Don’t get me wrong. This site’s dunking culture is good and it serves an important purpose. It’s an immune system that stops bad-faith trolls and fascists from getting a foot in the door. Just like a biological immune system, though, it can get overactive and start attacking its own body. This is called an autoimmune disease and it can severely damage or even kill its host body.
What’s appropriate for a lib or a fascist who refuses to even consider whether they might be wrong about our fundamental ideas isn’t appropriate for a comrade who, in good faith, is voicing an opinion you happen to disagree with. This is very similar to something Mao talks about in his essay “On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People.” Mao’s essay splits contradictions into two types:
- Antagonistic contradictions are those between class and political opponents with irreconcilable interests. There’s no real debate to be had here. They’re enemies. You don’t engage in dialog with them. You defeat them.
- Non-antagonistic contradictions are those that occur within a class or movement. The interests of all involved are fundamentally aligned, but there’s disagreement on how to advance those interests. These disagreements are resolved through discussion that improves mutual understanding and allows for arrival at a consensus.
Applying the analogy to posting on Hexbear:
- Antagonistic contradiction: A chud wanders in to lecture the site about how Stalin killed 50 quintillion people / Hamas is an evil terrorist group / the transes are corrupting the youth. You can’t convince these people and it’s not worth trying. Post dunks, express hostility, drive them off. That’s community hygiene.
- Non-antagonistic contradiction: A comrade who’s been on this site for years voices a concern that you posted something bigoted / disagrees with your interpretation of a work of media / advocates engaging with people politically in a way you don’t consider effective. You both want communism, you are both anti-imperialist, you both want Hexbear to be a welcoming space for marginalized people. Good-faith dialogue is a way to share information and enhance mutual understanding. Responding to these people with insults and dunks just pisses them off and discourages them or anyone watching from engaging with the site except to post their own insults and dunks. The site becomes more toxic and hostile.
I think spending your time dunking and bullying says, to me, that you in some way get enjoyment out of doing those things. I think that doing those things on the regular doesn’t make you a pleasant person to be around. Its akin to always gossiping or always venting, always having something negative to say.
i’m mostly here because you guys dont whine about tankies every other post
there aren’t enough tankies on lemmy
ngl i think in the end the opponents of federation on here have been vindicated, though most of them have left or been banned by now. I’m not saying its the only cause or even the main, but before federation it felt like the overly dunk hungry people on here were a minority that had just been a bit brainrotted by twitter + still engaging with reddit and everyone else had gradually tamed over time after like 4 years of not being hit with “go back to r/chapotraphouse” everytime they commented anymore. Post-federation though everyone got brainblasted with liberals coming back in here arguing + the fun of going out to argue with liberals on their hometurf + constant posts celebrating people outside crashing out after they got dunked on too much and tricked into looking at a picture of a shit covered pig + an influx of users who see us just as the “communist dunk instance” and now we’re mostly isolated again that culture’s turned inwards on itself again. I know I’ve definitely been too snarky on here, and I’ve had people be unreasonably aggresive at me on here over very minor disagreements.
Also the ‘approved enemies that its ok to say anything to’ things gone a bit far, when i used to use the hexbear mastodon instance years ago i remember once posting about mark fisher on there and having someone reply that it was a good thing he’d killed himself because he’d been annoying online and anti stalin
I see your point however I think it presupposes that our community was never going to be able to rein itself in with the dunking. Then again, you may be correct about that. I favor federation, but I guess that was in hopes of having the opportunity to actually build community, ideally with done mild discipline/ROE, but obviously that never happened.
There are some chill people, but this site is extremely “you’re not wrong, but you are an asshole” which gives a certain level of vindication to the "tankie [ this and that] " complaints from federated users. I have made many posts about how I am concerned that the site is on its last leg if it doesn’t change its ways.
One possible solution that I have brought up is a partner instance (call it “square bear” or something) that turns its shoulder away from irony and dunking, and had more of a tolerance for liberals and less educated potential comrades. Make u/cowbee a sitemod on the first day. It will at least offer a chance at a “stepping stone” community.
I have ideas for other instances too, if anyone wants to chat more you can use this Link to add me on deltachat (fdroid) (e2ee and more anonymous than signal).
Duality of hexbear
Two good posts, one of which is in the wrong comm
Good-faith dialogue is a way to share information and enhance mutual understanding. Responding to these people with insults and dunks just pisses them off and discourages them or anyone watching from engaging with the site except to post their own insults and dunks. The site becomes more toxic and hostile.
I agree. There will always be exceptions but you gotta take other hexbears in good faith and, imo, err on the side of humility.
In turn, if a hexbear is having a bad day and they snap back at something you felt was warranted criticism, also try to remind yourself to be patient and humble.
its too easy to be a jerkass.
I can understand why a lot of leftists are prone to losing their patience in the current climate especially but yeah, it’s pretty counterproductive.
I have been working a lot on my anger for this reason.
Somepeople on this siteget way too caught up in scoring dunks and it canget annoying
Why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave?
a comrade who’s been on this site for years.
Can I ask why is eldership favored over new blood? Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
If I am really trying to build socialism then that inherently means new recruits will learn faster than I did. Otherwise I’m doing something wrong. The pitfalls is immediately promoting new potential into leadership position, rather they should be given work tasks to demonstrate their capabilities, through practice. Incidentally, this is also the only correct way to do a “purity test” through practical application of socialism.
If they’re a socialist they’re doing good. If they’re not then they’re self destructing, also good. Once they see you’ve realized this they’ll try to get rid of you so that kind of sucks.
I agree with where you are coming from, but from a veteran user standpoint, the “friendly fire” aspect can hit deep.
A sustainable community does need to have a way of bringing in new users though, and those people won’t know as much as we do. Even if they are better read on theory, they aren’t going to know the site culture.
