206
This has been the funniest week on this site in years
(hexbear.net)
New account but I've been using burner accounts and lurking since the sub got banned. I've been seeing all the standard liberal brainworms again for the first time since 
and everytime it's an account from another federation. I was tepidly against federation at first but this has been entertaining, like the old days of 
people who wandered into the sub.
I gotta imagine this will only last another week before everyone defederates us, but let's enjoy it for now.
I hope it's fine that I, as an external, come into your space and give my opinion here, this seems as good a thread as any.
I think what is
is the general hostility here. I think I agree with a lot of the political opinions here, however this place seems to revere "dunking" on people. Sure, these people you're dunking on might not be intelligent, and sure, they might, with their (wilful) ignorance contribute to the destruction of our planet, but I just hate the hostility, open insults, etc. I think it accomplishes nothing except pushing people away, it's not changing anyone's minds.
Whatever good discussion may be found here, I just don't like to deal with the tone it's had in. I understand that it's probably some kind of coping mechanism to deal with this shitty situation we're all in, but I have different ways to cope and don't want this big pile of negativity.
Anyway, I wish everyone a nice poop.
Real
energy.
🥺
I like the way @Munrock@Munrock@lemmygrad.ml put it:
Hexbear won't be the same as it was, there's no doubt. I am going to miss the kind of community we had there, which wasn't insular, but just a uniquely lib-free (relatively speaking) island of leftist sanity, despite the ongoing joke that everyone there is a lib. I'm still very interested to see how federation turns out going forward, but it really does fucking suck for the people who liked things as they were and used hexbear as a kind of refuge.
As for the original comment by Azzu:
It may not accomplish anything for you but there's a reason the chapotraphouse subreddit was one of the highest volume posting subs on the site, often made it to the front page, and was growing quickly, only to be banned. It does work, and we know this because it worked on a lot of us. There's a wide range of how people from hexbear respond to fresh libs, and part of that includes insults and reveling in the dunking on them. Just as there's a wide range to the kind of rhetorical tactics that people (including lurkers just watching the dunks) are receptive to. It's fine if you have other ways to cope, you don't have to participate. Block the hexbear instance if you're inclined to do so.
This is a great point that I think should be underscored. Lots of people here came onto r/CTH as vaguely disaffected libs, Bernieceats, "progressives," or the like. For very many people here, it was interacting on that sub that actually kicked us down the road to a more sophisticated and radical understanding of political economy. It led to us reading theory, getting involved in our local socialist orgs, and generally learning to understand exactly what is wrong with the global capitalist order. I definitely believe that this happens--at least for some people--because of the tone, not in spite of the tone. The jokes are the thin end of a wedge that, for at least some people in the right headspace, can open your mind.
I just want to point out to the lurkers that I did not care the cth sub got banned and I encouraged the banning as I hate reddit. I didnt consider myself part of the community or have any non-neutral feelings to it being banned. PPB is a dead horse being beaten.
"What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for Gold? Power? Or were you just... born with a heart of neutrality?"
It was a very common sentiment at the time to encourage the banning bc fuck reddit
That's fair, but the thing is... the strategy sort of worked for us the first time around. It worked so well that we got kicked off of Reddit despite being one of the largest and fastest growing communities, and we owe that growth to good old fashioned cyberbullying.
The important thing to remember is that nobody on hexbear punches down. If you come in with a bunch of dumbass takes then you're going to get dunked on, but nobody is going to misgender you or call you an autist as an insult while they do it. Most people who get called out on here deserve it, and if not, you can bet I'll be making an ass out of myself by defending that person until they inevitably say something that makes me regret it.
From what I've seen, most comrades engage in good faith from the beginning. The second we're accused of being Russia or China bots, or they start with the racist rhetoric like "Xinnie the Pooh", it's NBA jam time.
Love the gigantic PPB.
Just wanted to remark that a lot of us have learned our lesson about trying to put real effort into political discourse with Internet randos. doesn't matter if you put hours into tracking down all your sources and trying to make your arguments absolutely airtight, if the person on the other end just calls you a CCP shill, or an ignorant idealistic Westerner who didn't have to experience "real Communism," or a bot, etc. It just isn't worth the time to try to have an academic debate if the other person is obtuse, ideologically committed, ~~a teenager~~ basically a child, or posting from Langley (lol). Edit: unless you really can spare the time, obviously
Also, I think hexbears do a decent job of providing sources on average, you can't force someone to read/listen to them and engage with them in good faith, though. You know that thing about horses.
Well, happy poops to you too!
Edit: that was unfair to teenagers
Also, there have to be reasonable limits on bullying, but it does work.
Learned that quickly on lemmy.world
Made a long argument, typed it all out, provided multiple sources, and I just got called a troll and then the mod removed my comment
The irony though is my sources were all western sources too. I guess they just don't like real independent journalism
Freeze peach at work in the marketplace of ideas!!
