Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
No wonder they went nuclear when I mentioned the fake news comm then....
lmao wait really? i missed that, but damn that's super funny.
like wearing a ski mask and a sandwich board with a picture of your face and home address to a bank robbery
Yeah, after I made this response I got told to die basically.
I really think my comment wasn't that bad. I was just trying to point out that trying to make hexbear into a super serious website by banning the dunking comms, but still having a community called fake news, and one deliberately made for bad posts, didn't make sense.
talk about disproportionate, goddamn. i'm sorry you had to deal with that. you bring significantly more of value to the site than they ever have.
and i completely agree with you, for what it's worth. i also think it's incredible for them of all people to be calling for or celebrating the gutting of "unproductive" or unserious comms.
I had no idea that Melina was on the modding team. Kinda weird that someone problematic enough to need two dedicated containment channels would have an elevated voice in the larger community.
fae was banned 8 months ago
Apparently, now the admins are saying it wasn't Melina, but a totally different person, possibly that deranged Zionist who occasionally pops up in the news mega.
I think the admins genuinely don't know who did it and perhaps will never know.
well it wasn't fucking me asshole