It just feels difficult to have meaningful conversations on here sometimes. Like yes I dislike America, but I don't need to act like nothing good has ever come out of it. Maybe China is better than America, but I don't want Xi nuking American cities. I don't think war is suddenly cool and good because Ukraine has some nazis in it. Not everyone I disagree with is some bumbling mass of idiocy, a lot of times we just differ on certain core values.
My take on the matter as someone who's been on hexbear for ages and was on r/cth is this:
Hexbear is a radicalization chamber, and what you'll see in places like those is people egging each other on to say more and more "radical" things. It's just how we are wired as people in groups, when you say something that would be seen as outrageous anywhere else, like "Haha I want Xi to nuke New York", but instead of outrage you get people cheering, that's something our monkey brains enjoy. And the naysayers who go "Actually nuking New York would be bad" are just kinda raining on that parade. Of course, nobody here actually wants New York to be nuked, but people like saying it because of in-group dynamics.
This is something I've been concerned about for a long time, honestly. I'm not doing horseshoe theory here, but this is how people go off the deep end. It's important to keep in mind that people who become radicalized are often not in a good place mentally, and while 99% of us just say these things for laughs, we have to consider that eventually, there will be people who take it seriously, for whom being part of the in-group becomes part of their core identity.
I know this is not a fun take, but please keep this in mind: Hexbear is not only an echo chamber, it is very much a place of radicalization and extremism, for better and for worse. For a lot of people, places like this give us something to believe in as well as a community to belong, which are generally good things. But on the other hand, there will be people here who are very unstable, who will get too invested, and if we're not careful eventually someone on here will murder their landlord because of what they read on this site, and for all the Maoposting we do on here I don't think being responsible for that will be a nice feeling.
Edit: tl;dr post responsibly, in some aspects it's better to stick to minecraft
This is what I have been intuitively feeling for a while and you articulated it perfectly. I saw the same thing happening on 4chan when GamerGate took off. I was like "hey these people keep saying more openly fucked up shit" and by 2019 people who split off on 8chan were going on mass shootings. Like, when I was still new I didn't really understand how or why some of the more fucked up shit like how the Japanese Red Army killed a shitload of their own people or
Pol Potbut I kinda get it now. Maybe this is wrong but I sometimes thinking taking theory too seriously is a bad thing. Even Mao said so. Like, you have to open your eyes every now and then or you're going to wind up in a Peruvian village boiling babies.As others have said. Praxis without theory is Pol Pot, theory without Praxis is Shining Path. Don't be them.
What theory is it where it says you should boil babies and murder entire villages of working people to own the bourgeoisie?
Gonzalo doesn’t count, that guy had ghostwriters from the :cia:
I have United Red Army downloaded and ready to watch when I get the time. It's three hours though. sigh
An additional effect of the based takes arms race is that people wind up with a lot of takes they can't back up, which makes people defensive and kind of hostile towards anyone who is putting them on the spot by trying to start a real discussion.
:gold-antifa:
Well said, comrade. Thank you for bringing this up. It's a good reminder to us all.
I would support this being its own post and getting pinned on the homepage for a bit. @CARCOSA can we do that, or refine the message and post something similar, like "reminder: adventurism is bad, solidarity is good. praxis is good, extremism is bad. irony is fine, but sincerity is even cooler. we're here for you AND you should touch grass every day."
No please no fucking mod statements. Extremism is good when the system wants to murder you. It has to be organized extremism with a fuckin purpose.
yeah, fair enough. I didn't say it nearly as well as the person I was replying to.
:an-eco-heart:
This site and the people won’t be responsible for that shit. Adventurism is always bad. I think a lot of people who are too fucking comfortable can come on here and be shocked about things like trans people wanting to see Greg Abott murdered.
Pacifism is fucking privilege. Those of us who are already getting attacked by the state and nice “well-intentioned and earnest” Cishet WASP families know this. When I walk alone at night I’m fucking strapped for a reason. If I kill a fucking chud who tries to turn me into a statistic then it won’t be hexbear’s fault.
Yeah I think as long as we consistently tell fedposters to fuck off and try to get people to educate themselves about adventurism, the culture is fine. The whole “stochastic terrorism” thing is prevalent in the right because they’re larger numbers on the more fringe sites and those sites have nothing to temper indignant rage with. You just keep upping the ante until people burn out or, in some cases, snap. There are definitely people here who get too worked up relative to the amount of danger they’re in and the tactics they understand and we’ve always done a good job of talking those people down or removing them from these spaces
This puts words to something I've been concerned about for a while now, too. Thanks.