First a call-out of fatphobia (https://hexbear.net/post/4189552) that ended up proving its point, then the stuff about "he/hims" (https://hexbear.net/post/4187781) ". Apparently a mod got banned!?
I am not very active and I never look at the megathreads, the number of comments in them scare me away from them. Is that where it's happening? I feel confused about what this community is like now.
I, uh, don't really know what my point is. Maybe someone can explain what the state of the site is? Especially on the he/hims thing. Maybe that's the main point of this post.
I feel sad for people that got hurt by this.
its very funny that a post by a casual user asking whats going on
turned into another struggle thread
Me checking my post be like:
Show
Ironically though, it seems I now know out what's going on: lots of individual users holding grievances against each other or staff as the resut of struggle sessions or mod actions.
This is just hexbear at heart, doing what it loves: arguing with itself
This instance has a challenging inconsistency in that it wants to hold lines like an org without adopting the (necessary) culture of patience, consensus-building, and mutual education required to do so. Most of the work in functional organizations is emotional, it is hearing some bullshit and finding a way to move the group to the correct positions rather than reaching straight for vilification, uncharitable assumptions, and callouts. And it requires planning and coherency for projects that take months to complete. By the time people are pissed about ignorance, the (education heavy) project that would actually address the issue should have been going for months. Just dropping a reference and saying "educate yourself" is not an example of this. The reference must be adopted as a priority and focus with an accompanying schedule, rationale, contextualization, and implicitly some kind of buy-in like having all committees promoting participation and working it into their own projects. And it should become part of an adopted set of fleshed out positions and a "required reading" bibliography so that new members must adopt this education as part of an onboarding period. To be clear, I amnot criticizing the feeling of being pissed at someone saying something wrong or harmful, that is often entirely righteous. But the knee-jerk reaction is often the wrong one to take, it can tear down rather thsn build.
Without this educational and patient emphasis - and without structures that help democratize the way the organization communicates and functions - the group becomes at risk of toxicity and focusing endlessly on grievances based on whoever is "in charge" at the moment. Sometimes you get lucky and the people "in charge" keep things running well and avoiding turmoil. More often, you get toxic cliques, subsequent imbalanced application of norms, and a treatment of comrades as primary enemies. creates burnout and alienation between everyone.
This instance is increasingly tending towards the latter, with calcifying cliques at various levels that are increasingly hostile towards the userbase. They frame this using communist and liberationist language, though often inconsistently. For example, I know that one of those that is throwing around accusations and being generally aggro has also been repeatedly explained of how something they are saying is anti-X (being vague because I'm not doing a callout), but rather than acknowledge this and do the work to build to a consensus understanding, they are lashing out. Others have been banned for less than their behavior, but they seem to be unscathed. It is quite clear that this user is both burned out and a member of a clique, and nobody with any power is either interested in or has the capacity to actually deescalate and, instead, are just supporting their in-group.
It should also be noted that this is a standalone website and not an organization. I'm going on and on about (dys)functional organizations, but a website of anonymous users has its own challenges and limits. But the social core I'm describing seems to be there.
I see a lot of tokenizing logic on this instance, which I see as internalized liberalism coming from a good place - seeking liberation - but then combining with petty toxicity to act more like a weapon for mutual alienation. "Someone with an X identity told you it bothers them so you need to stop", that kind of thinking. To those of us with a liberatory mindset struggling against reaction, this can be appealing, as we see ourselves as co-struggling for liberation with or as "X" and in opposition to any anti-"X" action. This makes it easy to adopt this tokenization, maybe even not notice that this is what is happening, never stopping to wonder what it means when an "X" person has the polar opposite view of another "X" person and how the logic then falls apart, therefore requiring a different justification for the initial position. Tokenization, aside ftom being itself [racist, sexist, ableist, etc] makes our theory fragile and organizations weak, at risk of takeover by liberal positions that attach themselves to sn identity. And, to me, not recognizing and rejecting tokenization in a left space belies a naivete, it means they have not had to combat it in irl organizing where it is ubiquitous and can straight-up destroy entire projects and organizations.
For one example, I have seen more than one allegedly socialist / clasd conscious organization fail to maintain an anti-cop position in the US because, and I kid you not, "most black people want more police". And this is often coming from white people, who are only understanding black people through tokenizing logic: they have decided that "the" black person position is actually a pro-cop sentiment (more to unpack there, of course) and are not engaging in the correct analysis of why we must understand cops as part of the racialized capitalist prison industrial complex. Though to be clear, I have also heard this same logic from other black people, namely those in proximity to bourgeois interests, those in leadetship of NGOs (funded by bourgeoisie) or business owners, all of whom understood (black) community improvement in terms of capital investment (shops, black owned businesses etc), of capital investment only coming from private investment (because this is their actual lived experience), and cops as the business-protecting alternative to street gangs. If you try to adopt tokenizing logic to justify one's position on racialized policing, let alone forming a political program by which to organize against it, then you are vulnerable to its same weaknesses when it is weaponized for a liberal position. And the liberal position will benefit from being amplified by capital.
So, to me, it seems like those who aren't hyper-aware of tokenization just plain don't have much experience doing irl organizing. They are underdeveloped in terms of praxis and will make various (near?-)fatal mistakes for the groups they are in.
