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
How easy to be against the platonic ideal of a bad thing. The devil is always in the details and especially the execution.
Hexbear interactions have fostered a culture of hostility and dunking. You expect compassion from people trained to claw at the throat of anyone out of line. Is it strange then that they don’t care to discuss first principles with you? We need dialectics, we strive for obliteration.
How easy to be against the platonic ideal of a bad thing
I’m not sure what you mean by this. It absolutely isn’t easy to be nuerodivergent and be against ableism, I assure you. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you’re no better than the type of chud who accuses people of only being against transphobia for virtue signalling reasons. Sorry if I’m misunderstanding you here.
And we’ve grown and changed a lot since the dirtbag days, self crit and growth have also been a part of this sites culture. We have always tried to not tolerate bigotry here, this ability to adapt when this sort of thing is brought to our attention is on of the only good things about this place or we would just be another stupidpol or Trueanon
I’m not sure what you mean by this. It absolutely isn’t easy to be nuerodivergent and be against ableism, I assure you. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you’re no better than the type of chud who accuses people of only being against transphobia for virtue signalling reasons. Sorry if I’m misunderstanding you here.
I think you are. What they are saying is that hexbear’s culture encourages hostility and that the culture of dunking is directly causal to the hostile atmosphere. Which is just true, when we are always looking for fights and weakness, we are going to seize on opportunities to dunk that shouldn’t be used. See any time a chud has a disability or a flaw in their appearance.
Thanks, communication isn’t my strong suit. I like to think we’re at least a little better than most places on the internet when it comes to not resorting to body shaming chuds or using bigotry just because the target is a terrible person. I really do believe one of the strengths of this place is that unlike say, a lib subreddit that happily throws homophobia around the moment they see Putin and Trump together, we at least do self crit and try to do better and address our flaws when they’re reflected upon
I too would like it to be this way, but my experience tells me we’re not much better. Especially because we also have a very bad habit of eating our own.
Like, I like it here, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in an online community so eager to single out particular users for scorn.
I hope someone calls me out for it since I find myself saying a lot of wrong stuff as a baby leftist that needs further introspection
Call people out, with the appropriate level of confrontation. If you’re called out, try to resist knee-jerk defensiveness. You might have an opportunity for growth. Everyone make an effort :)
That’s a literally reactionary attitude. You are telling us about your reaction condition and look out!
“Reactionary” has nothing to do with literal reactions, even though the jargon has that in its etymology. It’s about striving towards a former or perceived-former state of being. Their argument is 100% progressive
is this because you think I’m coming after you?
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No, fuck off back to reddit
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you can take the redditor out of reddit…
thank you for the post, and a reminder to people that a fundamental aspect of moderation is for the people to report posts and comments that violate the code of conduct.
So, to reassure us, it’s not “too small of a matter” to report a post with commonly used casually ablest language? (etc)
I think my instinct is often that if I can’t summon the energy to engage directly to at least ask politely for a correction, then I haven’t done the basic work myself before hitting report.
But sometimes one is just too tired to engage and I’m realising that hitting the report button is not just acceptable, but appropriate and perhaps necessary since it might spare the next vulnerable person from hostility.
100% without reports the mod team has to see every post and comment during all timezones. When someone makes a report you help to focus our attention and are very happy to have anyone’s participation in the process through the report function.
And also, I personally don’t necessarily want to personally step in as I’ve been on the receiving end of ableism all my life and it can easily become triggering. It has happened a few times here.
I’ve started to just hide posts that are like this. Because I also feel like just reporting something that some might consider “minor” is not necessarily good if I haven’t first engaged in the post. A clarification on this would be nice.
not “too small of a matter” to report a post with commonly used casually ablest language?
Mods have the ability to remove certain parts of a comment I believe? I think it would be a good thing to do
No. They can’t. The slur filter can remove a part of posts and comments.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
I thought that was mods, thanks for the heads up
Imagine the negative reaction there could be had if mods had the technical ability to edit comments. I can barely fathom it and it makes me want to quit at the very thought
I didnt think you could edit, just censor parts of the message explicitly. I’d be fine with that, I trust my moddies <3
So there’s a Slur filter regex box in the admin section of the site where the past admins spent a lot of time filling it with all the slurs, and all their variations, to ensure any dweeb trying to have a gamer moment gets their gamer words zapped instantly
If I say anything reactionary I will be extremely disappointed if you fuckers don’t drag me for it
You’ve only ever been cool 👍
Nah I’ve definitely posted L takes (much more so on my old account than my current one) and had to be corrected. Never let it be said that I’ve learned nothing of value from this site.
