Hey everyone, I’ve removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn’t restore your account yet, let me know and I’ll fix it.) Don’t worry! We’re not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn’t seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I’ve talked to the other admins and mods, and we’re all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you’re afraid that there’s been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that’s absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you’ll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I’ve seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can’t get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it’s the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven’t been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren’t making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn’t foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
Hello users of hexbear, I have gone back and tried to unban everyone from the past couple days related to this struggle session.
I was offline most of yesterday so I missed what happened.
From the bottom of my heart I am deeply apologetic to everyone who was hurt by the statements and actions of the past few days. I know it will be a long and tough road to regaining back the trust of the userbase.
We are going to let this post sit for a couple of days and then move towards rebuilding. I’m back today and am happy to answer questions.
I’m sorry, but if people are garnering resentment for “the [he/him] demographic” at the mod/admin level, that’s a failure of having pronouns on this site, no one should be reading posts and judging them based off of the poster’s pronouns unless they are engaging in misogyny or something else where pronouns would actually be a relevant factor, also you don’t know whether these [he/him]s are cis or not, that is extremely reactionary for a leftist website
With that group being largely cishet white guys
How do you know this? There is not a cis box next to the pronouns, there is not a race box next to the pronouns, there is not a sexuality box next to the pronouns, people are just assuming this about other people who have not made this clear? That’s kind of a fucked up thing to do, I’m not personally assuming whether any user is cisgender or not, or is white or not, or is hetero or not, based on how they post unless they explicitly mention it.
If this was going on on a widespread level some serious self crit needs to be had.
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We genuinely didn’t foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist
Yeah I’m definitely more on the side of there being some bioessentialism brainworms at play, instead of it just being a “miscommunication”
iirc, on the site polls, the site was overwhelmingly white, and almost all of the he/hims who responded to polls were amab.
I really don’t think that excuses anything personally, unless you know the specific user’s sexuality, gender, race it is fundamentally reactionary to assume what they are
At that point you are quite literally profiling people based on their pronouns
Pronouns aren’t gender, nor should they tell you anything about somebody’s sexuality.
I feel like the mod team probably has similar demographics to the rest of the site tbh
Thank you for unbanning me. I appreciate the apology in the post, and I am glad that the bioessentialism and transphobia were addressed.
But I think that there is far more to this that needs to be addressed by the mod team and admins. Because there is more to this situation than a simple miscommunication. Regardless of whether this was a prepared statement, preparation went into the post itself - comments were collated, opinions measured, policies outlined. The post itself dripped with condescension from the opening line. It made blanket statements about the cisheteronormativity of tank posters - invalidating and marginalizing unsuspecting trans users, such as myself. The fact that no one saw how this could be construed as bioessentiallism or transphobia is, frankly, a further indicator that serious self crit needs to happen with the mod team with respect to how they communicate their opinions to a userbase that has no access to the internal discussions happening within the mod team. It made blanket statements about dunking being the domain of white internet communists - invalidating and marginalizing certain POC users of the comm, who made comments to that effect. It made ableist, infantilizing comments regarding participation in dunking as being a form of self harm - invalidating and paternalizing the neurodivergent again such as myself. The name of the gossip comm was, as pointed out, deeply misogynist, and the justification for choosing that name was again invalidating and marginalizing for many users, not to mention condescending. I do not fault any of the mods for being unapologetic and staunch in their opinions. They do not owe apologies to irony poisoned, bigoted cishet white men, who have always been a problem for the chapoverse since the days of the sub, the discord, and the sites inception. Concessions should not be made for bigotry. But this shotgun blast of a post caught people who had absolutely no business being in the firing line of these changes. Not a single one of those statements should have made it into that post in the way they did. And when users such as myself and others expressed our issues with the post, we were met with silence, further condescension, and dismissal. We were told to stay quiet and that it was being looked into and to log off. We were told that we were drifting into the conspiratorial because god forbid a post seemingly dripping in disdain for and condescending to the userbase (beyond just cishet white men!) Is indicative of a culture of cliquish superiority among the mod base. That doesnt even touch on the harassment certain users have faced by alleged members of the mod team. Even the most staunch defender of trans rights this site has had, someone who I thought would do everything in her power to make sure that transphobic shit would absolutely not fly said nothing to assuage the genuine fears and concerns of nonbinary and trans users beyond an edit mentioning out of pocket shit being said. The focus was all on people getting their slop back. Then she started banning users, the first of which was someone who faced severe harassment by an anti-dunker who told them to off themselves among other vile comments. The ban messages, again, were condescending and infantilizing towards, and when i expressed my shock and utter disspointment I was hit with my own ban.
