Original post here: https://hexbear.net/post/3856299?scrollToComments=false

I think we have a general path forward based on community feedback. "We see you, we hear you!"

I went ahead and unpinned the old post. I'm pinning this one for now and will edit this post when I wake up from eepy time. I had a very mid week and have no particular alarm set so be on look out. Love y'all and I'm amped for my first announcement post since coming back. :)

  • replaceable [he/him]
    ·
    4 days ago

    I did not engage with those arguments because i did not find them convincing, all they boil down to is that its cathartic and "fun", but i fail to see why the targets must be other common people for it to be cathartic and "fun"

    • Tomboymoder [she/her, pup/pup's]
      ·
      4 days ago

      If I go to work and my coworker is being a bigoted asshole conspiracy weirdo I am gonna vent about it when I get home to my partner.
      I don’t care how much of a “common man” he is.

      • REgon [they/them]
        ·
        4 days ago

        NOOO VENTING TO YOUR PARTNER ISN'T PRODUCTIVE YOU HAVE TO PRODUCE VALUE ALL THE TIME I AM A SOCIALIST AND YOU ARE WHITE AND CIS AND HET AND CHAUVINIST AND TOXIC

    • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
      ·
      4 days ago

      I think it’s clear that plenty of people here, evidently at least a plurality, find these posts to be cathartic and "fun", so why should you and a handful of people disagreeing have any impact on why people shouldn’t get to have catharsis and fun?

      Essentially, why are you right other than you think you are?

    • iByteABit [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 days ago

      The "targets" don't even know we're talking about them. In the off chance that someone sees a post on the comm and decides to go dunk on some fascist, I'd say it's deserved, we should not take any actions to protect fascists from having their feelings hurt.

      • replaceable [he/him]
        ·
        4 days ago

        The purpose of those changes is not to protect the nameless chuds, but to make the content better and less toxic

        • Kuori [she/her]
          ·
          4 days ago

          okay but how do we make you better and less toxic

          genuinely

            • Kuori [she/her]
              ·
              4 days ago

              naw listen, when someone whose entire online life is a tsunami of toxicity tells you that you're sucking shit i really do think it's wisest to at least consider the possibility that you may not have the clearest view of your own actions

              let me rephrase. i don't want to say you are toxic. but you are definitely being toxic. if you don't want to claim that (i think you should) then you are at very least being...i guess deeply disrespectful? it's unpleasant, is what i am trying to get at. there should not be this level of hostility between the people running the show and the rest of us. i don't think it's natural. i also don't think it's something we the userbase are responsible for kicking off (at least in this instance).

              shrug-outta-hecks js

              • replaceable [he/him]
                ·
                4 days ago

                you will have to be more specific, in what way was i disrespectful?

                • Kuori [she/her]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 days ago

                  alright, i'll play along.

                  i think the way you've comported yourself in general during this event positively reeks of disdain: for the userbase, their interests and desires, and for the effort they have expended trying to communicate such with you.*

                  you should be able to understand that replying to long, considered posts with terse statements of dismissal and apparent disinterest is, if nothing else, deeply rude behavior. it's the equivalent of responding to someone's impassioned monologue with "okay". at best they will feel stupid for trying to talk to you at all. it's flatly not the sort of behavior you extend towards someone you respect on any level.

                  *i know this isn't equivalent to the effort of upkeeping and running the site. i am keeping that in mind during this critique.

                    • Kuori [she/her]
                      ·
                      4 days ago

                      lmao i genuinely cannot tell if this is an example of the behavior i discussed or if it's just an amusing coincidence but i will take it in good faith and offer some advice in kind: if you feel that your time here has embittered you towards the userbase, the site culture, or your duties as a moderator, i really do think you should give consideration to either taking a break from moderating or the site as a whole. i say this with no hostility. you folks put in a lot of labor to keep the site usable and we all appreciate that. and the key word there really is labor. i'm sure monitoring the community that is simultaneously the most active and the most likely to contain deeply emotionally damaging/draining rhetoric is not easy, to say nothing of the drama it stirs up with the other, lesser instances.

                      you should not be spending your limited free time in this life doing something that you hate.