Anyways apologies for the long post. We should of course oppose misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia, and fatphobia, all of which are part of this infighting. We also need to be able to communicate patiently with one another, prioritize education, and be willing and ready to accept criticism, as we have all internalized logics of marginalization that need to be purged. Either that or we will need to ban everyone except me, the one true leftist on this site.
To make an unsolicited recommendation, it is to get involved with irl organizing, in any capacity, and to seek out organizations that are socially competent: where there is an emphasis on education and understanding to resolve internal disputes. These orgs will have better humility and better external projects, in my experience. This place ia just a website, it could go poof one day because the domain owner gets alienated enough. But a network of irl comrades has real staying power and will help develop actual impact and inclusion.
A culture of deescalation and patient communication among ordinary users would also help us.
The more people fight, the more that bitterness builds up, which puts people on guard and leads to even more fights, and it becomes a feedback loop. Eventually people clique up to defend themselves, and communication breaks down even further, until the site dies.
It's hard, because deescalation requires some vulnerability, it's like lowering your hands during a boxing match. People get vicious to protect themselves. They're not inherently vicious, any more than two spouses who argue are bad people. The fight just gains a life of its own.
It's also slow. The longer you pause to gather your thoughts, process your emotions, and write a thoughtful response, the longer their comment goes unopposed, and the longer your peers are reading that hurtful stuff about you and maybe making up their minds.
When you refuse to deescalate, though, that hostility ripples out into the community, it poisons the whole atmosphere. Struggle sessions are what drive people off the site more than anything else, just the sheer misery of them. It drives away people who are more conflict averse and less terminally online, leaving only the people who are too invested to leave—the same people who have the hardest time deescalating.
I really think somehow we need to shift our culture, but I don't know how.
*I keep tweaking the wording of this comment like I'm chewing my nails. I'm going to bed.
Yes, I agree, this is the fundamental dynamic of being "defensively" aggressive. Even when the defensiveness is justified! This is the difficult work of org leadership, how to carefully let certain things slide or receive a soft correction and then out-organize around them, particularly through education.
An important aspect of this negative dynamic is that it is cyclical and self-escalating. When people are frustrated with aggro leadership, they may not recognize that leadership perceives aggro membership and builds their own resentment and alienation, and so on. Opting into an aggressive approach without education or patience is basically a decision to alienate yourself from the group and to be pretty unhappy in general with the state of the organization. Even when your fundamental point is correct!
I'm trying to think of examples where I've seen it really work out. All I can think of is this instance being kneejerk pro-trans (still could've gone better) and an irl instance where a hard line was taken against the sex industry, though that org split in a very toxic way because of the underlying dynamic and basically no longer exists. I tried really hard to think of examples and had to sift through like 9 irl counterexamples that came to mind instead. So many toxic events.
It should also be noted that this is a standalone website and not an organization. I'm going on and on about (dys)functional organizations, but a website of anonymous users has its own challenges and limits. But the social core I'm describing seems to be there.
I think this is the limits of an anonymous forum. You can't hold people accountable because there's nothing stopping someone from just junking their current account and getting on another account after saying some fucked up shit. Other forums try to solve this by giving privileges to old accounts. And while this has its own can of worms like breeding elitism among the users, Hexbear swings too far in the opposite direction. Like, there's basically no real requirements in becoming a mod outside of submitting an application. No, "your account has to be at least a year old" or "you can't have a mod action against your account in the last six months" or "the admins have to unanimously agree before onboarding you" or "you have 6 month probation before we onboard you for real as a permanent mod." This entire stupid struggle session happened due to a petty argument between Mod A and Mod B with a Mod C commending that they always thought Mod A was sus. But it's like, if that were true, why was Mod A even a mod in the first place? Why weren't Mod C's (and presumably other mods) concerns addressed? Imagine if there were an actual onboarding process which rejected Mod A's mod application. The argument that burned out Mod B wouldn't have happened, and Mod A wouldn't have ragequit Hexbear.
It's very obvious that the Hexbear admins and mods are falling into the trap of commandism. When the recent Luigi struggle session went down, is it the userbase being tailist or the admins/mods being commandist? The admins/mods have no real plan or process to politically develop the userbase, much of which has to do with Hexbear being an anonymous forum, so when the userbase fails to live up to whatever political line the admins/mods have in mind, the admins/mods lash out and become ever more contemptuous of the userbase they nominally are supposed to help politically develop. Let's take the topic of fatphobia as an example. I would wager that at least 80% of the userbase is fatphobic by the standards of the admins/mods, so what actionable plan is needed to go from Hexbear being 80% fatphobic to Hexbear being 20% fatphobic? Because from what I've seen, their "plan" is basically trying to purge the 80% away through heavy-handed moderation. Except that Hexbear doesn't have great outreach either, so they will purge people for being too fatphobic only to onboard newcomers who are equally as fatphobic as the people who got purged. This is just a recipe for burnout.
