I did a similar post on Slops community, asking for feedback regarding how specifically their comm is moderated, I did not ask for their overall sentiments of Hexbear at large. “Slop” is not a clear demographic though.
This comm is different though, as the demographic is clearer. From your perspective as people who are more covid/health aware, what are your concerns with not only how this comm is moderated, but the site in general?
Been reading here for a LONG time even though I’m new but I want to piggy back on a few points that @JoeByeThen@hexbear.net and @Demifriend@hexbear.net made about covid denialism and eugenics. While these things do exist specifically on this site, and even on this comm sadly enough, the sad fact is that EVERY site these days is a covid denialism and eugenics hotbed. For christ’s sake, even the DSA can’t be bothered to pass a resolution to mask up, much less the CPUSA or any of the other so called leftist groups in this god forsaken country. It just is what it is at this point.
While this is despair inducing, we can’t give in and sink to the lowest depths. There is a need for moderation throughout the site when it comes to the eugenics (subtle or over) and covid denialism, and it needs to come from US, not the mods! There are just far too many instances of this subtly awful behavior getting posted around the site and we have take the time to point it out and shut it down. At the very least, make these user feel shitty enough about their views that they want to reflect and attempt to change. God knows, we leftists love a good struggle session, but we need to focus on not throwing our fellow comrades to the wolves, and instead attempt to point the mirror back at them and reflect their own poor behavior back in their faces.
None of us came to covid willingly and none of us want others to go through what we’ve been through. We’ll never achieve that if we close ourselves off to every single person that has a stupid, shitty view on this issue. Furthermore, we’ll never achieve the solidarity that we so desperately desire if we huddle around each other, isolated from the outside world. I see very little advocacy from other members on here, and even less backbone to stand up and for one another. I have advocated for militancy in real life in discussions recently but it is a very, very lonely road. Here though, no one is going to spit in my mouth. I don’t have to worry about someone coughing on me and my mask being slightly ajar because I’m chewing gum. No doctor or nurse is going to flatly refuse to wear a mask while I’m forced to take mine off. On here, we can be a community, and we should do more to help our other fellow leftists avoid having their lives completely ruined by this horrible disease if we can.
On that note, from the moderation front Hestia, I’d like to see some more sticky threads on this comm. Its a little ridiculous that there are 47 different sticky posts on the front page, and not a single informative sticky on here. There are a font of resources and information we should be sharing with one another and not just linking back to Reddit.
I agree with you completely, but I’m afraid I’ve also reached the ‘pick and choose my battles’ stage of the game. If I were to go after every silent, but obvious anti-mask post I’d be spending all day/every day doing it. There are so many posts every day where folks are very obviously doing shit in large crowds, indoors, without a mask. I’m already at a point where I’m questioning why I come here, if I acknowledge every last one of them aloud (in type, whatever) I don’t think I could keep coming back.
Honestly, part of my mental survival nowadays is actively ignoring that the general population doesn’t give a shit about the health and safety of each other when I interact with them. IRL, there’s a whole list of shit in my head that’s like “this is all the shit this person is ignoring and will cut ties with me if I mention it too often” and covid is right there at the top because it’s (or should i say the lack of it is) all over their face.
Speaking of, prop to this guy’s daughter in becoming the face of CC and clean air advocacy despite her parents not masking. 
I completely get the pick and choose your battles line. I’ve had to pull back from a lot of the Palestine discussion for the very same reason. As to why you come back, this is part of my point - where else are you going to go? There really aren’t any leftist discussion spaces online at this point, and those of them that are still out there, are even worse than this place when it comes to covid. So why not try to work with what we’ve got, however shitty it might be, in an effort to improve our community?
You’re lucky you have people left to interact with at this point.
What do you do when the “help” is unwanted? At best, we can do agitation, and I have been barking up this tree IRL and online since the early years. People won’t change. They don’t want to change. If they do, they are an outlier, and I have not met a single one of them. The only time any of them did anything was when it was policy and under threat of consequences—visible consequences that they can’t wave away like degrading health. We won’t get there again without it. Even then, not everyone would abide. People were on their deathbeds decrying the existence of COVID. All I, a human being of “the community”, have succeeded in doing is burning myself out while no one listens and the party outside goes on unimpeded. What then? As someone else here put it, someone needs to be COVID Stalin to shape the discourse. It will not happen for our part. We have no authority, a fact that is easily confirmed by trying to talk to anyone about COVID whatsoever.
I’m firmly convinced at this point that most people aren’t going to care about this until their lives are ruined by it in some manner of fashion. I admittedly agree with every one of your points. All I was trying to say is while most of us have given up IRL, given that we have nowhere left to go in leftist spaces, we can at least try to advocate here instead of relying on mods to clean up the random jerkoffs when they pop up.
No one has any authority. I can make the same covid post as I can about peaceful protests. Neither one of them will mean a good god damn in the end. I can only hope that the covid post will have a smaller chance of getting someone to think about altering their behavior.
Yeah I try to push for it irl. Whenever some casual acquaintance mentions “oh I dropped off the face of the planet for a couple weeks because I got covid, I’m doing better now (cough cough cough)” I just nod and say sympathetically “damn that sucks, hope you’re feeling better. I’ve never had it because” points to face “I get these bomb-ass respirators from China and wear them indoors”. People will nod and say “that’s smart of you” and then continue to never touch a mask.
Close friends and family I have struggle sessioned about it with and their conclusion was basically “getting covid once or twice a year is worth the price of not having to wear a mask” and when it comes to the topic of protecting the vulnerable they just throw up their hands in despair and go “well nobody’s masking anymore, what can I do? The vulnerable will have to just wear masks themselves. No I’m not vulnerable even though I have all these risk factors. No I’m not old I’m only in my 60s.”
Underneath it all is this: They do not want to wear a mask. They just don’t want to, and will rationalize to protect that feeling. Maybe they don’t have the ability to cope with living life as if there’s a dangerous disease going around that could disable them at any moment — after all, a lot of people handle uncomfortable feelings by just engaging in straight up denial. I don’t know, but I know nothing has gotten through to a single person I know irl.