Every step along the way, every mod and admin action (except for carcosa stepping down, that should never have happened) every stupid bit in that thread, every flippant, callous, and dismissive comment, every shitty ban message, did nothing but the make the situation worse, make the mods seem as out of touch, patronizing, and uncaring as they were accused of being, and made marginalized users in the firing line feel incredibly unwelcome. I myself in the 4 years i have been here have never, ever felt more silenced, unwelcome, unheard, and frankly, betrayed on this site . because this didnt come from people i hated and didnt care for, shitass reddit admins, wreckers - it came from the comrades around me, from people i respected and trusted.
After I got banned, I had a panic attack and made an alt account to post this comment. Someone suggested I repost it here. i felt the need to defend TC69 and also spill my guts out over why dumb internet drama got to me.
CW suicide, self harm, transphobia
I do remember. I remember the sub being banned. I remember the wack ass discord. I remember the first few months of the site. I remember TC69 stepping up, organizing, cleansing the site of the transphobes, the chasers, and the bigots. Even though i didnt consider myself a part of it at the time i felt so much safer as I watched the burgeoning trans community here blossom. I never posted about it, but i was always always there.
This place became my refuge. Its laughable, I know, because its just a reddit clone, but it was, and it was all i had. As i grappled with my own identity and neurodivergency, isolated, alone, unmedicated for the numerous undiagnosed mental disorders i had, going to therapists who told me to wear emotional masks and act manly as i watched my body start to age from testosterone, tearing my body apart to feel anything beyond this emptiness. I stayed out of every major struggle session the site had because in the end i just… couldnt deal with the idea of the site breaking apart.
When i accepted my identity, put on womens clothing for the first time, confirmed that I was, indeed, trans - i was so happy. So purely happy. One of the first things I did was change my pronouns here, and i laughed and laughed and laughed. If this place hadnt been there for me i dont know how long it would have taken for me to come to terms with this part of me. Maybe i never would have. And even if i had I may not have survived regardless. I nearly didnt. I’m still quite mentally ill, after all. As I watched my state become dramatically more hostile to transfolk; as the nation began to single us out as a punching bag; as I faced the cruelty and verbal abuse from people close to me after coming out; throughout it all you were there. I found solace in your embrace and meaning in our shared struggle. I connected with other queer and trans people, found support in my city, friends at times and lovers at others. Fucked things up with some people but reconnected with people dear to me, too.
Things started to go wrong again recently. Lost my job, fell out with my parents, got fucked over by new anti trans legislation. Then the election cycle started to ramp up and we all got to watch as americans voted for an antichrist embodying some of the worst excesses of the system we live in while the people who are supposed to be our allies did nothing to defend us and perpetuated war and genocide. Nearly lost my mind again. Fell back into self harm, stopped trying to find a job, blew my savings on rent and cheap comforts and drugs. So when trump won, i did what i always do - i came back here.
It was, as always, refuge. Some hope in a hopeless world. Even better, the people that made this site a safe place for those like me had returned after nearly 3 years. I made it through yet another crisis by the skin of my teeth, avoiding a hospital visit without insurance that would almost definitely have wiped out the rest of my savings and trapped me in this state for the forseeable future.
When the decision to close the tank comms was announced, i was just sad more than anything. But not super sad. Thats how things go sometimes, yknow. This site wouldnt be what it currently is if it werent for focused, concerted efforts to change site culture that at times ignored pushback from users. Theres always always been at least some amount of chauvinism, misogyny, and other generally shitty behavior, ever since the days of the sub. Thats just a fact, although from my perspective I thought its always been handled pretty well as the site got older. So I decided to share my opinion anyway because i didnt really think of it as a strugglesesh at that point and, well, i am pro-slop as it were.
But that anonymous post was like a gut punch. I was fucking furious and sad and anxious when i woke up to it this morning. I dont pass. I never have. I get misgendered every day - its probably more like 8 or 9/10 times when im not with ppl close to me. My body is covered in scars and the lines of my body imply the years of testosterone driven aging. I want to be pretty, but i dress masc to hide the scarring and most days im too tired to wear makeup. I dont voice train consistently. Even after 10 laser sessions the hair on my face is noticeable, even through concealer. Ive never organized due to my fears and various neurodivergencies, although one day I hope to do so. Ive read some theory, but find it hard to pick up books consistently, especially after losing my medication. Im not a particularly good communist. Im not particularly good at being trans. Im barely even a person at all. But i thought i didnt have to be. Lying in the sweat and silence as the blood seeped from my wounds into my sheets and scabbed into my sheets as the days melted together and the drugs burned a hole through my skull. As long as the fire within me never flickered out. Just a worm, writhing, wriggling in the mud and the decay, surviving. Praying for the rising of a red star.