Love you dort
No, I feel you. I’ve noticed a lot of punching down lately — especially towards people with mental health issues and ESPECIALLY substance use issues.
In a recent thread I was honestly floored at the lack of compassion, but even more floored by the… support for the criminal (in)justice system and prison industrial complex?? When I said something about it I was told that… I was wrong?? That I should… support those systems because… DWIs are bad?? Okay then, hexbear, I see you.
Apparently yall don’t actually care about these issues or the people experiencing them if you deem them to be “trashy” — got it. Very cool. If this is the state of amerikkkan leftism we are indeed cooked and truly deserve to be wiped of the map.
Edit: I don’t mean to insinuate that hexbear is an amerikkkan site, rather, my comments in the above-mentioned thread were in a thread about trumpers and alcoholism
So what’s a more productive take on someone like Pete Hegseth?
He’s a cosmic void of malevolence and evil to be sure. But if someone suggested his alcoholism is connected to this in some way, is that ableist? Or if the fact that he gleefully orders war crimes gets described as “psychopathic”, is that in the wrong?
DWIs do get mentioned here as a condemnation of a person very casually - I agree. It’s up there with someone “coming to the left” after being part of the US armed forces.
A lot of people who get DWIs rightfully deserve the contempt (politicians and famous actors who outright kill people while driving and lawyer their way out of ever receiving a proper sentencing). But, if someone has a substance abuse problem and is properly sentenced and learns from their mistake - I can assure you - the last thing they need is to be shamed by their comrades because stigmatism is what they’ve been inundated with since their arrest - they have shame in spades. DWI isn’t some ignored, “benign” crime like it used to be - it is probably one of the leading contributors to state revenues after taxes in the modern day - there is a whole cottage industry around it. The capitalist state fully is onboard with legally and financially crippling DWI convicts to hell-and-back (provided they are working class people with substance abuse problems).
Obviously, driving while intoxicated should not be tolerated. Hell, driving itself should not be tolerated. We should all be doing our part to prevent the harms caused by driving inebriated by preventing our friends and family from ever considering it. But, the nature of substance abuse coupled with 95% of people in the West being forced to pilot automobiles to make ends meet and participate in society guarantees the emergence of DWIs. Yes, yes - there is Uber/taxis - but inebriated people don’t think clearly and poor people are prone to take risks (we’re all pro shoplifting here last I checked).
I don’t have a real, coherent argument above - just some insight. I’m sure the “bullying works” segment of Hexbear won’t stop their shame campaigns, but not all people who have a DWI (or multiple) are reactionaries when they are sober. A lot of them are caught in a quagmire of capitalist dystopia and with compassionate education can heal from substance abuse (or just agree to actually stop driving) never to endanger others again - making them feel like a “person non-grata” can prevent this outcome.
As an aside, the DMV (US specific department of motor vehicles) is cracking down hard on these offenders - and this is saving lives. These measures will never prevent the first infraction though, unfortunately. Access to both automotives and drugs is just too high to not expect these outcomes.
Compassion is a requirement in leftist spaces. Capitalism/imperialism is a collective and universal trauma inflicted on the world population. Everyone’s fucked up by it. To be honest a DWI is upsetting to me but I also agree with your points which you articulated well.
I still need to properly engage with Frantz Fanon but I appreciate his centering of psychology and subjective experience of imperialism. This is also found in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (which is basically an elaboration of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth):
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both. This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
It’s deeply unfair that the victims have to carry the burden of fixing everything; yet I have to admit that Freire speaks the truth here. We are dealing with a societal problem that can’t be solved without compassion.
it can be a bit disappointing if you discuss prison abolitionism here
It can be a bit disappointing to even just discuss rehabilitative justice vs punitive justice here
I don’t mean to insinuate that hexbear is an amerikkkan site
its fr*nch
(/s but that was where it was hosted last I checked.)
I don’t know if this post is about a particular explicit incident, but the constant baseline of casual ableism here is quite offputting at times. Everyone should be looking at the ableist terms in their own everyday parlance and excising them, as a first step. Consider why these words came into use as put-downs.
I have seen users here reject this suggestion offhandedly multiple times because it’s “too hard” (all things require effort, and this is no harder than switching pronouns and grammatical gender when someone you know transitions) and “the words’ meanings have changed”. In the 1990s, the word “gay” almost went through this same process, yet we all agree that using “gay” as a put-down was bad. How is this any different?
I beg others to self-reflect.