I used to believe that Hexbear should aspire more than being a shitposting forum, but given the recent display of organizational dysfunction, it's probably better for everyone involved if this dysfunctional website isn't responsible for something with higher stakes than a shitposting website. Imagine if Hexbear was responsible for feeding homeless people or organizing a tenant union where a failure to step up means people with their lives ruined. I remember an interaction when one of the Palestinian accounts stumbled upon one of our cringey terminally online struggle session with a massive wtf. It's deeply embarrassing and profoundly shameful for us to subject someone whose entire extended family could be exterminated by the IOF in a moment's notice to some terminally online bullshit.
I'm rambling now, so I'll stop.
For what it’s worth, I’m the user who made the fatphobia call-out post and my goal/intention was never to purge users from the site for being fatphobic. My goal was to create some guardrails around these discussions so that a fat person can post “Wow, going to the doctor as a fat person sucks” without getting a bunch of unsolicited diet advice and concern trolling in the replies.
If we kicked off every user who has some fatphobic beliefs, there wouldn’t be many users left. Which is kind of my point. It’s not an issue of individual users being assholes and therefore needing to be purged; it’s an issue of unexamined and unchallenged beliefs about fatness. Those beliefs dominate the larger culture and the left is not an exception to this.
What I’d like to see is a rule against giving unsolicited diet and exercise advice here (if people want advice and ask for it, of course that’s fine. I don’t want or need to see it but I can keep scrolling.)
And I’d like to see a rule about content warnings applied to fatphobic topics and topics/replies that may trigger people with ED. This site generally has a culture of “when in doubt, be courteous and use CW and spoiler tags,” so it’s honestly pretty upsetting that people have no interest in simply expanding the existing guidelines to include fatphobia and ED triggers.
I didn’t see any replies that I feel warrant a ban; I would like to see fatphobic comments removed when they go too far and challenged/refuted when they don’t. And as with everything, the line between what should be removed and what should remain with a rebuttal is up to mod discretion. I don’t expect everyone to get it right every time or do things perfectly.
I thought your post was good! This one too. Sorry it had so many people saying fatphobic things or derailing. Not really what should have gone down, imo. Fatphobic doctors suck and you deserve better.
I liked your post and was sad to see what it devolved into. I was really frustrated about the hostily I received in the thread as well.
For the record, I actually liked your post, and this is what I wanted to comment before it became some shitty struggle session. Possible CW for not great terminology and phrasing on my part since I'm not familiar with fat activism at all:
I'm not entirely on board with what your post said, but I had seen similar arguments before on Twitter and have incorporated some of what was said in my current fitness goals. I did the repeated cycle of fad dieting and failed fitness goals and self-loathing eating, so taking inspiration from those fat activists(?), I decided to ignore my weight this time but still exercise anyways. What I found was this:
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Once I stopped hyperfocusing on weight and see reality for what it is, I realized my weight didn't really impede in my exercise at all. There's some stuff like how my treadmill wears out faster, but my weight has surprisingly little impact. I thought jogging would be an issue except it turns out overweight people have the corresponding developed leg muscles needed to move that weight around. The only real impact are things like planks, pushups, and pullups, but even those have "easier" forms like doing them with your knees on the ground or pushing off a table instead of on the ground. Sure, they might not be "real" pushups, but a pushup is ultimately about exercising certain muscles under a certain amount of body weight. Therefore, a heavier person should be exercising with a form that puts a lesser percentage of body weight on those muscles than a lighter person so they both are working on muscles under the same effective weight. It's only fair.
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People started to comment on how much weight I "lost" despite the fact that I lost a grand total of two fucking pounds. I've taken shits and piss that weighed more than that. But after reading your post and some reflection, I think what they're actually trying to say is that I look more fit, that I have better posture and balance among other things. And with some pride, I can say that it is certainly true. But there's a disturbing element to this. I have come to believe that they are blinded by ideology, in this case fatphobia. And they are so blinded by this ideology that even when faced with the objective reality of someone who has obviously become more fit despite being overweight and not losing a single pound, they literally have to invent their own reality and say that I must have lost weight somehow.
This is a bit off topic, but the original thread is locked and I think it would be super weird if I DMed this to you lol
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Hi, I read some of the resources that were linked in the replies. I was taken aback by your claims at first and the medical journal article in particular gave a good explanation of the points about weight loss and ties to racism you made.
I stand on the opposite end of the spectrum: I'm naturally thin, work out and basically follow intuitive eating without realising it. So I felt a little awkward witnessing the mess down there, because I know that I have this privilege, that I still have prejudices inherited from my social upbringing and that biology is messy and often counterintuitive.
I probably will get things wrong from time to time, but I'll try my best not to, and to respond well to criticism if I do.
I guess what I want to say is thank you for making the post.
Slight disagreement with the unsolicited diet advice aspect: for the purposes of fatshaming, I agree.
But I think unsolicited diet advice for moral reasons should be allowed.
For example: If a user on c/food posts a picture of Sabra hummus, a poster should be a to reply "You should avoid eating Sabra because it's manufactured on an illegal West Bank settlement and is owned by Isr*el"
I have a comrade irl that didn't know KitKat is owned by Nestle, which is a company so evil the executives deserve to be summarily executed for their actions in Africa and the Middle East. Reminders like these are good because companies are owned by other companies owned by other companies and it's hard to keep up a boycott if you don't have a photographic memory these days. Like obviously no Pepsi or Coca Cola products, that's easy to remember. No McDonalds or KFC, that should be easy. Pizza Hut had a hand in the fall of the USSR, so that's a no.