But. Because of my rage? Because of my desire to see the bourgeoisie torn into shreds and fed to the hounds? For my longing for just a tiny bit of catharsis and fun on a stupid website thats given me many laughs and much kindness over the years and that i am far, far too attached to? I get told i give off cishet man vibes, by a mod team that is supermajority trans people, scolded for being an internet communist turn off, dismissed, patronized, and paternalized as self harming by doing what? Posting a meow-knife emoji under a bigoted tweet from some dipshit with 20 followers?
So yeah i was angry and hurt and sad and very very fucking scared cause the site i love did something shitty and the response has been unsatisfactory for no reason?? I didnt expect an immediate resolution or for the mods responsible to be dragged out into the streets but good lord i just want something, anything more than an edit saying that some out of pocket shit had been said under stress and a third rank post saying to log off cause its being looked into with no real acknowledgement of the fucked-upness of the post, and other trans users i have looked up to for a long long time being dismissive about it and saying its missing context. And i just dont want to be treated as a child for speaking up about it
But im sorry if ive come across as rude, or disrespectful, and im sorry that i let my anger and sadness get the best of me when i said i was disappointed, and im sorry that i ban evaded to write this post because i get emotional and this is the only thing keeping me from ugly crying even more than i already have which i know is very very silly. Im very sorry if ive contributed to the stress of any admins, particularly @CARCOSA@hexbear.net (who really didnt deserve any shit) and @TransComrade69@hexbear.net because i know this shit isnt easy and youve only been back for a few days and i hope you can get this sorted out because you really did make this a very good place to be and i want it to stay that way.
Anyway I LOVE MY TRANS COMRADES and you can permaban this account. Sorry for the rant
From the bottom of my heart I am so sorry for the pain of the past few days. Many folks here have been hurt by the statements and actions, we know that we have alot of work to do to begin rebuilding trust.
I love this place because of how many people have been helped by the community and the refuge it provides. I can see how important the tanks were to people, and we want to work with you to find a way that is satisfying for everyone.
Thank you for the apology. Hopefully we can broach this unfortunate divide that separates us. Never stop posting
I will be sad to see her go. I hope she comes back again some day. Hopefully under better circumstances. She really did make this place a safe haven for trans users
❤️
I’m so sorry.
You’re incredibly brave and I wish you didn’t have to be.
Thankyou for putting the effort in to share this.
You write beautifully.
Thank you for reading comrade.
Im not brave. This will be the first and last struggle sesh that i participate in and if i had known it would develop into a full blown strugglesesh at the start a few days ago, i would have stayed tf out of it. Because this was honestly just one long extended meltdown for me, a break between figuring out which drugs to put in my body next and which mushrooms to put in my next risotto and share with hexbear (i have decided on maitakes and lions mane). It started from when i woke up yesterday and read the post and culminated in a full blown panic attack, an actual mental health crisis, and some of the worst dysphoria ive felt since last year when the mental hospital took away my razors and moved me to into a mens only unit when my facial hair grew out the next day. I really, genuinely never wanted something like this to have happened or ever happen again on the site and if it does im just going to tune out and blast my brains out with something to forget myself, forget the world, and forget how much this place means to me because i wont be able to take it otherwise. Probably ketamine.
💙
I have no idea what’s going on, but every time I check in, it seems to be worse
It really is astounding how the mods and admins keep making it worse. It could have been solved so easily at several different points, but they seem to insist instead on doing the condescending lib PR thing and pissing everyone off, then banning them for expressing discontent.
Keep your chin up and Keep Posting. The only way out is through
When you find yourself in a hole the first step is to put down the shovel.
I still can’t get past the fact that the admins lied to all of us about why they were doing the thing (which IMO was a BAD reason), then when they got caught there was zero contrition. Y’all are quick to apologize for the ban rampage and the chauvinistic brainworms, but this seems to be just slipping to the back of the conversation.
The admins/mods demonstrated that they think this is their site, not the users. That was only reinforced by the gleeful cruelty and ambivalence of the ban waves. I for one spent yesterday afternoon reliving the intensity of anxiety I felt when I was in an abusive living situation, because I felt compelled to speak out despite people catching bans literally just for being upset left and right.
