Hexbear is the last fun place on the internet
The web has been monopolized into a handful of big tech sites that trap everyone inside. The enshittification runs deep.
The chilling thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. There are still plenty of niche communities online. You can find web comics and blogs and hobby forums. But these all require some means of funneling people into them.
Where are the AlbinoBlackSheeps and ICanHazCheeseburgers and YDMNDs of yesteryear? They're on TikTok and YouTube, rather than their own boutique platforms, because there's no really good way to get people from Main Public Forum into your niche community.
One of the silver linings of Lemmy has been a nascent renaissance of this kind of community. Even then its predicated on creative folks contributing and participating and feeding on one another, like the goons over at Something Awful did. I kinda see that sort of thing with podcasts like E1 and Hello From The Magic Tavern. It feels harder to find but not impossible.
To be fair the method that existed before tiktok youtube and the like was either word of mouth via discussion boards or google itself.
I think the bigger problem here is actually that everyone is chasing money in some form, which means people aren't creating content for fun. They're chasing mass market. The problem with chasing mass market is that it reduces the quality of niche content that is designed solely and specifically to only appeal to fans of that niche. This content is only created by people doing it for fun, and it achieves the highest level of quality within its respective niche (but not for mass audience).
If you like a bunch of niche things while finding mass stuff terminally boring, this becomes a problem when all the niche things no longer have creators.
The other side of this is that people do still want to do it for fun, but don't want to do it for fun on a platform for someone else to profit from. The platforms being for-profit deters people from using or contributing work to them, because why contribute your labour to someone else's profit? Fuck them. (Fandom being an obvious example of this).
Everyone was happier on the internet when everyone was just kinda doing stuff.
I think the bigger problem here is actually that everyone is chasing money in some form, which means people aren't creating content for fun. They're chasing mass market. The problem with chasing mass market is that it reduces the quality of niche content that is designed solely and specifically to only appeal to fans of that niche.
I mean, idk. I don't think the E1 guys are exactly targeted to the heart of consumerism. And I periodically do see things in the hobby space pop up that I marvel weren't introduced earlier. Virtual Table Tops, for instance, are a thing that really hit their stride in the last five years. Maybe its just my corner, but I never fail to marvel at all the stuff that gets churned out that you'll simply never see spoken of mainstream. Discord has been really good about keeping me in the loop on these hobbies. Reddit has too, to a lesser extent.
I agree you do really need to be in the loop to find the heart of the hobby, but that's not exactly new. Its always a challenge in a niche community.
Everyone was happier on the internet when everyone was just kinda doing stuff.
I think they still are. The mainstream stuff is just a lot louder now, so finding the "cool kids doing their thing" signal in the "BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME!" noise is harder. But once you cut past it, you can tune all that other stuff out and just have fun with your friends.
Nothing to do anymore but work, shitpost, and cook crack cocaine in the microwave.
I attribute Hexbear with keeping me up to date on the hip slang lingo of the modern teen-ager
I was using tiktok for that but stopped on the day i realized i had spent sixteen consecutive hours swiping tiktoks without noticing. Adhd is a horrible burden. There is no punchline.
I get it
I'm on the spectrum, so certain things tend to occupy my time a lot too
My adhd makes tiktok impossible for me to watch because it's too fast and i get frustrated. Silver linings i guess.
One of the first days I had tiktok I did the same shit. Just a haze of swipe after swipe after swipe until 9+ hours had gone by. I did literally nothing at work that entire day but watch tiktoks. I felt drunk/high afterwards with how mush my brain became
Understandable. The format seems to encourage or require stricture conformity to a specific presentation style, mode of speech, etc.
Understandable. The format seems to encourage or require stricture conformity to a specific presentation style, mode of speech, etc.
i haven't finished reading every last HTML page on marxists.org yet
Hard agree. Shit's just boring now. Even hexbear, while the best place on the internet, still gets boring when the posts aren't there
Tbh I feel that this site has been more focused on culture war bullshit than before. And like, cutesy terminally online shitposts about power users or peepeepoopoo posting.
I know it's fun, but I do enjoy the more effortposty and analysis based content.
Or maybe I'm way off and reminiscing over something that never really was.
It is true the majority of the activity here is rage bait content.
But the site is getting old and the community is not realy growing, this is a larger issue with the western left after Bernie,
The old sub was different because when you're on reddit(and one of the biggest subs) there is always new people/controversies etc. In contrast even compared to the past here we already had our struggle sessions, we actualy had a fair amount of AOC/Bernie libs or not explicitly ML "socialists" and they all left a long time ago too.
Anyway the Ukraine war brought a lot of activity but it was downhill from there because Ukraine already lost this war over 6 months ago and now it is just throwing innocent black van teenagers into the meat grinder. I still keep myself informed and I rarely look at maps now because nothing is happening except a few timid Russian moves maybe.