Comrades should encourage comrades to not be complicit in genocide.
I think that's not diet advice but advice about your diet, if that makes sense. Diet vs dieting?
Making personal adjustments to your routine diet and lifestyle vs ideological stances that influence your diet vs the overbearing influence of capitalist commodification of food to profiteer off of its every aspect.
Yeah that's what I was getting at. Like your diet can be vegan, but you're not dieting
Really short thing I just want to tack on to this, but it seems to me there's a lot of people here that confuse "I dislike this" or "I disagree with this" with "this is bad". A bunch of those people are mods now and they try to remove/act against "bad stuff". They then get met with confusion or opposition and then conclude that the people disagreeing with their actions are bigots or have unexamined brainworms. When someone tries to explain their position to them, they perceive it as the ramblings of some angry reactionary, so they dismiss it, barely reading the response, let alone understanding it.
Massive word for word projection from you. I trust the mods more than a terminally online redditor like yourself.
yeah they strike me as just wanting to complain about everything ngl
They're acting like they're on some anti authority crusade like liberals in the eastern bloc. It's that specific way they complain about everything the mods do as some egregious injury to them personally. Like they somehow just realized that hexbear has ideologically motivated leftist moderators.
Very much 'aggrieved redditor' energy
Very much 'aggrieved redditor' energy
totally agree lol. they're stirring the most shit consistently in the last few struggle sessions while acting like they're just expressing concerns in good faith. just getting off on inflaming drama and complaining. and being an asshole to ND users too. I'll breathe a sigh of relief if they get banned tbh
Yeah, the lack of onboarding is a primary symptom of a lack of organizing. Thinking like an organizer is all about building and expanding capacity, usually through struggle, and adopting various practices by which to loop people in and "level them up" both theoretically and in practice. Not everything has to be Serious Communist Work, of course, but there is an inconsistency in how seriously some take themselves and how at odds their actions are with basic practice. This inconsistency describes the situation fairly well. I can think of some amazing contrasts from the last few weeks but listing them out would probably be toxic behavior on my part.
Re: commandism, I agree with the sentiment, but I think the term may exaggerate how serious of an entity this site is in the first place. It's not a party, there are no lines, and there is nobody to command (not really). Who even knows the dogmas? I wouldn't be surprised if someone making a good faith attempt to list them would catch a ban for not listing them with the right (otherwise completely unstated) framing. In that sense, there is an opposite dynamic that depends on ambiguity and whichever mod saw your comment that day. Ad hoc inconsistent application of correct-sounding logic that may or may not apply. I also perceive a "defensive attack" dynamic in interactions, which tends to mean people alienated to near their last nerve and without anything to ground them, deescalate, or shield others from the fallout. I have seen orgs fall apart or split from not nipping that in the bud. By the time that's happening regularly, resentments that should have been addressed constructivelyages ago tend to prevent self-crit and functional behavior. Finally, commandism presupposes that leadership are more theoretically advanced than cadre (or a similar above/below split) and I really don't think that applies here. To be sure, many in leadership have plenty of good to share with others theoretically, but I would not say the last few weeks represent a mature grounding in socialist or liberationist theory. There are glaring forms of reactionary and liberal thought in various rationales and the main characteristic is alienation and escalatory aggression.
With the example of those in Gaza trying to survive genocide, the contrast can sometimes be disturbing, especially with conflict driven incompetently from the top. There's a wider point to make about chauvinism, perspective, and irony there but I'm struggling to frame it constructively. I'm glad to have seen many of the same crowdfunding pleas on other sites and that it does not just depend on one volatile lemmy instance.
We've been working on a vetting system for moderators for a bit now, should be ready to go in January or February. Absolutely in agreement that proper vetting would have entirely prevented this situation, and we'd all be in a different thread smoking the Jimmy Carter pack right now.
How about that fatphobia thread, though? To be clear, that thread wasn't at all indicative of a universal opinion. An official "take" on how fatphobia is actually going to be handled moving forward is forthcoming, with a focus both on kindness and proven science. I think both of these things were sorely lacking in that thread, and that shouldn't have been the case. I'll cover how moderation should occur, what sorts of things are and aren't appropriate to say (and why), and reiterate that use of CW's is mandatory on the site for plenty of things including ED and weight.
The plan to politically develop the site is to encourage political education (book clubs and agitprop are great starts) and have politically consistent, non-sectarian rules across the site.
And yeah, everybody has to quit blowing up everything into struggle sessions every two weeks, what the hell‽ Really frustrating.
Developing a line on fatphobia is a good idea. I do think it would improve outcomes to take a look at how previous attempts to establish lines unfolded and to compare this critically with how irl organizations succeed at doing this. Of course it can't be perfectly emulated because it's a website and not a party, but I do think there are recognizable negative patterns.
I agree that political education is valuable and something a site like this can contribute to. I would respectfully suggest that those interested in developing a line recruit and develop openly, for example establishing a committee where folks know who is on it, why they are on it, how work will be done, and how to get on it. And that you bring people along by announcing the intent, declaring when the process begins, and focusing on how the line (which sounds like it might be bylaws more than a work of theory?) will be shared, updated, and balance education (bringing people along) vs. removal (when people go too far and aren't in a position to be educated). This is not because I am dogmatically committed to bourgeois notions of democratic participation or transparency, but because they are ways to create buy-in, avoid alienation, and improve the theoretical correctness of the line as well as the concrete skill of community management.