                • Venat [he/him, any]
                  ·
                  4 days ago

                  I would also like to see more effort posts instead of reddit tier screenshots and gotchas. I'd like to know - have it spelled out for me, rather - how to discuss and process why liberal and reactionary talking points and axioms are false and ineffective. but I think understanding the criticisms against liberals and reactionaries doesn't come from internet posts or youtube essays, but from reading and learning.

                  And then coming to the site to share that common understanding of reality via the leftist lens, and then exercise levity over that reality as we face our spectrum of competency and power(lessness) in that reality.

                  I've learned that the catharsis is the point. It's a necessary intellectual cultivation of enduring in reality and acting upon reality.

                  It'd be fair to say that you, I, and perhaps all of us would like to see that catharsis go somewhere. Yet we just won't see it go from Hexbear -> ??? - > socialist activism, community organizing, volunteering, etc.

                  The unknown factor are the material conditions and motivations of people to put their time and energy in the material world; the levity gleaned here is the point of the site, and as a community this is what its members make of it. It isn't inherently a bad thing.

                  Let people have their fun. It isn't meaningless, fruitless, or useless just because it does not interest you or I.

                  • Venat [he/him, any]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 days ago

                    Dolores Umbridge was more hated among the Harry Potter fanbase than Voldemort.

                    What makes the distinction between mockery of public officials and petty trolls on the internet (twitter, reddit, lemmy) is that often our fellow proleterians are also our tormentors. In the news, Israeli football vandals picked fights, defaced properties, and chanted genocidal and racist rants. This behavior is echoed on the bottom of Israeli society and validated by the top; this behavior (not just Israeli racism but bigotry/oppression in general) is also echoed in Western states by core constituencies of its dominant population, and validated through willful ignorance and patronizing liberalism.

                    I think our problem here is that we've seen a lot of this content. So much so that it also gets grating.

                    But not everything is for everyone.

    • REgon [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Ah is this the fabled improved rhetoric? Or is this your idea of not being dismissive and toxic?
      "I didn't engage with the arguments because I didn't agree with them" amerikkka-clap
      Fuck off, seriously. Do some self crit.

      • "Oh I don't like this thing, so therefore it's not good." Narc mindset.
      • You're also changing your reasoning. Before it was that targeting non-powerful people "had no impact" lol. Now it' that you feel sorry for some chud who will never see us laughing at them?
      • Also you're presenting it as a "has to". It doesn't have to target "other common people", which is a very loaded phrasing, but it can.
      • What happened to it being unhealthy? Or do you realise how stupid that sounds, so you excluded it. That doesn't make sense though, since that would have required you engaged with the arguments.

      Why are you modding the dunk tank? Why take the job if you hate it?

      edit: If you can't even be arsed to put in basic effort when having an argument, how can you expect this site to be one that fosters effortposts?

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
        ·
        4 days ago

        Time for tone policing. Take your strongly worded words in your replies to replaceable down by like 30 to 50 hogs.

        Some of the people that have Ms or As next to their names are gonna need having strong words of their own so I'd suggest not getting too tilted.

        • REgon [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 days ago

          rat-salute-2
          Thanks for giving me a warning, I appreciate it. I got too heated and treated an annoying dork like a genocide-apologising lib. It was too much.

    • Hexboare [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      i fail to see why the targets must be other common people for it to be cathartic and "fun"

      You've read the posts though right? like objectively there are some pretty bad fucking people getting represented in that content

      • replaceable [he/him]
        ·
        4 days ago

        Those may be people that say terrible things but that doesnt matter, if we dont know their identity, most likely they are just another prole and their words are just as inconsequential as mine or yours

        • tocopherol [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 days ago

          The words of a random chud might not be consequential in itself, but I think it's important to take note of what kind of rhetoric is going around chud circles and counter it and the dunking helps that. Maybe people are getting riled up or mad because of it but it seems like many of us don't see it that way. The dunk tank posts do not rile me or make me mad in general, it gives me a view into a culture I don't interact with and the comments allow discussion of how these mindsets come into being, and how to counter it.

          • replaceable [he/him]
            ·
            4 days ago

            it's important to take note of what kind of rhetoric is going around chud circles and counter it

            c/counterpropaganda is precisely for that

    • m532 [she/her]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Westerners are not members of the global proletariat, they are our enemies