remember first going to the chapo subreddit and thinking to myself, "wait, aren't these people liberals? why are they just spewing right wing stuff?". Turns out I was half right.
I remember going to the Chapo subreddit and thinking "wait, don't these people claim to be leftists? why are they obsessed with electoral politics?"
I remember going to the Chapo subreddit and thinking “wait, don’t these people claim to be leftists? why are they obsessed creating content for capitalist Reddit?”
I remember going to the Chapo subreddit and thinking “wait, don’t these people claim to be leftists? Why are they obsessed with having incestuous sex with their fathers?”
I remember going to the Chapo subreddit and thinking "...Amber?"
I was so confused by everyone making fun of libs. It took my r/politics brain a bit to adjust
My first encounter with anything chapo was getting trolled in the Pod Save America subreddit.
Godspeed to those brave comrades. :rat-salute:
o7
I had similar experiences on other subs. I miss making fun of libs in their own spaces
I think my brain got broken a long time ago because I don't see this site or the leftist stuff as alienating at all. Can someone literally give me a run down or some examples?
I don't know I checked the dunk tank and suddenly everything seemed too terminally online.
Yeah my brain is fried then because nothing about it seems abnormal or niche at all. Maybe I need therapy again.
Isn't that just the literal purpose of the dunk tank though? To point and laugh at online nonsense that doesn't really have any actual value outside of entertainment?
I think this is an effortpost haha
Tbh I go back and forth and wanting to make this place more accessible vs really just appreciating it for what it is. I feel pretty close to the community here, so I'm always nervous about changing things around, but it would be nice to have more people
I've only recommended this place to like three people, but maybe I just need to be less selective and see if it sticks. I was once the kind of liberal we hate too lol
We'll kill them with proper pronouns and acceptance. Just don't simp for US empire or you'll get bullied all the way to hell lol
I've been here like a month and a little more, and I love the place. destroying what you have for what you might get is a bad idea. you just gotta get the name out harder. I am very online and never heard of here aside from an offhand reddit comment. it seemed like r/cth worked by being on reddit and having outsiders join the sub because they found it via reddit, and here ain't gonna really have that same ecosystem to grow in.
We're terminally online, but the draw is that it's a different types of cancer and sometimes people just want change.
Going back to Reddit after being away for a year made me realize that all online communities are totally nonsensical and look weird to people not subsumed by them.
:rat-salute: meme game will always operate on layers of online shit though, post in theory posts and learn stuff :rat-salute:
What if more energy were directed towards the hobbies comms and stuff? Trying to make things more accessible to more people and whatnot (yes I realize c/libre needs to do that lol)
I've definitely had the experience of talking to friends who are communists and anarchists and this site comes up and I can't totally recommend it. Some of that is wanting to retain a separate identity online, but some of it is how this place gets weird about minutiae and China. (Hesitate to even bring it up, critical support)
I dunno I don't think we really need to change much, just practice understanding that posters are people and not pounce on every possible ideological vulnerability. Happy the site has survived for a year.
