I might be way off the mark here but the more I think about self crit and my own neurodivergence (maybe I'm been a bit black and white about this) the idea of having a sub where people go to self flagrate over their mistakes to signal to us they are reformed?
I dunno chat.
I've lurked here a while and while some of the drama on here has been funny or sad or anger inducing, at no point did I ever feel satisfied reading a self crit post. I never felt "oh the sights clean now time to make an account".
I butted heads with incels on here immediately and while those people genuinely made me uncomfortable i don't wish to see a selfcrit from them. In fact it would frankly appear disingenuous and virtue signally to me.
Like if people get called out then it's on them to go do the homework, I don't expect to have to mark it though. The people I butted heads with about that incel thread got comments removed and temp banned. That seems reasonable to me. I'll die inside if I see a self crit on it.
I dunno I think there's a lot of neurodivergence on this site, myself included. We try to make it a safe space for everyone which is great.
I think what I'm worried is that a culture exists on here where if a ND makes a mistake, they may feel cut off and left out from a community they need for socialising and support unless they make a self flagrating post further signposting their mistakes.
There's a very niche and cool silly culture on this site. For a lot of ND people who don't have supportive irl group I can't imagine how it would feel to make fuck up and then feel locked out or lost this clique. I don't think making a new account is the answer either because people's accounts and history are representatives of who they are so to lose that for some might be like losing their identity as well. Maybe I'm projecting here but if I really embarrassed myself and didn't think people would talk to me as much on here because of it and that the only way to fix it was a self crit post. That's scary.
And then when i see self crit posts I feel like "damn nobody needed this, it feels uncomfortable to see this" like them getting dog piled and a temp ban wasn't enough punishment.
Like it felt maybe relevant when the admins/mods did some self crit on their behaviour but like they run the site so that kinda makes sense (not really).... or it might have if they all did it, so far I only saw like a few and even then it felt uncomfortable to read their comments.
Clearly they made a mistake and having to convince faceless terminally online people that they had the sites best interests at heart was sad to watch given they clearly did care cos of the graft they put into the site.
I dunno I don't see the point in this comm personally but I'm bored, my tamagotchi just died and I have always kinda thought this since the comm appeared so like yeah, let me know what I'm missing because I'm not the world and obviously my single view will be bias and full of holes or missing context.
Until then the sub feels a bit like 
asking cheaters on fo76 to write an apology letter and it feels like a bit of a toxic power dynamic to have it on the site kinda looooming as an example of what happens to the naughty hexbears.
Edit: lmao I've deleted and undeleted this twice cos I'm scared of getting grief but then I'm kinda proving my point doing that so I'll be a big girl and leave it up.
not regulating bigotry on the site hurts disabled people, and banning people for bigotry with no recourse hurts disabled people, recourse for bigotry.... also hurts disabled people? i am adhd and autistic and i just dont get it. it seems like most people want the bigotry and its actully a small minority of people who have a problem with it (just the poc users) idk. it just feels like everyone only cares about this space being for a very small group of white autisitc people and anything that MAY make them slightly uncomfortable (meaning calling out their bigotry or having any expectations for them not to promote bigotry) is more serious a matter than the actual bigotry. also the comm is half formed due to the struggle sessions.
it was always a bit suspicious to me that neurodivergence specifically is/was so widely brought to light here under the lense of ableism and the rest of the very, very wide disability spectrum is kinda just like...eh...ok sure, whatever to most people. at least that's the impression i got until getting together to make the comm + weekly discussion threads. i was really feeling very alienated too because while i am autistic i also have physical impairments and medical vulnerabilities and any time i'd try talking about those it was pretty much crickets from ppl i had otherwise seen going on about ableism so much. so i feel this. i don't really understand why it is so hard for the typical demographic here to be consistently principled -- well, i do know, but...yeah. i hope there is a way for any of us to make a dent.
me too comrade, i actully feel pretty proud of my effort to hexbears poc community (revitalizing the em poc weekly threads, creating the empoc user element chat, creating the em poc mod committee) and i hope more can be done...
and yeah i was actully talking to and autisitc person earlier about how so many autistic people online seem to refuse to listen to physically disabled people or chronic pain havers. sucks this is a thing on hexbear too, but hopefully we can find a path forward on that as well.