Anyways, this is meant to be a constructive suggestion based on irl experience and having founded a (still running) left forum, so I hope it is not taken as venting or unhelpful criticism. Running a site is often thankless.
like how can this website be so much better than reddit, but the moderation is basically like I'm back on fucking Reddit
Wow it’s almost like moderation and admin actions have historically created a place that you love and that is accommodating to all sorts of leftists
Yeah I’m just cheerleading, not pointing out a massive flaw in your opinion of the site and recent mod actions. Like wow, this place is so great, I wonder how it got like this? Quit stirring shit cause your main got banned, if not, just post on your main.
I said everyone. That includes the moderation team, yes.
(Wow, what an asshole.)
And you, famous not asshole, are any better lol?
Wauw mods are modding what incredible news. What's next, leftists fight on the internet? The earth is a sphere?
You could just log off and spend some time chilling with friends and family during the holidays, not shitstirring on a forum that got rid of you.
What are the specific changes you suggest?
We have book clubs and theory discussions going back years. Each book club gets dwindling participation as the book goes on, that is on the users. We cannot hand hold a person into reading.
The mod onboarding is the same as it's been for years, any active users older than a month that hasn't been sitebanned is eligible after submitting an application. Some community mods choose to appoint more with the understanding they are vouchers for them.
We have a Matrix space where site decisions are proposed, discussed and voted on. We used to have a community, but it was repeatedly targeted and served only to concentrate and amplify site meta drama.
When a notable about of users with intersectioned identities speak out that there is a site culture problem with regard to racism, misogyny, and now fat phobia we are taking action as another admin commented.
Your analogy with an organization makes sense, except an org doesn't have people trying to bust through the literal door to scream slurs and project porn/gore on the walls.
As an addition, I would like to say that the people who have been patiently explaining and discussing the anti-x topics are saying that some users are neither listening to them nor engaging with the reading groups. As such, they are feeling drained and that their emotional labour is not being appreciated and in fact actively argued against.
These are people I know are involved with irl orgs, and in such a situation, how would you handle a new member who is not listening to senior organization members nor engaging in any reading? I would say that that person would be kicked out as they aren't meeting the org half way.
Will there be mistakes in this? Of course we are only human, and there could be improvements on the appeal process. Which I would welcome a specific recommendation on that matter with the caveat that on-site appeals have been tried and were a net detriment.
The difference here is that anyone is welcome back under a new username, unless they repeat the same thing that got them banned.
Happy to see your response to this comment. I gotta couple of three things
When a notable about of users with intersectioned identities speak out that there is a site culture problem with regard to racism, misogyny, and now fat phobia we are taking action as another admin commented.
And when an equal notable amount of users with intersectioned identities respond that they don't agree, what then?
Your analogy with an organization makes sense, except an org doesn't have people trying to bust through the literal door to scream slurs and project porn/gore on the walls
This is acknowledged as well.
The people that don't agree and have considered leaving the site are welcome to message me with their specific concerns as the others have or if they have already left I'm happy to hear their concerns through an intermediary.
I just want to say this comment is both excellent and has perfectly communicated what's been going through my head recently on several of these struggle sessions much better than I ever could.
Edit: Jesus fucking Christ can the mods go twenty minutes without purging quality posts under the thin veneer of leftist languaged excuses?
lol I just noticed the removal plus its inventive and mischaracterizing justification. It's an appropriate demonstration of the breakdown in basic abilities to communicate between higher ups and users that I described. To be constructive and not just critical, that would've been an opportunity for whoever removed the comment to instead participate and, if needed, develop a line for others to adopt and build into sitewide culture. And, as a first step, double check one's understanding of the stated position(s) first, since this time it is their misunderstanding.
Holy fuck I just took critical damage from being on the other side of a massive essay. Now I know how everyone how everyone else feels.
(Good post though)
Ha sorry I can write long things if I don't go through a few rounds of editing. When hitting the lemmy instance comment length limit is the cue to wrap it up you know you have a problem.
🫡 I've been there before
There also used to be a bug in one of the apps (don't remember which) that would cause it to crash if over some limit. Not the lemmy limit though. I got a new app.
the criticisms are pretty clear and connected to the identities of the people leveling them. It isn't just a case of "listen to the minorities", in this case there is actual theory and ideas connecting complaints and their experiences to those complaints
The tokenizing logic of some of the aforementioned black NGO workers was also not disconnected from their own identities nor was it free of theory. One person I have in mind was a former panther and pretty on top of things. Employing the false logic of tokenization does not mean a person is wrong or invalid or "other" in all the various ways a person can be in that situation.
Tokenization is rampant on this instance and is a key example of internalized liberalism and part of why the Western left is anemic. It prioritizes splitting and escalating grievances over mutual education and humility, and one of the main weapons for doing this is blurring the lines wrt tokenization. I'm certainly familiar with this, it's the main thing I focus on in new organizing spaces, as it determines how much humility I can safely show. Toxic environments do not allow for productive self-crit, they reward those most willing to insult and fight and you cannot show weakness. Normally, this just means not reacting and not offering very much engagement in this first place: put one's energy elsewhere.
