btw is it just me, or are there less and less people on this website, all i see around me are familiar faces
I see a lot of users with like 1000 comments and close to 0 posts. Users are obligated to post the things that they want to see posted. If you (the girl reading this) are expecting something to be posted, then be the user to post it.
It’s not hard to make 1 post a day. It takes like 10 minutes.
Maybe you saw a really funny meme. Maybe you saw an important news article. Maybe you read an interesting blog post. Maybe you have a special interest. Search to see if it has been posted today. If it has not been posted, then post it.
spoiler
Avoid posting everything into the slop comm. With the rapid decline of Western Society, there seems to be a tendency to post everything into the slop comm. I believe that the slop comm should be focused on the bottom of the barrel to prevent it from being a catch-all comm. Slop should be a thing that would get you kicked out of a public space. Imagine you are in a coffee shop and making small talk with the barista. If you explained your post to the barista would you get kicked out of the coffee shop? If you said “I saw our president post some ai generated image where he was jesus. I couldn’t believe it”, you would not get kicked out of the coffee shop. If you told the barista “there’s a world of warcraft player who doesn’t shower and he wants to kill all immigrants”, you might be asked to leave the coffee shop.
Chapo Trap House is a left wing political comedy podcast. It would make sense for posts that are funny and politics-related were in the chapotraphouse comm. Trump posting an image of himself as jesus, is something that they would talk about on Chapo Trap House.
Don’t post screenshots of headlines without including the link to the article. The article headline and the article are written by 2 different people and many times the article headline can be inaccurate or not contain enough information. Don’t repost screenshots that someone else made. Link to articles.
Make posts that you think are interesting. Make the title of the post contain key details about the post, sometimes articles bury the lede. Include keywords in the title or post body, so that your post is searchable. Don’t be afraid to comment on your own post to share your opinion about the post or include additional information. If somebody comments on your post to say that your post isn’t interesting, ignore them, they’re being a jerk.
I think part of the comment to post skew is that the megathread culture redirects posts into megathread comments
I agree but it’s not like the megathread owns the URLs that are in the comments. The megathread people are set in their ways because they wish hexbear was a discord server.
If you see a comment in the megathread that you think is interesting enough to be a post, then you can make the link into a post (if it hasn’t been posted).
I see more and more people in the news mega making separate posts for big news items at least which is good. They usually still don’t get as good discussion for some reason, unless it’s a really big news story.
I only post when inebriated, everything else is comments on the toilet
Thank you
to be fair, there’s just a lot of stuff happening in the world that will make you touch grass. I, myself haven’t been posting and commenting as much as I do before, I simply just don’t have much to talk about anymore, and academics (I’m still in that phase of life) are quite huge, and mount up once semesters start. It’s also a bit of IRL organizing that of course, you shouldn’t post too much about in Hexbear about it for OpSec reasons, and there’s not really much to look at and talk about (yet…) that would energize internet social medias like this.
Like the US-Israel War of Aggression on Iran right? It’s still happening, but the website was quite active during it’s more turbulent weeks.
there’s just a lot of stuff happening in the world that will make you touch grass
sameeeee, i’ve just been trying to do more stuff IRL, but I still lurk here, way too often when I have the downtime. so i might as well just post something
We are all libs and the site tends to pick up during US election cycles.
Even us non-US citizens also pay attention lol
Hexbear’s userbase waxes and wanes over the years. It’s also had more technical issues than usual lately (or it has seemed to). I wouldn’t read too much into it unless there is a profound decline.
From my perspective the whole fedivers has stagnated.
In general, people will stick to communities and platforms they find, like, for example, many games I play don’t have a presence in lemmy because the fediverse’s concept itself is already very alternative because most people just join wherever their friends / co-workers are, which is the mainstream platforms.
The rising costs of hosting your own server is also a factor, and generally, hexbear itself is more focused on politics, which is fine, but more niche topics or interests are lost, and only through dedicated posting can that be changed, but most hexbearians here obviously have IRL stuff to do, and not all of them share the same interests, such as the c/slop community. Some people like it (like me) while others don’t, and that’s also fine.
But it’s that the tendency of ‘power users’ that have more free time and thus able to be more chronically online are also more reactionary due to how they got the money and time to do so, this is seen in reddit. The fediverse is like, maintaining an open source project. You can have donations, or even encouraged to work for various reasons such as ideology or use-value, but volunteer labour is very precarious especially in a time of crisis such as today, so it’s not entirely surprising users go offline.
I think the Fediverse is a good concept, but, like the open source software is built on, it will only grow if it provides a genuine better experience than mainstream, which is why leftists and free software people go here since our priorities differ from those who stay at the mainstream platforms. The concept of an internet built on fediverse principles with state support is not fully realized yet, but I do think it’s possible, if the server hardware for it is still available, that is.
