So where do you get your news?
OWL PISS 
main reason I haven't told the trans people I know is that each of them would get banned rather quickly from what I have seen of their politics
a mate asked where i was getting my live israel updates, and i was like
its a cool forum, its this leftist subreddit that got banned a few years ago to balance out r/the_donald getting owned
oh, they're TANKIES????
yeshe looked so disappointed that that didn't land as a real insult lmao. love this place
it was the opposite btw, r/the_donald had been abandoned for months. it was banned to provide cover for getting rid of CTH
They only did that because the tankies gave them every reason to hate communism!!
All my friends know about this site but they think its too boring. One of them did post here for a bit but decided to take up knitting instead
I know four of you live in my metropolitan area but I can’t ask further questions due to opsec.
And the “lefties” in my life can’t be introduced to this site because they all still hold onto the western (Reddit) framing on things like the holodomor, North Korea and Xinjiang. Maybe once they listen to every season of blowback.
Is metro area not already too close for comfort?
I generally try not to identify my state, I can't remember if I've identified my region.
The sun is about a 45 degree angle view from my window right now. I hope that doesn't give too much away.
That was actually my inspiration 😄. I was sad I couldn't say I am directly under the sun......now
Under the EARTH'S sun. I wouldn't normally nitpick but it's one of my favorite parts of that line thst he makes sure to note he's still in our solar system
Is the joke here that you're also this worried or that I'm too concerned and should calm down a bit?
None of us have explicitly come out and said where we live but if someone is criticizing a mayor (and it isn’t Eric Adams) I assume they live in or near that mayor’s city.
I definitely would assume the same, which is why I try only say things like "the mayor of my town is an anti-homeless demon and I hope he buys a Tesla" and " the police department of the nearby midsized city has committed an atrocity at some point in the last decade."
I'm worried that if I accidentally let slip, for example, my age within a few years, the number of and gender of both my siblings and my children, and a rough description of my job duties, some ghoul will be able to triangulate my identity and put me in prison for wishing Tesla ownership on my dipshits mayor.
It's possible that's unreasonable though, I don't know where the line is.
just depends on how often you keep your accounts (+ how distinct your writing style is). if you want to keep it for a long time (year+ maybe?), yeah i would be wary about even sharing your state. if you delete them every few months metro area wouldn't be the end of the world as long as you're relatively vague about other identifiable info.
Maybe once they listen to every season of blowback.
One good use of this place is to figure out how to pipeline people left. For a lot of folks, this is getting from "I'm a leftist who supports every revolution but the ones that succeed" to some level of critical support for AES states, or at least a healthy skepticism of Western narratives around them.
Identifying media that's lib-friendly enough to not get immediately rejected is huge. Blowback is a great example, as is Citations Needed (though they don't touch too much on AES states). This is a lot more useful than dropping links to even well-sourced (but overtly leftist) stuff like Redsails.
Parenti uses this strategy all the time -- he uses NYT cites or quotes anti-communist politicians so he can say "if even these sources are saying it, how can you call it propaganda?"
We need some sort of shibboleth to find each other in the wild
Like, I'll make a big spotlight that makes the moon pink with a big Lenin face on it and y'all track it back to me and if you don't respond to my call of "Pee Pee" with "Poo Poo" I'll run away like a gazelle into the night
Giving the other commies in the holding pen the hexbear nod to know if I've got anyone on the inside.
For a split second I misread that as maybe once they listen to every season of Nickelback 😂
For real though Blowback was a catalyst into me becoming communist, especially the Cuban season.
My IRL leftist peeps are either still too
to appreciate this place, or they're militant types doing actual praxis IRL, in which case the last thing they need is more social media in their lives to sap their vital psychic juices.same, but also there's also an account looks like someone I might have told, but IDK for sure.
I told exactly two people about hexbear.
The first is a friend of mine. This was a few months ago when we were talking about the middle east as a whole and Gaza in particular, back in November or something. I told him that I was reading about this conflict from the perspective of someone who lives in the region, and how that person thinks this can definitely be an era-changing event for the region considering "Israel" is pivotal.. how he provided well argumented historial examples like pan arabism, it's death and the appearance of pan islamism, etc etc. He was definitely interested to read more about this person's takes and asked me for a name or a link to "his articles", I just told him "Oh, the guy is called @LargePenis@hexbear.net (Your takes are very good and I always make sure to read them), he's on a site I'm also in and he likes to make charts where world leaders and categorized following cuck or gigachad lines". He was definitely amused and told me "You people have your own Epic going" when I told him about the lore of Hexbear.
The second person is someone I know from university. I was browsing hexbear's news mega while in class and she was sitting by my side, she asked me something regarding class and saw the screen of my phone. Later on, while on break, she asked me "why there were so many trump emojis on your phone?". I had to do a lot of explaining lmao.
I did meet someone at a State and Revolution reading group who knew the old Chapo subreddit and even posted there, that was in like 2018/19, can't remember if the subreddit was still up (and agonizing) or if it had already been executed by r*ddit's GESTAPO.
Yeah I don't go throwing it around too much because most people aren't ready for pro-china stuff let alone respect or even tolerance of DPRK. One person I know also was into r/cth and chapo/chapo adjacent people on twitter, so they know about it but don't come here, never have.
Many people don't really have strong enough political opinions to push back, and would maybe be comrades if they learned, but they are simply too depressed or overwhelmed by the state of things (even though they aren't tuned in enough to know the half of it), and refuse to dig deeper because of it. They fundamentally don't want to know and so while I can't help but share some news I try not to be too depressing.
That's basically the two types of friends I have: the "I don't have time/energy/spoons to think about all that, let alone organize" type, and the "yeah I'm totally with you, capitalism sux, when can we go protest?" type (who rarely protests and never organizes further). Not that I'm that much better. I'm better read, but only because nobody reads anything anymore, and I help orgs and protests more materially, but I'm still not like, deeply involved with any of them. Honestly some seem distrusting of me, and I don't blame them ig. I got accused of being an undercover cop/informant on the street recently so I must have the look.
If I find something I can really sink my teeth into I'll probably drag as many sympathetic friends along as I can and hopefully get some comrades along the way, but so far its just spotty mutual aid work with some very loosely "organized" local groups
I have a close trans commie friend who has exactly my sense of humor and would absolutely love to post here until someone starts bullying them because they aren't the Perfect Idealist Leftist and then they would feel super sad for weeks to months and never log on again.
So basically because we take bullying libs way too far into the realm of bullying actual comrades I would never suggest Hexbear to anyone who doesn't find it themselves and stick around despite the bullying
I have never and will never mention the existence of this place to another living soul in the flesh
I met someone from here IRL. It was slightly awkward but overall chill. Hearing the phrase "hexbear comrade" being said out loud did give me a major pang of something tho, cringe I guess? it was still worth it
I had vague plans to meet up with another user here because we realized we lived close enough to each other to go get a beer or something sometime. If that user is reading this, I'm still down, I've just been dealing with a lot lately
Also, I've mentioned it to my wife, and I kinda hope she doesn't stalk my account here haha
lmao no
I won't elaborate further but suffice to say definitely not
I have told no-one, telling people seems like a bad idea.
Literally a million other things to talk to comrades about.
I thought hexbear was a secret club we weren't supposed to tell people about...
Literally one person I know IRL knows I'm here and they got here through the CTH sub, not because of anything I did. I don't want people to know about the 'bear, they're not ready.
Oh hell yeah, we gotta get real weird for the next few weeks.