None of the apologies coming from the people who did this are speaking to this, that I’ve seen. To me that means the status quo still stands. Decisions about the site are for making behind closed doors, a week before any of the users know about it, and can be lied about when the rollout happens. And by my measuring of the timeline, that’s the point where the userbase went from sad to angry, so letting this fade into the background is just setting us up for another huge drama like this in the future.
I go for a run and TC69 deletes her account
Anyway I’m back from the gulag. I’ve got thoughts, but I’m gonna chill out and not post for a little while - Trying to embrace @Awoo@hexbear.net thought - so it’s only going to be a short novel of a post.
Thanks for the support y’all, it’s warmed my heart to see all the people who wrote about me getting banned. TBH I was being hostile, though I felt like my hostility was an appropriate response, and it was not like I came out swinging. It ramped up slowly as this situation became more… Situationy.
I’m really happy to see the direction things are going right now. @Lyudmila@hexbear.net Is handling this how it should’ve been handled from the start. Truly doing a great job. 10/10
I wanna say I don’t think there’s a shadowy mod cabal, that’s not what I meant by “clique”, but I guess it could be read in the commnist way.
I didn’t expect immediate action, I still don’t.
Renaming the comms for a joke was not okay. Renaming them because of racism was very okay.
Just how we gotta be watchful for transphobia, we gotta be watchful for ableism. The infantilizing “you can’t take care of yourself, I know best for you” attitude of a lot of people is ableist. Even when the sentiment is rational, speaking like that to other users is ableist and it creates an environment that is not welcoming for ND people. Extra sucky to tell someone who was a back- and knee injury that flares up and makes them literally unable to walk at times - that they should walk outside. This wasn’t completely relevant this time (hence the run), but still, it has hurt to be told to do so before.
Embrace Awoo thought.
Main.
little bit of drama if you're a messy piggy
I’d forgotten how bad TC60 was a community admin though lol. Thought she’d mellowed out This was just the VCJ all over again, really exemplary.
> Comes back
> Immediate strugglesession
> Carcosa steps down
> Vagueposts about misogyny in the modlog
> Bans all dissenters
> Condescends and infantilizes the userbase
> This will surely stop the conflict
> 72T steps down
> Deletes her account
> Refuses to elaborate
I know the strugglesesh isn’t her fault, but it is very funny.Go kiss your dad on the mouth y’all <3
edit: forgot to say that banning me was fair. Not for the post I got banned for, but for how I treated @blight@hexbear.net. I apologised later, but I was way too much. I do not think I was too much elsewhere, since I believe I gave back what was passed around. I do not respect Ben Shapiro and I do not respect people that behave like him. Also death to redditors.
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Why wouldn’t I be afraid that the admin team hasn’t had some form of transphobia kicking around in it when I got banned shortly after I attempted to defend my trans comrades with the following text.
The admin team needs combed through for transphobia immediately. Between the anonymous comment and this where an admin misgenders AlaskaBall, there’s clearly an issue that needs addressed. If you folks want to continue being known as the transfriendly instance, it’s time to act like it.
I don’t care how much of a funny bit you think any of this shit is, but you need to gauge when shit is starting to careen out of control. It is not fucking okay that you folks banned me for that. As a transwoman, getting banned for that comment is a huge red flag for me. I’ve been here for a long fucking time and have been a mod of the traa community in the past. I’m still on there. I’m the only one without pronouns cause I deleted my account for opsec reasons. What was done and continues to be done is not acceptable and is purely childish behavior on the part of the people that run this site. You folks seriously need to all do self crit or get the fuck out.
I think the worst part about all of this is that the ban reason given made it seem like I asked for it, obfuscating and giving absolutely no real reason as to why I was banned. This is clearly because there was no reason and you folks just wanted me to shut up for whatever reason. Fucking figure out your shit admins.
I’m in absolute agreement with you. You absolutely shouldn’t have received a ban, especially given the topic of the comment. You were banned independently by TransComrade69 for that comment, her reasoning given was because she was afraid further comments about the topic could lead others into further wild speculation based on mistakenly thinking an admin banned and misgendered Alaskaball. In actuality, they did it to themself.
Fucking figure out your shit admins.
I’m sorry you were banned. I hope that I and the rest of the mods and admins can work to earn your trust again.
her reasoning given was because she was afraid further comments about the topic could lead others into further wild speculation based on mistakenly thinking an admin banned and misgendered Alaskaball. In actuality, they did it to themself.