I'm really sorry but I'm not following this comment.
Have I fucked up or offended or insinuated something here?
im basically just very frustrated. im autistic too. which is why i dont want to ban people from the site or lock them out of the community permanently for mistakes. we agree there. but when this site has a persistent problem of bigotry evidenced by it bleeding poc users often in waves, (these waves are often completely unnoticed by the white users) something should be done about that. so we dont wanna ban people for every small bigotry right? because they live in a bigoted culture and this very site has retained that culture, there are people on here who openly admit to listening to cumtown and the adam frieldand show, that should not be a socially acceptable thing to say in an environment thats welcoming to poc people, especially black women. this is just one example of Hexbear site culture, there are many more but i dont have the time right now.
so what do we do? of the self crit com is not good what do we do? baning users causes rsd, and its unreasonable to have what? a dedicated mod team there to one by one explain why something is problematic to every users who says something wrong and upvotes that wrong thing? if its a site wide cultural issue is must be addressed site wide.
from what i can tell, the issue most people have is that they dont want to change, they dont want the site to be a safe place for poc, (well ones who arent ok with being treated poorly and dont agree with everything they say).
so im frustrated, not at you but at the discourse and everyone's priorities, none of them ever seem to be in the interest of the most oppressed in our society (including poc nd users)
I totally see what you mean and honestly yeah even as a white girl I've noticed the power imbalance.
Maybe I'm wrong but the most prevelant racism I think i see on here (as a white girl) is the poc kick off and white people kinda give them that "alright no need to get that upset about it" like it's less kick offable about. Kinda like the polite discourse crap. I mean I went nuts in that incel thread, I got some guys acting like I was the irrational woman not engaging with the issues because they just missed any context and I swear I see it on here with poc users kicking off and white users being all reddit polite discourse about it. But if we are telling incels to grow up it's "ableism".
Like even though trans users have a big userbase (which id have assumed meant power on the site) there's still transphobia and takes that you just don't expect showing up and that it's not really a numbers game imo because white cis men will inherently hold power and direct discourse etc because aquaman (i dunno havent worked the last bit out yet). At least that's the vibe I'm getting.
What put me off making an account on here for so long was waiting till I thought it was a healthier place for women and well.... I don't think it is but anyway.
Despite being a big lurker I didn't notice poc leaving but tbh I haven't seen Angel post outside of mutualaid in a while now that you mention it.
I didn't think self crit was the vehicle to impact change, especially one as ingrained as racism but from my other comments you can probably see what angle I came at it from.
I'm sorry I feel like I'm just chatting now.
It's like I was thinking wouldn't it be nice for people to make big effort posts educating others again but then it's like a) not victims jobs to educate oppressors and b) they never fucking work in my experience. People need to want to change and I think that was one of my issues with the self crit comm, does it create a desire to change or is it just a way to avoid the hard work/questions/change in perception that's required?
chatting is fun, never apologize for it.
yeah thats a big part of the issue, it causes burn out.
well it was intended to be something different than what it is, but after the recent anti mod/anti change sentiment the project was basically dropped halfway through.
but i still think it encourages a more positive change then a negative one even still.
Having the big mega threads like the poc one is great though. A user on here included some links in her replies just as like a footer at the end and I keep going to read them but honestly notifications on here and my adhd are winning rn BUT I love that. The idea of just including a footer in every comment with a link to pages educating.
Which is all that really matters as an answer to this post. I'm lowkey so glad I got to post this and have nice chats with peeps and not have my head blown off, I need to check my anxiety lmao.
As the self appointed hexbear operations inspector I have concluded my direct survey and c/selfcrit gets to stay
thank you operations inspector!!
i agree nice chat!
you have not fucked up, offended or insinuated anything. dont fret. part 2 coming but in the mean time no stress.
Oh cool thank you for clarifying
you are very based
Thank you!!!
I wanted to be all "don't lie go self crit lmao" but I've been told that rejecting compliments because I don't agree with them is rude and I shouldn't do it.
glad I'm not the only one feeling this way, especially in the light of the last handful of struggle sessions here
THANK YOU