Hello users of Hexbear, there have been many changes and some drama the past few months.
The recent changes we've been making have been an attempt to create a more safe and welcoming environment for many demographics that have been overlooked in the past.
For any of our comrades that have been unintentionally hurt in this process, we apologise and hope to find a solution that accommodates as many people as possible while still meeting the needs of the marginalised groups who need a space like this the most.
The intent of this post is to provide a space for all users to air grievances with regard to the site. As well as provide suggestions for specific things that could be changed to address your grievance. Comments insulting the mod team or those without a specific means to address your problem may be removed. No commenter will be sitebanned, unless it clearly breaks the code of conduct.
What's the attitude going forwards wrt irony-poisoning? I remember back in the UlyssesT era I discussed the topic with him and we came to a fair point of "irony is not a good coping mechanism because it promotes detachment rather than facing the problem, but if you can acknowledge that it's acceptable"
But I kinda feel like that's not an ideal position, right? We can all acknowledge that ironic bigotry is still bigotry. But we still do ironic bigotry all the time, just hidden behind an extra layer of exaggeration or abstraction to make it absurd enough that no one is hurt. Is that a bad thing? Is it a bad thing that we often are just skirting around the problems, either because we're privileged and can't really confront them without revealing our biases/ignorance, or because we're too affected by them to feel comfortable treating them seriously? It's a bit of a tough one, IMO, irony gives some safety to comrades who don't wanna seriously delve into dark subjects for them but I personally feel it acts as a shield for my own shortcomings more often than not. I don't think I'd feel great if every Adam Friedland Show reference in this site was removed for ironic detachment or whatever, because it really is just nice having a mechanism to detach for a bit, but I just listed out some reasons why it's pretty harmful so...
What does Hexbear think?
I think any moderation centered around “this isn’t healthy behavior or coping mechanism” is faulty.
If you are making someone feel unsafe or being offensive that is one thing.
But I don’t need mommy mod and daddy mod to tell me which types of posting are good for me or not.
That's totally fair. I think it can still be bad for other users, though, remember the thread about the "I have no problem with the American ruling class, my enemy is the American people" tweet? And how many comments there were people ironically self-flagellating? It just takes up a lot of space in the discussion and is borderline inappropriate. Like, yeah, we get it, you feel awkward and guilty so you use irony to cope, but come on.
There is always going to be posts or comments people don’t vibe with, I don’t think we should ban people for self-flaggeration tho
My issue has always mainly been that the self-flagellation kinda ends up being performative because time and time again when it came time to shut up and actually listen to genuine viewpoints from marginalized people, the self-flagellators almost always end disappointing because of unexamined, internalised -ism brainworms.
To get back to OP's point, I think that the site's culture has shifted quite a bit from the Chapo day's and that maybe we're gonna have to let go of the ironic detachment dirtbag leftism that characterized where we came from, in favour of something more sincere.
We don’t have to do anything.
Site culture can and will change organically, we don’t have to influence it through modding decisions, nor should we.
If someone wants to be an ironic detached dirtbag I honestly do not give a shit.
Oh I meant "we" as in the user's, I'm not asking for the mods/admins to take action, just that it seems more productive to let go of the previous culture.
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There's also a bit of a fine line there. It oftentimes ends up steering into weird bioessentialism.
I don't think ironic bigotry is necessarily still bigotry. I am subject to some forms of bigotry in real life and when I hear them being made fun of here by being said ironically (even things which have been said verbatim against me), I feel supported, never othered or targeted. The difference is how aggressively and preemptively hexbear prunes and bullies users who do have bigoted ideas, so in this particular environment I don't have to question whether a joke is a """joke""", and even if it was there is hardly a larger group of similar bigots for them to dogwhistle to or provide cover for.
This is just my experience, no doubt other forms of bigotry I'm less sensitive to as I am not the victim, aren't as effectively stamped out as ones that target me.
Other than what is in the code of conduct I don't know if there is a hexbear platform on that