Then perhaps this information should be divulged to the userbase rather than banning people without a proper, given reason.
For someone who told us to read the modlog, she seems very upset every time we read the modlog.
her reasoning given was because she was afraid further comments about the topic could lead others into further wild speculation based on mistakenly thinking an admin banned and misgendered Alaskaball. In actuality, they did it to themself.
The ban do not stop this no? Other user will still discuss. It does not make sense to me. I am not trying to be mean. Do I not understand it?
I do not understand it either. Really all I can do is undo it.
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For the love of god stop posting please.
I mean this with love, for this team and this site.
Context for my take:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5620189
https://hexbear.net/comment/5620267
Just stop fuelling this whole thing. It’s that easy.
72T is resigning? wtf
And TransComrade69 has deleted her account.
It’s all incredible levels of overreactions on top of overreactions. It’s all blown entirely out of proportion.
One of the core problems seems to be that everyone is moving incredibly quickly. Like, things that should be taking DAYS to spread in the community and come to understanding over are occurring in posts that are up for 2 hours, then locked, then everyone is expected to understand what happened in those threads.
Nobody knows what the hell is going on because half the drama is stuff that occurred between a literal handful of users and admins in a timespan that means only a few people even saw it and then everything else is being roughly understood through tail end tacked on threads over and over again.
SLOW DOWN.
Surely once the third admin steps down, the fourth will post “Update from the admin team: there’s no update, we’ll examine the issues that led to the recent drama and reflect on how to move forward. Everyone has been unbanned, continue posting comrades” and lock the thread
Surely…
This is how I would go about it. A cool off is sorely needed. People need to stop posting about it. The new comm name needs deciding. And that’s about it.
Yep. That’s the goal here. I’m here toanswer a few burning questions and help fix some things that got messed up, but we’re all taking a little cooldown here.
One thing I think sorely needs impressing on the admin team is the need for announcements and big staff posts to really get 48hours of time between them so that the existing post can run its course (mostly posts last 24 hours) and then have another day of time to be digested properly.
The pace of things that happen leaves the community completely confused about what is going on. Everyone is fragmented into different segments based on whether they saw something or didn’t and people did not get time to see many things, myself included.
(I plan to leave this post pinned and unlocked for at least 72 hours.)
I’m not locking anything or going anywhere. I’m here til we get this fixed.
I know, you’re the third admin
I really don’t know what the fuck is going on at this point. Was the first few months of Hexbear like this?
The first few months of Hexbear was slower than this(in a better and more understandable way) over issues that were genuinely larger. This has occurred at such a speed and frenzy over something that literally could have been resolved with a single paragraph post that it makes everything else look relaxed by comparison.
Policy/staff announcement posts should not occur more than every 2 days. It takes that long for the MOST ACTIVE users to see them. Most people login once per day, and miss a day here and there. Hexbear this week has had announcement posts that were up for 2 hours before new announcement posts were made and then new ones.
If I were going to tip cold water on this I’d post a single paragraph about how the dunk tank is being renamed, a contest for it is occurring, some policy changes to avoid federated drama will be discussed but there will be no further policy or staff announcements until after the new comm name is decided in a few days.
Simple, easy. Give it all a cool off period. Tell people in the team to stop posting.
I wonder to what extent Trump getting reelected has anything to do with people’s emotions being so out of wack. That was my very first comment. I made it in half jest, but perhaps I shouldn’t have done that. I really wonder if people are genuinely afraid of Trump and that this fear is creeping into their decision-making. Emotions aren’t always instantly felt. It’s like how many people (most people?) don’t immediately start sob when they receive news that their love one has died. It’s only a while later that the sorrow really hits them and they start crying. Fear is the same thing as well.
I have never seen the admins and mods (and even some users here as one user who got temporary banned immediately typed some 10+ paragraph comment about how they self-harm because they think they’ll never pass) here act so melodramatic. I tie all this with UlyssesT deleting his account as well. He was very clear that Trump’s win genuinely scared him and he wanted to touch grass and build a small community so his family and friends could weather the storm. Perhaps the fear is creeping into the admins and pushing the admins to “do something,” which is where the frantic energy is coming from.
Yes, it’s the cool leftist thing to say that Trump ain’t shit and the US already treat marginalized communities like complete shit, but emotions are emotions. You can either ride out the emotion and steer it towards productive ends or you could bottle it up and mask it before it explodes like what we’re seeing right now.
I wouldn’t know, being in britland. I feel basically nothing about it, but I have seen similar emotional behaviour from americans I consider friends in other spaces. They are snappier, quicker to boil over, and scared.