I have another irl example. I helped a coalition group organize in solidarity with Palestine. They adopted an anti-tokenization stance, but had weak and undemocratic structure, non-existent political education outside of what my org introduced (it was well-received, people usually like these things when they are organized), and later invited an Arab org to participate (Arab group as in, definitely proclaimed itself Arab and excluded non-Arabs). That group ultimately took over the unstructured group using self-tokenizing logic. They included other ideas and arguments, of course, but those were ultimately rejected. When emotions were high and people afraid of state reprisal, that group expressed frustration and began condescendingly telling others how only their group should be the voice anyone listens to and they had decided to disband the coalition. This worked on enough people that the project fell apart. There were more Arab people (from other orgs) there who disagreed with them, but this didn't matter as the white people were already cowed and had their excuse for not taking any risks. Oh, and they exploited doing this in an ad hoc meeting when other orgs were resting. The tokenization here did not happen free of context or theory and those who ran with it seemed authentic to me. They were actually frustrated and not feeling listened to. They really seemed to believe they could boil the situation down to white people not listening to those who knew better because of their connections to the region and upbringings. They simply ignored the other Arabs in the coalition, placing all focus on the white people with identical positions. They were also incorrect in their analysis and were frustrated, in part, because they had no real response to correct feedback. Tokenization emerged as an effective weapon for resolving a situation in favor of their preferred course of action, following a series of other ideas about what should be done and why.
Tokenizing logic is always invalid and is harmful to organizing.
Hexbear mods use to have a stance of maintaining peace and order on the half serious/half shitpost reddit spin off, now mods want it to be an ideologically coherent org without any of the actual org work
It's weird to only be involved exoterically on this site i guess is one way to put it? I really don't wade into drama threads, i don't exist in the deeper social network here. I just browse the pages, and the closest thing to drama I indulge in is like, when someone from a lemmy instance with liberal brain rot wades in and demands group humiliation from us.
I can tell it's impacting the user base, and the activity level, and I do want to ask the mods what's going on in the back end? Because the number of drama bombs going off behind the scenes that leaks out into the instance as a whole is probably beyond what's necessary - this shouldn't be happening like this y'all.
Like, to me an ideal mod-admin cadre exists to facilitate discussion inside some parameters, like a set of rules and conventions for behavior. Hexbear is leftist, and has a sizeable contingent of serious leftists, so I understand that comes with some of the tensions these spaces have in real life, and is prone to wrecking and power tripping and all that stuff - I think leftists expect some of that.
But it's happening an awful lot, and it's fucking things up - so structurally something should probably change, I just can't comment on specifics. I am just certain that unity of intention and purpose, and being even handed and consistent with enforcement does prevent a lot of what's happening. The fat-phobia stuff should not be happening, and it didn't need to go this far. I am transfemme and I have traumatic history with cis men and toxic masculinity - i struggle to be nice about men to be very delicate about it - but some of what flies here is just toxic to a healthy community in that regard. I say that with the hopeful understanding that as a transfemme woman I really do not want any cis men coddled over their identity and perceived oppression, but it still gets kinda wack here in that regard.
If this site wants to go that direction, i even think that would be fine, but consistency and, again, not letting drama be aired like, on the main page, is important because it's the kind of drama that makes people nope out, and regardless of merit, that shit kills the site, and i don't think hexbear deserves that as a place or community.
I'm gonna try to limit this post to all I say on this. I generally like the moderation and administration here - but something is clearly wrong, and some kind of overhaul in hierarchy, vetting, and autonomy needs to be reviewed.
Hexbear has a lot of issues that have been present for a long time. These are issues that came along with the exodus from r/CTH and never went away.
There's this perception that because someone has been on the site for a long time, they can't possibly have any bad takes or harmful opinions lying below the surface. Surely they would have aired them out over the past 4 years, right? If someone hasn't been banned, they must have good takes! But if issues like fatphobia or misogyny or western chauvinism or white supremacy aren't being actively handled, these things can just... Hide below the surface. People can hold opinions that suck, and the subject just hasn't come up before or they were previously not seen as concerns worthy of moderation.
As we're trying to work on some of these issues, tons of people with unexamined brainworms are coming out of the woodwork and exposing their reactionary mindsets. Some of those people are on old accounts, some of them are even mods. Obviously, we want to give everyone the opportunity to learn and grow, but a lot of people just seem to want to die on the hill. People really just keep trying to post through it, and end up saying or doing something so egregious that it results in a ban.
If you don't want to get banned, all you have to do is just not harass people in DMs, not write a weird racist screed that's virtually indistinguishable from a chud uncle's holiday dinner rant, not spend two hours blowing up at all the other mods and admins over an argument, etc. People aren't getting ousted for taking a certain side in petty arguments. They're getting into petty arguments, doubling down, refusing mediation, getting really mad at everyone else, and then refusing reconciliation and even literally going as far as to ask for a ban.
