I probably shouldn’t be making this post. I hate getting involved struggle session highschool drama shit and I won’t even point to specific evidence because frankly this shit depresses me. But here goes:
This might be a “wtf are you ranting about, Owl?” moment but there are some serious reactionary vibes in this place sometimes. Maybe it’s a holdover from the dirtbag leftist era, I don’t know, but it’s gross. I see it trying to worm its way in here and it’s a bad sign
If you ever catch yourself using the kind of shitty othering and ableism you’d see on stupidpol or a 2016 cringe compilation, go do some self crit or fuck right off
Hexbear has a lot of users so utterly unaware or possibly even uncaring about their own reactionary politics but I guess this is inevitable of an online forum, but the lack of effort to slow it down and when it does eventually get called out the speed at which people dunk the OP for simply suggesting there is an issue is infuriating especially from somewhere that claims to be leftists, communists and materialists
This sort of thing is why the PSL makes you take a bunch of classes and read a bunch of theory before you can become a full member.
Do you think we would need a clearer idea of what and who hexbear is for in order for HB to do something in approximately the ball park of that type of thing? Or do you perhaps think Hexbear is not very suited to that kind of thing?
At its best hexbear feels unified and reliably safe. At its worst hexbear feels like r/CTH when we were all still trying to figure out how dirtbag we could be without inadvertently reinforcing chauvinism and bigotry.
What I’ve been wondering is if this is an oscillation that is necessary and ongoing, or if it is necessary and slowing down rapidly, or entirely unnecessary.
I fear that people burn out on the constant microaggressions and we lose the pool of posters who are really talented at educating the userbase. So then we have a corrective force that incrementally loses to the status quo over time, instead of maintaining its high energy and effectiveness at correcting the culture when it gets complacent and self righteously defensively wrong on a regular basis.
I don’t think it’s a level of discipline you could maintain outside of a revolutionary project that’s doing work in the real world.
Closest I’ve seen is back when TC69 was bullying people into doing a reading group to correct their unexamined transphobia.
Yes and this was something I brought up in 2024. In late 2025 I saw a hexbear mod act really weird and gross/creepy, wasting around an hour just rambling on about pedophilia while everybody else ignored them, before blurting out what I assume was supposed to be a joke about the idf killing children (?). The fact that this user is a mod on the same site as Carcosa and Awoo is mind boggling, and I feel this has to be at least partially the result of nobody having a clear direction in mind for hexbear.
Theory does help, but I also think people need to engage in counter factuals and learn their parallels in history and actually try to engage in analysis themselves even if flawed at first
Are you talking about the magic followup thread?
I’m not sure which thread you’re referring to, I was generally referring to the reception of another recent post which critisized the dunking culture of Hexbear where many users simply decided OP were themselves dunked for being obviously wrong and we’re lashing out in exchange (which was not the case and was their own assumption without research)
I’ll write more about it when I get home if you want examples, especially comments in news mega threads and comments c/electoralism has the clearest issues from what I remember
Oh yeah, those threads come up from time to time and get treated like that. Last one I remember is from a few weeks ago but I don’t follow them closely. I agree it’s shitty and ridiculous.
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Pls link the thread I’m curious and bored
As you wish: https://hexbear.net/post/8204512
For the record, I only found out that this thread existed from checking the modlog in response to Dort_Owl’s post here, trying to figure out if there was a recent thread to provoke it. I was surprised to find someone mentioned me, and even somewhat positively!
You were very patient with them
Sometimes I’m glad that i live on the other side of fhe world than most of the hb userbase
I don’t really understand what in this specific case is provoking that response.
I mean more generally, that because I’m in the almost opposite timezone, I miss a lot of the struggle session threads that seem inflammatory or pointless, so the net result is that my experience of HB is probably more positive than that of some users.
I on the other hand have the modlog bookmarked as my homepage so I never miss out.
prime posting hours are overrated
Ah, right, that makes sense.
Same here, I miss so many struggle sessions to the point that when I do see them it’s whiplash
I remember this guy, while I did not think magic could ever be real the fuck is up with these people lining up to insult him???
I mean, I guess I understand why, times are awful and feeling superior does help alleviate stress, but man 60 comments in and no admin or mod stepped up, that is shameful
Mostly I think they aren’t insulting the user for believing in magic but for behaving in an extremely bad faith, one-sided way while freely insulting and disparaging people. We have other users who believe in “magical praxis” sometimes and the reception is usually very different.
I do agree generally that a huge portion of the HB social dynamic is a bunch of miserable people wanting to roleplay as the bullies rather than the bullied and that’s surely still part of it, but there was a little bit of context in this case.