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There were constant struggle sessions, this is kind of a return to form. Difference is that people have now formed more social/parasocial connections at this point which makes it more personal it seems.
The first year of Hexbear had a struggle session like every month. They were usually confined to one thread though
i genuinely believe this struggle session is sillier than the outdoor cats one
Yeah it’s just getting ridiculous at this point
More thoughts later commuting rn
Glad she’s giving her keycaps a break and taking some deep breaths
Whoever got banned for pointing out that the drama started when TC69 came back is laughing so hard right now. It was almost certainly a coincidence but still
Yeah I want to be clear that while I don’t personally like TC69 this drama is not their fault
But it is a very funny coincidence
She didn’t start it but she took it upon herself to make it worse.
Definitely true. I was hoping that in the few years she’s been gone she’d have mellowed out a bit. Maybe in another few years
Here a couple of thoughts.
If you’re an admin posting, don’t do bits. Have an alt and preferably recognisable as such.
Mod actions shouldn’t be anonymous. Own your shit.
Bits on admin/mod accounts have been banned and clearly stated as such. Sadly multiple mods were harassed for over a year before the actions were anonymous, including one that was doxxed, at the moment we are prioritizing their saftey but you are right some sort of oversight needs to happen. We will begin talking with people about what that should look like in the next few weeks.
i really appreciate the new stance on bits by admins and mods. my autism found it much more stressful than funny and i think most people felt the same.
thank you
You, and anyone else, can scold me for being an irreverent little shit if it helps.
Like imagine I’m one of those fuzzy cute animal toys with a squeaker inside that dogs love to go hog wild on, and proceed to bully away.
im imagining ur one of those toys where the eyes pop out when u squeeze it and im squeezing u super hard
Oh even better! Is it making classic squeaks or is it more of a rubber chicken screm?
more like a rubber chicken but it only makes the noises when u stop squeezing it and the eyes slowly move back into their sockets
squeeze away, soldier!
i don’t want to scold or bully as it wasn’t just you individually, but overall i’m glad it’s recognized and that we can move forward together :cat-trans:
FWIW, I thought it was pretty clear that you getting banned was a bit, but I couldn’t say so because I was temp banned and lurking
I don’t think there’s a good way out of that. Keeping the admins and mods safe is paramount. I mean, I was going to suggest just having a single admin account and you all just rotate who gets to use it, but that’s no different than an anonymous action.
This is the first sensible post to come out of the admin team since the start of this insanity.
Still a lot of room for improvement - not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down, to be honest.
But after the past few days of being entirely baffled by whatever the hell was going on with the rest of the admins, this is a step in the right direction.
not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down,
Iunno. Dudes do stay on hella bullshit; especially white dudes-- but it’s so much of a worse look when a mod staff that’s frankly always given some hWhite tendencies (no, I will not forget the 🦝 discourse and how I nearly had to fight that mod fight twice) starts hitting everyone, not just the white dudes with accusations of having “cishet white dude” mentalities over shit that rly doesn’t matter that much. Reads as friendly fire but cranked up a couple magnitudes; y’all just spraying into a crowd with that.
When I say ‘white dudes/white gays are the weakest link’ it always has something to do with formation-building, with interpersonal relations in organizations and the moments of action, et cetera.
…This is a shitposting forum; is shitposting suddenly the sole domain of cracker men? If so, we’d all have to leave except the he/hims.
Oh hey, I’m unbanned. Neat. I don’t know where it would be best to post this but my recent thoughts are as follows:
After all this I feel conflicted on returning to any sort of activity or interaction with the site. I don’t really feel that seen or welcome as a non-white, trans, nd person and it has nothing to do with the tanks. Despite being here since the beginning, I’ve never been a poster of any renown(?), and as of late I feel like celebrating posting clout and reputation has often taken a higher priority in hexbear’s culture than being a safe place for discussion for people like me.
The arrogant dismissal I and many others were recently confronted with is disgusting but, for me, unsurprising. I am disappointed but I expected something like this would reoccurr, as the phenomenon has been demonstrated many times since this site was chapo.chat.
The recent “struggle session” concentrated a lot of the feelings I experienced as an auDHD person throughout my life. Facing broad assumptions about how I felt and having to argue against a person built in the shape of me. It was uncomfortably similar to the arguments I’ve had with family, authority, educators, that have stemmed from them assuming the worst possible intention and refusing to hear otherwise. It was and is emotionally exhausting and simply not worth it for what this site has provided.