If it is any consolation I think it is a pretty safe bet things will get more active again during US election years just like it was in 2020.
Yeah, I agree. I am actually looking forward to the U.S elections for that reason alone.
I think that we are a community capable of creating/researching/curating some great content. Ukraine/Russia has been a great example.
I just think that we should get into issues that aren't necessarily the hot topic of the moment.
I am actually tempted to put some feelers out for the starting of a community researching project. I think we have a varied knowledge base and if we could put our collective minds to use in mapping the history of a country/region/issue in a similar way to the Ukraine stuff. Even with the Ukraine stuff, there are so many great takes and stats that go under the radar that I think are worthy of preservation, fact checking, and then acceptance into the mega-folder/document.
I am actually tempted to put some feelers out for the starting of a community researching project. I think we have a varied knowledge base and if we could put our collective minds to use in mapping the history of a country/region/issue in a similar way to the Ukraine stuff. Even with the Ukraine stuff, there are so many great takes and stats that go under the radar that I think are worthy of preservation, fact checking, and then acceptance into the mega-folder/document.
Hey hey, as @DictatrshipOfTheseus@hexbear.net mentioned, this is kinda what I've been trying to do! Would appreciate extra hands on deck in the literature department (as while nationals of the countries we try and investigate are invaluable, for the non-western countries it's unlikely that there's around on Hexbear, or if they are, that they're willing to break anonymity and talk, which is very understandable).
Helloooo
Well, I hate to be a disappointment but I don't know how much of a dedicated week-by-week task runner I can be. Life is going to be hectic for me in the next year.
However, I will be researching Latin America - Venezuela in particular but it's all linked - very deeply in the coming months as part of my dissertation and creative process. I will have a pretty good database to share along the way, hopefully.
Your country threads are great, and the effort that goes in there must be huge. I don't know who's the Ukraine watchdog, but if they're out there too - wow - you are an absolute workhorse too.
However, I was thinking of something larger, more long term, and casual. A bit like the primers on topics like Ughyur situation, Ukraine, etc, but bigger, and less about disproving a controversial narrative I guess. If everything I'm about to say is basic, or jargon, or too idealistic, or whatever - please, shoot me down. Fill me with holes. I would rather have criticism than placation, even if it's severe.
TEXT WALL INCOMING:
Something that I see a lot in this site is people with a lot of free time, great opinions, well read, but reduced capacity for in person praxis despite an inner desire to do praxis. Whether it's alienation, physical disability, nihilism, neurodiversity, financial stress, not knowing where to begin, COVID fears, distrust in local organisations - whatever it may be - the people remain posting. And my idea is that posting could be praxis.
Issues are super multifaceted, and so is the way people are persuaded. Theory is gold, but the stuff people often post on this website - personal anecdotes (a large part of Bullshit Jobs is based off personal testimony), memes (humour is a huge tool of persuasion and can be effective at highlighting contradictions), documentation of events (like the seemingly daily Ukrainian soldier with Nazi insignia), and media recommendations.
If the people's posting power (of which this site is so proud) could be documented, I think we could be surprisingly effective. If anyone ever wants to do praxis - well, there you go - find some info and submit it to the community archive. So much information on this website is consumed and then goes into the deep hexbear archive, often never to be returned to. It just needs to be open source, accessible, while also being moderated enough to cut bullshit out. I don't know how to go about it - currently it sounds a bit like a left wing Wikipedia. In my head, I can see it more like a giant 4D map, or a big messy case file sprawling out over a desk.
I know, annoyingly conceptual and vague... but there's something in there that keeps me coming back to the idea.
I don't know how to go about it - currently it sounds a bit like a left wing Wikipedia. In my head, I can see it more like a giant 4D map, or a big messy case file sprawling out over a desk.
Well to butt in again, I don't know enough about it, but people here have said good things about Obsidian. This is the place I know of that shows how it might be used to build an interconnected knowledge base. I think it would be better for the kind of thing you're describing than a wiki would. There's no "4D map" but it does have a rotating 3D map of how different sections connect. Just a thought.
I am actually tempted to put some feelers out for the starting of a community researching project. I think we have a varied knowledge base and if we could put our collective minds to use in mapping the history of a country/region/issue in a similar way to the Ukraine stuff.
I think this is an excellent idea and believe that @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net has said something very similar. It was the major impetus behind the COTW thing that was started a few weeks back. It might be worth hitting him up to discuss further.
After some discussion in the last megathread about building knowledge of geopolitics, some of us thought it might be an interesting idea to have a Country of the Week - essentially, I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. More detail in this comment.
I think most of us are burnt out. i know I am, I don't have the capacity for effort posts Like I used to on my last account
Yeah, that's true. And without new users coming in there's no one to spur it back to life. Just the same depressed online leftists rotting together.