Turns out the invisible hand of that particular marketlplace really loves car bombs
😠
That’s an extremely mayo concern. You will take your dunking and you will like it crackkker
Bullying works
You rn
I'm sorry but this comment doesn't meet our "Post"-based norms here. Please let me know if you'd like to know more.
Do you have scientific sources for that?
More importantly, is there any evidence that politeness and trying as best as possible to engage in good faith in every interaction leads to better outcomes? Is Posting Praxis?
Obviously not! We're all just screaming into the void for our own entertainment. If you wanted to make the world better you wouldn't waste your time on a federated reddit clone telling people they're being too rude.
Not scientific but we also haven't been in this weird new internet era long enough for there to be that much science.
I firmly believe GamerGate only happened because things like ShitRedditSays and bullying culture raised the emotional intensity of discourse, which of course caused wilder swings in the other direction.
Many people who jumped on board with GG originally weren't people trying to harass women, they were people upset with all the condescension and derision they got from what were labelled "SJWs".
(NOTE: I am extremely anti-GG so any sensitivity to this is because I want to avoid another far right incel neckbeard movement, but this time with more political violence).
I don't have a horse in this race. All of the discourse in these communities (including lemmygrad and hexbear) don't really concern me. I don't feel made fun of or attacked by anything I see going one way or the other. But the tone of the posts I see from these instances really reminds me of the highly hostile groups of old like SRS and KIA.
Like I think a lot of it is being done ironically? I hope so anyway. But eventually irony turns into sincerity.
The adage "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" has been around for good reason. So far, these communities that have reached the main pages in other federations haven't exactly put forth a welcoming or informative attitude. Especially when so many people are trying to figure out how federations even work, it's not easy to go and find the more educational and informative parts behind the bullying, dunking culture posts that do seem to make it to the top.
I honestly have zero clue what these federations are trying to be. It seems fun but there's also an element that seems weirdly serious and intense about being mean. I'm just confused by what the actual tone is supposed to be.
I hope my posting these thoughts here instead of complaining on other federations signals that this is just a genuine observation for the purposes of promoting healthy and quality discourse and maybe to foster some thoughts about how to treat others who aren't trying to cause fights (and, hey, if someone is being a troll, then I'm pro loosing a can of ass kicking). I'm not here to piss on anyone's parade but merely to suggest that second and third order consequences from large groups like these adopting certain attitudes are real, and have happened before.
This is revisionist as fuck. Just like modern complaints about "woke" and "cancel culture", most of people's feeling about these things being real come from reactionaries telling them that it's omnipresent and seeing a handful of exceptional cases. GG has a recorded history of being an impressively-orchestrated 4chan (etc) op, maybe the most successful that they ever had.
I'd say you're being more revisionist than I am. You know it was well orchestrated but you're totally missing what the methods and mechanisms to convince the "middle" were. It didn't become a movement almost literally overnight because the extremists all went mask off.
Were you even there when it grew and happened? It sounds like you missed it entirely and only know about it from after-the-fact recordings that can't possibly capture the actual contemporary phenomena as it gripped communities in front of us.
Also, the nature of the replies to my comment are more in line with how GGers responded than it isn't. Please go back and reconsider how my comment was actually about how bad behaviour fosters more bad behaviour.
I was around for it, yes, but I also read research on it because the basic nature of the movement is an illusion created by enculturation, as I already indicated
And that's the only thing you got out of it? The size and speed of the movement cannot simply be attributed to just a 4chan initiative.
I'm not saying there wasn't already a popular base for right wing aggrievement politics
Oh totally. It's how they ensnared more people that aren't actually all that right wing initially that concerns me.
Holy fucking shit you're blaming SRS for Gamergate are you out of your fucking mind? It was an intentional fascist op.
And how the fuck can you act like SRS was ineffective? Reddit was a reactionary shithole (more so than today) back then. Gamers said "HAHA I RAPED YOU", redditors all said there were no women on the internet and quoted the rules that rule 34 comes from unironically. r/jailbait was defended by them as freespeech and Violentacrez was "thrown under a bus" by the admins, according to redditors at that time. Do you remember what being trans on reddit was like back then? Any idea? Because I do. EVERYWHERE on reddit was like r/conservative is today. All the liberals were exactly like that. Utterly hostile to trans people.
Judging by how much has changed the methods utilised by the left on reddit (by which I mean us) were VERY effective at changing all of these things. And it was achieved by being radical, not kowtowing to that shit. By creating different cultural spaces and taking an utterly hostile stance to them.
The problem with liberals with closed minds is that you have to make them uncomfortable first before they'll open them. Only after they've had some really negative experiences do they eventually prefer to have a positive one and open up to actually engaging in good faith. Then they actually fucking learn something. Until you kick that door down all your sugar instead of vinegar is meaningless.