The worst was assumed of people because nobody in power bothered to ask or communicate, and when action was taken, founded on this blind assumption, not only were poc, trans, nd, people ignored but mocked, shamed, and banned.
The aspersions cast on me and others like me, in contradiction to years of our demonstrated cameraderie, have been disheartening. Ultimately I don’t think it matters much personally as I’ve never been a celebrity or poster of renown, just someone who enjoyed the occasional dunk, art post, commiseration on the state of the world.
I don’t have illusions of being some valued presence or improving the site culture or anything, and I don’t mean all this to convey some high melodrama; for me it’s just a dull grey disappointment.
this is not in response to you specifically @Lyudmila. I appreciate the work you and @CARCOSA are doing in this thread to sort things out. thank you.
effortpost preface:
I started writing this at 5am this morning after checking to see if I was banned (confused? keep reading!), seeing @Aradina had been unbanned, stumbling onto the horrifically sad comment that apparently @morte made from an alt after being banned, and crying my eyes out. I’ve been working on it (and crying! 😂😭) off and on all day, in between reading the comments here to catch up on What Happened.
I have to get this out, and presumably we’re supposed to keep all of this contained to these threads.
admins, mods, fellow users – this is not an attempt to restart The Shit.
I’m posting this to get it off my chest and hopefully get some clarification from some people on it, so I’m gonna leave it and close Hexbear and maybe see you tomorrow.
ATTENTION, FELLOW HEXBEARS:
telling me anytime after Friday to logout and let things blow over was ableist, actually.
also, saying this is just a website is callous and fucked up.
please allow me to elaborate. get your clicking fingers ready, because baby, I got links.
I am autistic as fuck. I only just realized this last year, and got diagnosed last week.
justice sensitivity is a well-known neurodivergent trait, and it has been a defining part of my character for my whole life. one of my earliest memories is getting whipped with a spatula for “talking back” because I questioned the justice of adult decisions, for responding to “life isn’t fair” with “why aren’t you trying to be? why don’t you make it fair?”
I have been repeatedly socially ostracized for sticking up for others or finding repugnant behavior intolerable. I lost my hometown friend group when I wouldn’t attend functions to which they had invited the asshole who abused another person in the group.
CW: DV
(photos of large, vivid bruising were not enough. seeing the bruises on her in person wasn’t enough to make the host uninvite him.)
my husband and I lost his hometown friend group when nobody gave a shit about covid. they stopped inviting us to things because we were masking and distancing. I’d rather have no friends than friends like that.
it’s the biggest reason for having left most of the two-dozen jobs I mentioned – somebody outside the management clique is unjustly fired or otherwise punished, and I quit in solidarity with no backup plan. 🤦🤷
it made me unwelcome in the glass program at art school because I reported the head instructor’s abusive treatment of a fellow student to the program director.
it’s the reason I left Christianity as a teenager. the adults wouldn’t stand up for anything. they didn’t give a shit about “love your neighbor.” they were too busy gossiping and backstabbing each other while jockeying for positions in the social and institutional hierarchy. there were people with country club memberships while some of the other members of the <100-member church didn’t have enough to eat.
it has made me the outsider in my conservative evangelical family. they thought it was super fun to get me all fired up about this stuff when I was younger, and then they’d make fun of me for caring until I cried and fled. they also hated that my best friend was a gay boy I met in band class. why should it matter that he was gay? didn’t Jesus love everyone equally? I didn’t understand. I still don’t.
it’s what drove me from the Republican indoctrination of my childhood to the Democrats as a young adult. it’s what made me ditch them over the way they treated Bernie. it’s part of what drove me from DSA. it’s what has driven me further and further left.
it’s why I would never have employees. it’s why I pay for any little indie apps I use. it’s why I left reddit during the API fiasco. it’s what made me investigate Hexbear when you federated instead of just accepting the warnings about you as facts. it’s what made me abandon my other fediverse accounts and live here on local on my previous account and this subsequent one. it’s what made me start contributing to the Patreon the day I found out it existed.
I’m not online all the time, so I know there are plenty of things I miss, but since I joined last summer, this place has been fair, it has been caring, and it has been wonderful to see so much good come of this place. people have been fed and sheltered because so many of us are willing to share what we have, even when it is very little. lots of very little bits of goodness added together can make something great.
I’m 42, which makes me older than most users here; many of you are much closer in age to my 17yo son than to me. I don’t bring it up because I think it makes me inherently wiser than any of you – far from it, I know I’m a dumbass, I have a lifetime of failure and fuckups to prove it. just because I’ve been fucking up longer doesn’t mean I have learned more from my fuckups than any of you have from yours.