Regarding the drama constantly making it to the front page, there's a certain clique of users on the site who keep dredging up all of this stuff and making every modlog action they don't like into a struggle session. If you go back to these other struggle session threads, you might start noticing that some of the same people just keep showing up over and over, arguing in every thread, making unfounded accusations, and posting about how they think the mods are destroying the site. Do whatever you want with this information.
There's this perception that because someone has been on the site for a long time, they can't possibly have any bad takes or harmful opinions lying below the surface.
For sure. You however seem to be under the intention that just because you're well-intentioned or a member of some persecuted group, you cannot have brainworms of your own. The people you complain about have repeatedly and patiently tried to explain their issues, they've gotten banned for asking for clarification, they've gotten banned for asking how things in the modlog can be proof of an issue, when the modlog is proof of moderation functioning. This comment explains the issues so much better than I ever could.
Regarding the drama constantly making it to the front page, there's a certain clique of users on the site who keep dredging up all of this stuff and making every modlog action they don't like into a struggle session.
Reacting to people getting banned for no reason is not making every modlog action a struggle session. Banning people for no reason creates the struggle session. Avoiding the arguments put forth in good faith, dismissing users concerns, banning people for disagreeing, never clarifying, upholding rules inconsistently, allowing some users to be incredibly inflammatory and then punishing those that react, this is what creates drama and struggle.
The removal of the linked comment is a perfect illustration of what the actual issue on the site is.
What's the take on posts like this? Do you consider it re-dredging the issue up or think it promotes healthy introspection?
idk but I've been on this site since it existed (and r/cth before the cataclysm) and every time a struggle session happens I usually completely miss out on wtf happened and within a day or two it's usually over with, though a couple of times the subject of the conflict has been something too obnoxious for me to endure so I just log out for a little while
otherwise in the meantime I just keep posting tiny rants about shit nobody here cares about and also random thoughts that several people always upvote for reasons that escape (and yet delight) me, like I just commented "beepboopasaurus" in the mega a couple days ago and it got like 5 upbears like?? who the fuck upbear'd this random thing that my fever-stricken brain decided to post lmao
anyway what were we talking about
Everytime theres a struggle session on this site, it remember it being hashed out a decade ago on Leftbook. In another decade, the same thing will happen again. While some things change, some things will remain. It'll be fine.
Older users that listen/listened to the podcast Chapo Trap House and joined the subreddit (the namesake for this comm) from back in the day vs people who have come to Hexbear later on for the vibes.
The podcast in question (and adjacent TrueAnon et al) drew in plenty of baby leftists, but their style includes a fair amount of things this comm (once again, named after the podcast) or this website as a whole does not allow. Felix would have been banned a long time ago for body shaming Charlie Kirk or some dweeb. Brace for being ableist. Matt Christman for for being fatphobic in a rant somewhere. Etc etc. But the podcast(s) also drew in so many listeners who like it because it wasn't as serious as some of the other left leaning podcasts.
I believe a schism was always going to occur. Mainly between the old users who made up who we were and new users who want to shape what we will be. For some we have strayed too far from the days of allowing a reactionary comment up so we can dogpile on the reactionary, get them to post their penis then body shame them for their ugly penis or weight. For others, creating a safe space for comrades supersedes the need to leave up reactionary posts for the purposes of dog piling on a chud.
I gotta say I sort of disagree. I'm one of the people dogpiling on chuds, but I'm also for creating a safe space. I do not think the "new users" you describe are creating a safe space, they are creating a space of power users and unsure vibes. One person can fly off the handle and it's cool and fun, another can respond and get banned for debate pervetry.
In my view there's two groups: Those that understand what @CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml was writing and those that decided to find some way to dismiss it so they wouldn't have to do any selfcrit. The removal of that comment is a great example of what I talk about when I describe people using leftist rhetoric to legitimise their shitty behaviour.
This place is going to absolute shit lol
Was fun as long as it lasted I suppose
I write this as someone who isn't all that happy either: HB isn't going to shit, it'll be okay. It's a stressful time for people who experience a lot of stress -- as my old man says, "Shit flows downhill."
I dunno. I've been here from the very beginning, and it never felt like it does now. Things have taken a turn for the worse imo
Our struggle sessions used to be about cats and rocks, and kicking out obvious reactionaries, not whatever the fuck is going on now
I could be wrong; I often am. The deletion of CarlMarks' post does fit with my feeling that moderation has been recently used to "win" (possibly not the right word) arguments, with the modlog reasons being final points that are impossible to respond to. Having been part of forum and chat mod teams in the past, this is a very familiar feeling.
Our struggle sessions were about much more than that, and pretending they weren't is deeply misleading.
You're lying to try to prove a point, a pathetic one, about how a site has changed after four years. Like some sort of old geezer bemoaning about how "things aren't like they were back in my day" while conveniently leaving out all the shitty parts that conveniently never affected you.
Drop this, it's pathetic
idk what to tell you if you think shit like "not all men" and "lose weight fatty" isn't reactionary. this is why your website sucks, not the other stuff
idk what to tell you but if you think that's what they think then you're part of the problem
You don't seem to think very much before you type anymore
Idk, I think the vegan struggle session was the worst I’ve ever seen here, and this current stuff isn’t even close to that imo. Tbf though I never pay that much attention to site drama anyway
The idea that this is the worst hexbear has been is just fucking insane to me. Really, not even with the fucking insanity of federation having actual fascists scare off minorities? Even further back during the transphobia purge or vegan struggle sessions?