Tbh I feel that this site has been more focused on culture war bullshit than before. And like, cutesy terminally online shitposts about power users or peepeepoopoo posting.
I believe this is because of however the new algorithm works. Before, you would never have posts that just stay on the front page for 2-3 days and just generate more and more comments. There was a lot more “churn”. But now anything that generates comments tends to stay around longer and generate even more comments, which is why culture war bullshit stays up longer.
Hexbear is the last fun place on the internet
I dunno what we are in now but the old web was better. 1.0 sucked. 2.0 was good though. You had all these nich communities bubbling with energy and ideas. Now it is just reddit and psyops and comodification.
https://neocities.org/browse
Hexbears should help expand our creativity on the web, by taking inspiration from NeoCities (successor to GeoCities). Not everything has to be sterile and bland and boring. I'd even like to be able to customize our profile pages more than just things like the banner and profile picture. I mean, just look at how much life can be breathed into a site with so much flexibility. Look at all the colors and non-standard layouts. What the web as lost is personality, which we should be taking back. We're on FOSS sites here in the Fediverse. We can do better, and we shouldn't be too afraid to take risks by deviating from what's accepted as "normal" these days.
We had way better tools for self-expression on older formats like early YouTube, MySpace, etc etc. We don't have to stay the course of sterile, standardized, corporatized web formats.
The original point of using the web was making things beautiful and tinkering around with different designs. It was to tell a story with the layout. That was part of the content itself, not just what we say and do online.
Edit: https://yesterweb.org/ (on NeoCities) has plenty of good and interesting information on this general topic of a worse present web (a manifesto, if you will)
https://fauux.neocities.org/ (CW: Epilepsy risk) (edited to the original)
Of course. Again, I feel ashamed for not catching that the first time around, and apologize.
I'm still hanging on to my own website even though I have 0 visitors because I LIKE having something I'm totally in control of to post my stupid writing projects.
We all need our creative outlets. It's good for our esteem to make stuff we like, that isn't primarily intended to serve someone else.
I've made a couple sites too that I have saved for time capsule purposes, and I genuinely enjoy viewing them once in a great while.
Check Hexbear
Pay bills
Order stuff
Watch a few youtube videos from select channels
Check email
Stream some show I don't even watch off a russian piracy site, I just want the noise.
Check twitter for silly shit
That's the entire internet.
Getting into meteorology because weather underground and staring at the sky are more interesting than the internet.
I thought I just had depression but no, the internet really does suck now
ripping off the twitter and reddit bandaids, in addition to not using ig or tiktok, means i can spend about 15 minutes online before i've seen all the current content. we probably aren't supposed to spend hour after hour surfing the web.
What else am I supposed to be doing while I avoid work then? Because I'm sure as shit not gonna be doing work
i read books on the clock, and then when i read about something interesting in the book, i hop on wikipedia and read a bunch more on the topic. yesterday i was reading
Breakfast of Champions and he mentioned "roller towels", so i spent the better part of a half hour learning all about roller towels. shit like that.
The only cool thing about the internet are niche hobby sites. Everything else is an SEO skinner box hellscape. I'm sort of glad honestly, it's helped to cure me from reddit scrolling and actually go do stuff like work on projects or go ride my bike.
did that "losing net neutrality" thing everybody was concerned about circa 2010 eventually happen, and that's why everything's worse?
No, California passed a Net Neutrality law, and it's easier for ISPs to be in compliance with it for the whole country than have different practices in every state.
I’m not sure this is universally true. Technically, phone companies violate net neutrality all the time by providing faster “lanes” for or access to certain streaming services (e.g. getting Paramount Plus or Peacock for “free” with your phone plan).
Do they just give it for free, or do they straight up give more bandwidth to those services?
In most contracts the data used for the "special" apps do not count against your bandwidth plan. Here's a T-Mobile example that has several "special" services that don't add to your bandwidth.
There are multiple tiers of bandwidth I can get exclusively for video sites with my phone plan. non video sites aren’t throttled under any plan, but YouTube, Netflix, etc are depending on what tier you pay for. The people I know who pay for the top plans get access to the offered streaming service with priority bandwidth.
I hate how gameification and memification has seaped into our everyday language too. Getting new skills is not "respecing", graduation isn't "leveling up", life isn't a videogame. It's like we can't even say coffee - cofefe isn't funny anymore people.
oldmanyellingatcloud.jpg
the internet does feel a lot more corporate than it did 10 years ago and especially 20 years ago. That sucks a lot of the fun out of it. Making money off of the internet was barely even a thing 15 years ago.
The peak of the internet was Friendster, Geocities, MySpace, and the chat with a random stranger button on ICQ
It is a conspiracy theory, but the way everything feels like copypasted crap really makes the Dead Internet Theory feel plausible.
Dead Internet Theory
Feels more like a reality tbh. The last human users of the internet are all washed ashore on social media.
LETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAIN 