I bring it up because I’m fucking tired, and life is hard, and I genuinely had very little hope for the future until I made a post begging for distraction from terrible thoughts, and so many of you came through for me. 😭 it still instantly makes me cry when I think of it.
the months since then have been physically harder – I had to stop hrt for perimenopause due to life-threatening side effects, and I have been expecting to slide back into the abyss, but I hadn’t yet. I really think the community of care I have found here is what was keeping it at bay. @morte’s comment let me know I’m not the only person who feels that way about this place, and I don’t want her to put herself out there alone.
some of you have become very dear to my heart.
a long-time user I have barely interacted with DM’d me yesterday offering help with getting my son T if Trump bans trans care.
there are no words to adequately express my gratitude for that sliver of hope.
Hexbear, I love you, but I care about things being “fair” or “just” more than anything else. I will stop caring about the way other people are treated when I stop breathing. you might as well tell me to stop getting rashes when I’m stressed.
wanna see what it looked like after I saw that @REgon had been banned?? 😂🙃
pic
this might actually be the worst I’ve ever seen it. it was definitely the worst my husband has.🏆🥇
you might as well tell me to quit loving my son or quit being 42. it is physically impossible. my parents couldn’t beat it out of me.
“don’t take it too seriously, it’s just online, it’s just a website!” friend, right now I wish it were just a website, because I would say fuck this place and never look back. no mere website is worth the amount of anxiety and stress I’ve felt and tears I’ve cried in the last 24 hours.
it’s not just a website, it is a lifeline for my family and so many of my comrades. it has been a sanctuary for me, until this past weekend. really, until yesterday. “don’t take that tiny sliver of hope too seriously”??
if you think that, then buddy,
with all my heart,
with every fiber of my being,
FUCK YOU.
is that hostile? good. maybe if someone who is usually kind to everyone gets hostile, this stuff will fucking matter to you, too. I’m glad that some of you are socially privileged enough to have enough support to not care what happens to this place. I’m not.
those of you who were applauding the behavior of TC69 and her Cool Kids Club this weekend should be deeply ashamed of yourselves.
I know I’m ashamed of you. I finally understand why so many people warn about this place. You Eat Your Own.
and for what??? what was the actual point of any of this? rename the comms plus change the comms equals change the site culture?
was the culture genuinely that bad?? this is a real and sincere question, I’m autistic, I’m sure there are problems that I don’t pick up on.
most of the time irl, I don’t realize a skillful bully is fucking with me until it’s too late, so certainly I’m not gonna catch all the shittiness on here, where I don’t have body language to help.
(continues below)
Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you’ll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
This really makes it impossible to build trust in the admins. The admins are vetted by who, other admins? They might be “in good standing” but there are users in this site who are in good standing who I wouldn’t want in charge.
Take SalvadorWALL_E for example. This account was sitting dormant for 2 years, got promoted to admin in the middle of a heated struggle session, pissed some people off, then was purged. Was this an existing admin who wanted deflect heat? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up and got demoted? A trusted user who got promoted, immediately fucked up, and is going to continue being an admin on another account?
I understand that it’s for opsec and I’m not telling you to stop using alts, but I’m not giving the benefit of the doubt to accounts with little-to-no history.
There are two categories of Admins, those that have been Admins for over a year and those that are new.
The new ones were nominated by members of our marginalized communities to help diversify the admin team.
The specific admin you mentioned was an old old admin, that had left and then returned. At this moment the team is the same it has been the past 2 years with the addition of the aforementioned new additions.
Going forward any admin that stepped down, and has been inactive for over a year will not be permitted to return, and that any new admins will be those nominated by users and then thouroughly vetted and onboarded to prevent this situation from reoccuring
Completely unrelated to the struggle session and more of a curiosity: how are admins vetted? Is it like a lets-meet-in-person thing or its digital equivalent? How do you know that you really know who is behind the handle?
I can’t be specific but it is 100% digital
We just send them down to the main office and let Mike from HR brief them on their extra responsibility. It’s generally not a hassle, except some of the wfh guys who have to catch a plane out to Langley and then you gotta get into scheduling and it’s a whole thing.edit: I’ve been informed that I should let you know I was doing a “bit” as we fellow leftists like to do. Josh around… Unrelated, but do you know of any cool POC community organisers? I’ve got a business proposition for them. And uh down with the US, fight the power, screw the man!