I think you're just being extra cause you salty the mods don't give a shit about your mid opinions.
Yeah. I hear people say "We've had strugglesessions so many times" and uhh not like this. So many regulars gone, vibes suck shit.
I think it’s important for people to recognize the divisiveness you’re fostering on this platform. The narratives you’re pushing claiming the admins are bad or suggesting power users should be pushed out are creating unnecessary tension.
You were especially persistent during the debate over the renaming of the dunk tank, engaging in lengthy arguments about something trivial. When I didn’t engage in your attempts to bait me into a debate, you escalated the situation by rallying others against me leading to my ban. I suspect you were also behind the alt accounts used to harass users, given how many hours you were wasting posting and your inability to get a debate from me.
It’s ironic that you called out others for “ableist” behavior, such as telling people to log out, yet you privately sent me a similar message. This contradiction highlights your lack of authenticity. You’ve built a persona of being caring and genuine, but your actions suggest otherwise.
After I was banned you accused me of creating multiple alts which targeted users and coincidentally yourself, being transphobic, and telling them to s*icide, while positioning yourself as a victim. This combined with your dismissive attitude toward me when I mentioned my long-standing presence on the site, shows how seriously you take “power posting.” You seem to thrive on drama, manipulation, and creating divides within the community.
For context, I’m autistic and have learning disabilities and you mocked me for struggling to articulate myself clearly, which felt unnecessarily cruel. I hope others see through your behavior and recognize the harm it causes, particularly to users who approach this space in good faith. You tried to gatekeep my condition and at the same time weaponizing it just to get a one up on others, it’s truly disgusting because not only you, but people I had genuine interactions with for years thought I was behind it all and you started to push the narrative that I was just a random cis neurotypical wrecker. Given how badly you want people to be against certain powerposters, only those who see through your bullshit, it would only make sense that you would attempt to drown them out, it’s funny because you have nothing to offer other than fake sincerity that naive users fall for, and being a shitty debate lord, you’re unfunny, you’re not special, you’re not unique, your kind are so common on the internet so it’s very easy to figure you out.
I’m committed to stepping away from this platform because it’s become increasingly unwelcoming especially with users like you creating such a toxic environment. The coordinated pile on you initiated came at a particularly difficult time for me, and it solidified my decision to leave for good.
I only wish more people could see through the facade you've created. You manipulate others with your fake sincerity but it's obvious to anyone paying attention that your main goal is to stir up drama and divide the community, again coincidentally you always return whenever there’s drama and i've been online long enough to recognize troll behavior when I see it, and you're nothing more than a transparent instigator trying to build yourself up at others' expense. Eventually people will see you for what you really are: a petty, insecure person desperate for validation on a niche website. You’re just a dork redditor clinging to this platform like it’s your whole identity. Enjoy being a loser online while the rest of us move on with our lives.
Also stay mad because I won’t be replying teehee. Go back to reddit lol
Not gonna read all that, so here's a reply to the first line: pointing out what is going on is not causing divisiveness. Also post from your main
It’s beluga/melina can’t post because i was banned for telling you to log off, and months later the same sentiment stands. Log off loser
This isn't me BTW
But fucking preach, REgon you need to calm the fuck down about this and stop peddling deranged nonsense. This isn't the posting trenches, you don't need to turn your terminally online debate bro habits against the site because you're bored.
Good thing I'm not doing that then 👍 Me disagreeing with you is actually not toxic, sorry
What's toxic is the sheer amount of your disagreement. You'll come back to days old arguments where the offending parties already gotten banned and you'll needlessly tack on nonsense. Again, Mods enforcing rules is not some sort of special tyranny that's oppressing you, get over yourself.
I'm sorry regon but it's been more than 4 years since this started. Even without the purges most of the OGs would still be gone by now due to just drifting away. Youre trying to make gold out of straw.
They were honestly probably another one of your alts, you’re trying to be dismissive of criticisms made against you by several users and trivializing the situation by creating an alt to be rude to you so they can be banned in the modlog so you can be brandished as a hero. Your tactics are tired, you’re a dork.
I remember the “debate.bro” accounts back when the dunk tank struggle session occurred, they’re literally your alts
Lmao, dunk on me harder daddy. What's gonna happen if I don't? Ya gonna ban me? Ooooh
I missed all the drama but think of megathreads like a twitter feed for the site. You don't have to read everything, just engage with whatever interests you.
Idk. I managed to miss a lot of this stuff by some very precise time blocs and I'm kinda grateful.
From what I gather people have been saying fatphobic things and a comrade made a thread to call them out. People came in and tried to shame or cast blame on fat people and got banned for being shitty.
The he/him situation is a bit more touch and go. I guess someone who was a mod was being antagonistic in the mod chat and they happened to be menby which lead to some jokes about all the masc posters on hb having he/him pronouns being bad, to which someone made a thread to correct.
That's what I saw anyway.
Before that, posts were deleted and members were banned regarding the topic of age-gap relationships between adults in which one adult is fairly young (19). To anyone reading this, I am not making any judgments on the topic, nor am I inviting discussion or debate; this is simply a comment relevant to the thread.