No, I'm not blaming SRS for GamerGate. Nor did I say SRS was ineffective either. You've misunderstood what I actually said and, consequently, this does not feel like you're actually responding to me but to some other sentiment you've detected in the past and have falsely ascribed back to me.
My focus is on how bad behaviour leads to bad behaviour. In fact the last time I experienced multiple people purposefully misinterpreting what I said in order to get mad at me was... GamerGaters.
It's not bad behaviour that creates the escalatory reaction. It's being effective.
There are different ways to be effective and the very real downside of the bad behaviour method is that it pushes people the other way and creates overcompensation if the receiver of the behaviour cannot figure out what the problem is.
Like I get it when applied to someone who is being a troll on purpose but if it's someone who just went the wrong direction a bit, it can push them further down that path.
That's why there are so many people now who wonder how fell for it but still to this day have a reservation about social justice and feminism. They still harbour resentment from the bullying.
Nah man. You're doing what the white moderates did to the civil rights activists, and you're doing what the liberals did to the lgbt activists.
You're claiming that we'd be more effective if we toned it down, dialed it back a bit, only pursued things in a lukewarm way.
You are devoted more to order instead of justice.
The best approach is the one that works, the one that motivates a movement, the one that creates something. That's what we did, and I regret absolutely none of it. You should absolutely read MLK's letter from a birmingham jail, it's quite relevant here.
You won't like this comparison, but I say it is extremely apt to compare you to the white moderate, people who are sympathetic in the abstract but judgmental of the tactics deployed in actual campaigns.
No, I'm not saying to tone it down. I'm saying pick the targets better. It leads to the wrong results to treat everyone like they're the enemy.
Is the goal to push people away and create a small community of coordinated bullies, or is it to bring as many people as possible on board with a message?
The white liberals asked the Civil Rights movement to stop by basically suggesting they had nothing to protest about. I don't know how to be clearer that I recognize there is a lot to protest about and more people should get in on it.
My goal here is to maximize the amount of people who understand the plight, not to ask you all to stop. I simply believe there are better ways than just getting mad at the first sign of a disagreement and dogpiling on that person with memes and anger.
The goal is not to bring as many people on board at all. This is a complete misunderstanding of the tactics of these radical pushes.
The goal is to make libs uncomfortable. Because it is the only thing that causes them to move their position.
Their entire thing is "uphold the status quo". This is the position of pretty much every single politically illiterate liberal who really doesn't understand what any ideology actually is. They change their shape in order to fit themselves into whatever the existing social paradigm is.
This is why LGBT people got absolutely nowhere with liberals until they literally bullied them with riots and pride parades saying a big visible fuck you to everyone that ever tried to make them invisible. They could not be asked to change they had to be bullied and forced. Once the social paradigm is changed they then accept it.
This is why anger and cancelling on twitter became a thing. It bullies liberals into new social paradigms.
This is why it works for dirtbag leftists.
And this is why they picked up guns and shot at whoever the nazis told them to shoot at. Not because they were true believers. But because mussolini or hitler and every other fascist simply bullies them into a new social paradigm... and once the paradigm is changed they accept it.
Liberals are absorbomorphs. Their ideology is absorbomorphism.
This is the tactic that you're against, the only tactic that works - make them uncomfortable so that they then shift their position in order to find a new comfort-zone. Because that's all they want, to find a comfortable space to exist in to live and not really think about anything. If they're comfortable currently they WILL NOT MOVE until you first make them uncomfortable.
They will not bother with attempting to understand anything until you have first made them uncomfortable, because they're lazy. They are comfortable and lazy and do not want to learn shit unless they must, and they only feel like they must after you have first made them uncomfortable.
scientifically, bullying works
also thanks, i just had an amazing poop thanks to you
Certainly doesn't help that our emoji don't size properly on other instances and are huuuge. Sorry about that.
And yeah I agree that posters here are often way too eager to be hostile. Sometimes just smelling disagreement will be enough to start a dogpile or get called a "treat defender" lmao.
Right now though it's because federation is new. Hopefully we chill out a bit before everyone defederates us lol.
🥰
Dunking is the exciting new thing rn, go see what's new on the smaller comms for a chiller vibe.
https://hexbear.net/c/news
https://hexbear.net/c/technology
https://hexbear.net/c/urbanism
https://hexbear.net/c/labour
https://hexbear.net/c/history
https://hexbear.net/c/politics
https://hexbear.net/c/science
https://hexbear.net/c/indigenous
You need to implement the carrot and the stick. Open minded people get the carrot. Closed? They get the stick. Maybe next time they'll get the carrot, but they aren't going to change if that's all they ever get and all they ever display is being closed to what you're trying to explain to them.
😔
Sure! We could hardly demand other people stay out, just follow the rules for our instance and comms like you would for any other.
This is fair, but others feel differently. I'll be nice to people who don't call me a bot for engaging in good faith but disagreeing.