That's right folks the year is drawing to a close so it's time to rehash last year's bit, nominate, and vote for your 2024 Hexies! These are the Hexbears you think exemplify what it means to be a real Hexbear hexbear-retro

Here's how it works:

  1. Pick from the below categories

  2. Nominate someone for that category by tagging them

  3. If you are nominated respond to the nomination to accept it

  4. Most upbeared accepted nomination in each category wins!

What do you win? The esteem of your fellow Hexbearian comrades of course. What more could you want?

The categories for this year's 2024 Hexie awards are:

  1. Best Effortposter of 2024

  2. Most likely to be called a tankie on a blocked instance

  3. Most comradely Hexbear

This year we have a special bonus category to commemorate some of the new comms we added:

  1. Best bad poster (this is not the worst poster, this is the best poster that is bad at posting)

We got a lot of new posters this year and have a lot of great comrades visiting from federated instances, feel free to participate too! We love all of our great posters, don't we folks?

Alright comrades that's it from me, be sure and do your democratic duty and vote for your 2024 Hexie winners and congrats in advance to the winners of this highly coveted and prestigious award!

And for one small trip down memory lane, here's last year's Hexies! https://hexbear.net/post/1477104

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This bit was fun last year so I hope folks enjoy doing this bit again this year too, as a bit though

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beanis

  • glans [it/its]
    ·
    4 days ago

    I know everyone is having fun here but I personally find this whole thing tres icky. A literal popularity contest?

    Maybe someone would like to explain to me how this won't lead to problems like resentment, big egos, anxiety, performance pressure, tensions, jealousies, celebrity, hurt feelings, deference etc. There are just so many pre-existing issues individually and relationally something like this could exacerbate, or even create. For all involved: who do or do not nominate/comment/vote/win.

    I feel bad posting this because I guess that it will be read as maybe I don't like the people who are nominated, that I wish to be nominated etc. Anticipate any criticism, no matter the content, will initially be suspected of pettiness. Or that I am belittling the genuine affection being solicited and shared here. Don't think that's just my own idiosyncratic anxieties. The structure is created in such a way as to disincentivize being the fun police criticism. That makes me really uneasy too.

    The idea of recognizing people who make contributions is perfectly sound. I am just not sure this is a good way. Making an institution (even as a quote/unquote "bit") of the idea that this is a place where some people are officially popular is a very weird choice for a left/communist community.

    The best defense of this I can anticipate is that it'll come and go and nobody'll remember in a week. And besides it's probably a slow time for the site so fewer people than usual will even see it.

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

      no-fun-allowed

      Seems like some harmless fun to me. Imo we should deal with it after it's shown to be a bad idea rather than preemptively shutting it down

      • glans [it/its]
        ·
        4 days ago

        1. I did not realize they made an emoji in my honor. Thank you for telling me and clearly I have won the site on this basis.

        2. Is there an emoji for "this is what's wrong with the left"? It is such a cliche and a very silly thing to say on the internet in the context of a forum discussion yet sometimes it does come to mind. I would like a way to say it in a way that communicates it isn't serious.

    • Infamousblt [any]
      ·
      4 days ago

      It's just a fun silly thing, it's not official. I just made it up. Last years was a wholesome trip down memory lane and this year is looking to be much the same. Nobody actually wins anything this is just a silly format based on something like the Emmys for a end of the year recap post where we call each other out and remember the fun we had together on Hexbear this year. That's all! I'm sorry it makes you feel the ick though that's definitely not the intention.

      • glans [it/its]
        ·
        4 days ago

        I'm sorry it makes you feel the ick though that's definitely not the intention.

        Well I appreciate that and I have no reason to think this was created in anything other than a loving capacity. This rly isn't about anyone in particular. If just one person made the thread it would be of no bother. Like I guess I am not so surprised that a person would make a thread like this, so much as that everyone would be participating.

        something like the Emmys

        Don't a lot of people hate awards shows like that? I know some of them are more respected than others. But aren't there always lots of complaints and gripes and resentments around those things?

        Maybe I'm just not the target audience. In some circles it seems to be normal for people to just be giving each other awards and certificates and trophies all the time. Academia and media are the 2 that come to mind. If you look at a CV for someone who's established in either of those industries they have all kinds of accolades. Aside from those, I have rarely heard of anyone I know getting any work-based prize. Except those which are directly governed by the employer ala "employee of the month" which is transparently a trick to control people. And not what is going on here.

        Instead of the Emmys, maybe a better comparison would be an amateur athletics league? But it's like, we've all been watching each other doing ribbon gymnastics and doing collective coaching, then are asked to remember who was the best batton thrower over the past year.

        If that's what everyone wants to do

    • REgon [they/them]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Us 1 month ago: Power users 😡
      Us now: power users! 😁

      • glans [it/its]
        ·
        4 days ago

        i extremely resent that you can say the same thing with 5% my wordcount :D

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
      ·
      4 days ago

      Hmm... If everyone is already emotionally mature, then a contest like this can't really have a harmful effect, right? So wouldn't the questions then be, 1) what is our "threat model" for users being emotionally immature; and 2) what exactly is the relationship between emotional immaturity and the ability to win contests or be "officially popular"?

      'Cause on the one hand, if you win family game night five times in a row and start going "mirror mirror on the wall" about it, would you say that that's the fault of family game night having winners, or is it there an extraneous root cause of that behavior that needs to be addressed instead?

      Then on the other hand, Jacob Louis Veldhuyzen van Zanten appearing in loads of KLM promotional material is believed to have contributed to his mental state as his plane barreled down the Los Rodeos runway that fateful day in 1977, and this led to a change in airline culture towards celebrity pilots and the effective end of actual pilots being used in airlines' advertising... Or so I swear I once heard, at least.

      ...I don't really know where I'm going with this. Family game night and the deadliest aviation disaster in history really have little in common, and neither have much in common with a popularity contest on an obscure communist link aggregation site.

      In any case what I can say is that it's probably not the end of the world: I've seen contests like this in other online communities over the years and it's never caused any sort of trouble in practice that I've seen.

      However it not causing trouble in practice, so far, that I've seen, doesn't necessarily mean that it actually is completely benign.

      • glans [it/its]
        ·
        4 days ago

        you mean you are being asked to choose between your friends?