I agree that if you can’t proudly propagandize people, you are doing something wrong as a socialist. It isn’t hard, but this community at large is failing at it, and doing more to propagandize itself than anything else.
It’s always a struggle between the old and the news. The ones who accumulated: wealth, knowledge, experience and the ones who just started. The question is where did it come from and where should it go? Is it really worth guarding the sacred trove? Yet if you give it away too easily then you risk making people lazy, at the same time cling onto it too hard and you’re gonna spend more time on guarding your wealth than living.
At the end of the day, it’s always a class struggle.
I don’t think I’m really in a state to give the full proper argument right now, but while your title is right I don’t think your account really helps, for several reasons depending on what one believes the purpose of the site is. Sticking to more popular ones, part of the issue with your framing is that it basically question-begs the knowledge of someone’s status as a “chud” versus a “comrade” (and also ignores that most people are neither), when that is something people have different opinions on and the designated status might change from a single comment. Fundamentally, I think that if you are serious about having a less absurd community, the only thing to do is dismiss the notion that “bullying works” or is even particularly relevant in terms of the internal affairs of a forum where admins can simply ban people, and the rules should be oriented around users either engaging with each other in good faith or, if someone cannot do that or is otherwise judged to not be worth the effort, to simply ban them. The idea of “driving off” is almost completely irrelevant in a space where we have admins with basically absolute control, unlike in a real space or even an online space where the admins aren’t part of our ranks.
By this I don’t mean to say that we should be nice to whichever fascist pops in tomorrow, but that we should regard any participant as either someone we need to treat in good faith or someone who the mods need to ban at their earliest convenience, rather than have people kept around as punching bags or given abusive motivation in order to “do better,” because that’s just not a good model for improving people’s outlooks.
I should mention that I don’t think my criticism of the assessment is very particular to you because I see it almost every time that this problem gets mentioned and it has barely helped at all in all the time this site has existed.
The whole “bullying works” ethos was a wrong conclusion from an accidentally correct attitude from the Chapo podcast: that you should not compromise on principle. Compromise is a practical concern that should never apply to the theoretical. Western leftists emerge out of a hostile environment saturated with counterrevolutionary propaganda. Most of them have to unlearn a ton of stuff and start to see the backwardness in their neighbors. In that environment it’s very important to stay principled and not to give up the correct line.
One thing about bullies is they insist upon their stance. We just need to find more effective ways to do this that don’t alienate a ton of people.
I think this is an excellent way to look at it.
I broadly agree and I appreciate the articulation of this point. Perhaps bullying had some utility with attacking reactionaries while brigading, but I think in internet terms that sort of thing is the only use case.
Counterpoint: I dont want to share community with anyone who doesnt think that Tsars getting mineshafted was good and cathartic.
Agreed! Well-said, comrade. People often try to go for cheap wins, while we need to better adhere to Unity-Struggle-Unity.
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Why, concretely, would “getting uppity” be the only way to hold the line? How is it the best option?
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This doesn’t address the argument because you are talking about “getting uppity” against the admins about site policy (or enforcement), which is a very different situation from the dynamic of individuals who are conversationally disagreeing.
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You’re missing that what you said before is seriously just a non-sequitur, but it’s fine I guess.
Most people I’ve seen here won’t change their mind no matter how many thousand replies you give them.
a) I don’t think that this is as easy a generalization to make as you seem to and b) just ban them
Now you could be accomodating but we’ve seen where that lead us, towards white feelings, instead of brown lives.
Let me know when Hexbear murders a minority, but in the meantime I think we should bear in mind that matters of life and death are somewhat downstream of this website outside of mutual aid, and there are many other tributaries. Hexbear’s role in this, according to some, depends on what you view the best use of Hexbear as being.
My personal view, which I expect to be the minority view on Hexbear now, is that this space is best used for radicalization and education, which necessarily means firmly pushing back against conservative and miseducated sentiments, but not doing so from a standpoint of crassly attacking participants. I would furthermore add that insofar as the website contributes to the safety of minorities at all, this would be the best way to do it because it produces more allies. I don’t expect you to hold this view, I am just mentioning it for completeness.
The more popular stance on Hexbear is to view it as being principally a safe space where we treat people who depart from the line as pests to be removed (“it’s not my job to educate you,” etc.), that having a space optimized purely toward being welcoming is for the best, but then this culture of ritualized abuse doesn’t seem very effective for that purpose either, because the poc that white liberals on this site like to use as human shields to deflect criticism (see the non-indigenous carnists cynically citing indigenous dietary conventions for example) are not actually a monolith and having backwards opinions is not exclusively the domain of whiteness, however much more prevalent it is with snowroaches. So if you want x minority to not be abused, “bullying works” still seems like a bad idea. Either someone is worth talking to and can be treated like a human or they are outside of those bounds and should be banned.
So I’d say even under the maximalist framing, bullying still does not work, and in basically anything but a genuinely closed group, the issue of consciousness-raising is unavoidable.
and doing it with others keep the risk of catching a ban to a minimum.
We are arguing in part about policy here, so we should not be treating the admins in a way that is de facto oppositional.
Edit: Reworded the reference to an old anti-veganism argument to be more clear.
This is the biggest problem with Hexbear and probably always will be
If we are helpless to even change the culture on hexbear, then it would be very difficult to make the case that there is any substance to us being revolutionary socialists.
The problem with Hexbear is its almost too good
😤
Dunking is a viable alternative to purges given the current material conditions.
Antidunkism is juvenile and reactionary.
This is projection. The fetishism of “dunking” is juvenile, a bunch of nerds and other outcasts relishing their chance to RP as the powerful party by abusing someone else.
you don’t know that I’m not a irl guerrilla