I don’t think this is what the post is about, but the “J.K. Rowling escapes insane asylum” Onion article that was posted here yesterday was pretty bad, it was basically just making fun of mentally ill people.
Also, I’d like to point out that autocorrect wanted to write “escapes insane asylum seekers” :disgost:
I feel mentally drained everytime I see stuff like that especially since I was abused there twice and did actually contemplate escaping among other things.
I hadn’t thought of it that way but yeah that was bad. Though I’m not sure “inpatient mental health facility” really captures how bleak the atmosphere has been in the ones I’ve been in.
I think it’s a good example of how not everything we find funny or interesting or worthy of our time belongs on hexbear. We could exercise a bit more restraint in sharing reactionary stuff.
Someone direct linked to a nazi’s youtube video very recently and I raised the issue and they just said “I think it has value” like we’re studying the enemy’s tactics as some sort of organised resistance movement.
Like, okay go enjoy that value but maybe don’t turn hexbear into a space to recruit for the right wing. It’s okay to just admit you’re wrong sometimes.
posting waste water analysis is good, posting a stream of shit is not
This is why i love this website
Its been making a resurgence irl as well, so its worth a mention, on one hand easy to type unthinkingly and this place is a spin off the cth
and reddist tendencies die hard in a terminally online population, on the other despite this seeming a bit much education on the harm of words maybe be useful since in the deepest, dankest pit of reaction one doesn’t see the light of humanization of the other, and to begin crawling out of that you must be re-taught all and yes I think some just don’t know or make assumptions of ‘this is how xyz concepts-ideas where always said’ and not consider subtext.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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Hopefully this isn’t about me. I’m certainly guilty of an “idiot” or a “stupid” from time to time, self referentially and not, because I don’t really have a good set of alternative language for casually dense behaviour of many liberals or ditzy “oh yeah, duh” moments I often have myself.
It’s definitely not you. I’ve also slipped up on using ableist words because I suck at communication (ironically due to level 1 Autism)
My gripes come from peoples treatment of neurodivergence in general, which I’m finding hard to describe because it’s a lot of little things. Things like doubt being thrown at someone’s actions being related to their neurodivergence, or that they’re embarrassing or broken in some way. The sort of vibe that being asked to accommodate neurodivergent people is them getting special treatment. Things like that.
The amount of shame I carry in pretty much every interaction either in person or online simply by virtue of existing as an autistic person is likely unfathomable to non-autistic people. Add to that the shame that those people both intentionally and unintentionally pile on top, plus the further shame of making mistakes myself, and the weight can sometimes be almost too much to bear.
I yearn for a day where there is no such thing as neurotypicality or neurodivergence, rather, we just accept people as they are and do our best to accommodate everyone regardless of brain-body functioning, gender, sex, race, etc., etc. This of course requires a dramatic overhaul of… literally everything, and I fear that is a long, long ways off.
Ahh well I’m in that neurodivergent group too I guess so whosoever can go fuck themselves can do so. Leave the vulnerable alone, caring about the most vulnerable should really be our whole thing.
caring about the most vulnerable should really be our whole thing
Yes! If everyone just realized this, there would be much fewer splits in our movements. Because it often boils down to:“okay let’s shelf the struggle of this vulnerable sub-group of our comrades for now, to be more appealing to liberals or less threatening to reactionaries” and it never even works ever. They just take that ground you gave up to them and press on. And the working class is split along one more fracture.
Sometimes orgs make that mistake, just to avoid dealing with biases within their own ranks and frame people who insist on protecting vulnerable people as splitters. Even though, they were splitting off those vulnerable people first. I get, that sometimes you have to pick your fights, like were to focus next, but at least defending the most vulnerable should never come out of focus, or what’s even the point?
Integrating for example neurodivergent and trans people, homeless people, refugees, people in Gaza, etc. in our struggles is what building class consciousness in a broad base looks like.
Even though, they were splitting off those vulnerable people first
Yeah this is how I see it. Take trans issues for example. Either your position is “transphobia is a tool used to convince the working class man to go against his interests and should be educated that this is just being used to delude him” or your position is “we should throw trans people under a bus to appeal to the working class man who is being deluded”.
The latter splits the trans people away from the working class whereas the former aims to keep the trans people and educate and inoculate the working class man against tools of division. Once they’re inoculated they are more likely to see it being used for other issues too.
One method is divisive, the other aims to unite. Accepting the division in order to be opportunistic gives away ground that must inevitably be fought for later anyway. Aiming to unite does not give ground.
Exactly, well put, love your perspective <3
seconded. quite a bit of reactionary comments from hexbear accounts lately