“It’s those damn tankies making people not want to join!”
kind of a failed project in my eyes, the idea was neat but that’s about it as centralization is a force that naturally takes over
We’re ever so slowly shrinking it seems. Feels bad man. Welcome back though I think if more people post then more people will be here so posting is praxis
I just returned after a year and a half hiatus. It’s much slower than it was then. There are about 300-400 users/day less than back then. I couldn’t possibly tell you why it’s like it is, but it is. Because of the lower amount of conversation, I don’t see myself just hanging around on here for more than a few minutes like I used to.
My opinion is and has been for years that Hexbear has accidentally cultivated a very mean spirited community of people who are constantly trying to dunk each other, therefore leading to the nice people getting scared off and the mean people occasionally crashing out and getting banned. It’s hard to grow in those kind of circumstances.
Honestly if we just started fostering a kinder community I think we would grow again.
💚
I blocked /c/slop a while ago and I’m enjoying what’s left of hexbear much more. You’re right, though. At some point looking for stuff to be angry about just makes you angrier and bitterer than you were before.
It couldn’t hurt. I left for similar reasons. The incident in question caused a very severe, negative mental state and I just had to stay away for a long time. I think I’m better?
I remember sharing a few ideas a long time ago but I can’t possibly remember what they were. I think it was more involving admin/user trust or whatever.
Honestly the community just needs to decide to do better. Myself included. All of us. We just need to decide to be comrades. It’s impossible to moderate kindness in my opinion, it has to be something the community chooses.
I know there are so many wonderful good hearted and kind people on this site. I hope the ones who like to fight and want to start shit and are always searching for the bad in each other can choose to think differently or not engage at all if they can’t.
It’s impossible to moderate kindness in my opinion, it has to be something the community chooses.
idk, literally within the past eight days you, yourself, called out another user that, at this point, i can confidently say has a multi-year history of deliberately being needlessly and excessively hostile, dishonest, and pedantic. i think taking mod actions on a user like that would be a good place to start in improving the general atmosphere of the site.
it has to be something the community chooses.
some people just won’t choose this though and at that point the mod/admin team should choose for them.
I hope the ones who like to fight and want to start shit and are always searching for the bad in each other can choose to think differently or not engage at all if they can’t.
(temp) banning them would prevent them from engaging on that account.
Even the “jokes” are getting grating.
I’m not 100% convinced that’s a joke, though it is a bit funny when it’s posted from an instance that’s currently 1/4 the active users of Hexbear.
I think it was more involving admin/user trust or whatever.
Well, a mod got banned for threatening to beat a user to death with a tire iron and an admin crashed out over an emote, so there’s that.
Same for me, I tend to frequent the trueanon subreddit more often these days. I think I’ll contribute a bit before the website just teeters out completely.
It’s because of… that user. It’s obvious who so I don’t even need to name a name. But because of that user making everyone uncomfortable there’s a chilling effect on posting.
the person if you've been living under a rock
${user.name}
and i’ll do it again
No! CrispyFern you need to stop! Your swag is too nice. Your comrades are too well read! They’ll CIA you!
Can’t be me because i make at least several people more comfortable rather than less
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be
Now that the internet is back on in Iran we all have to go back to our jobs in Langley as Persian influencers
post hard or die tryin
post in the creative spaces
i’m in the poetry mines someones gotta
Yup think about this too. Crazy how I was mocked relentlessly for using Reddit back in the day but how everyone and their mother is on that shit.
Really fucking sucks how reactionary (and sometimes blatantly ignorant) the hive mind is
Damn that structure and superstructure dialectics 😩
Yeah the vibes are fucked
to true posters tho
Am I familiar to you?
no pfp, no familiarity, sorry :^)
Am I familiar to you?
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
Edie I literally made a Matrix account because of you and then forgot about it lol. Your pronoun chain on the og account will be missed. Anyway, am I familiar to you?
Yes. That’s why I asked.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
Hexbear is dying.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
The new bear struggles to be born.
Now is the time of posters.
I guess I am “lucky” in the sense that I haven’t witnessed the height of activity and I am still satisfied. I don’t want to spend too much time anywhere so at the moment hexbear delivers pretty much what I want in terms of news. There could be more commenting going on, then again there often is not much to add to a news article. It really won’t help anyone if I write ‘death to isnotreal’ under every article about the entity.
I’ve started trying to comment to keep it going a bit. Where are the other users leaving to?
I just spend 16 hours a day in some combination of work and/or fugue state
If other users are anything like me they may feel like they have reached the limits of online posting, I think about leaving here but I wouldn’t go to another forum I would just start posting IRL
I feel like also a leftist alternative didn’t exist online before, so this space satisfied that. Nowadays leftism has become more mainstream and there’s big pages on mainstream social media platforms that engage with it.
I still appreciate Hexbear’s ML roots, it really cuts a lot of shit out, would hate to see it fully disappear.
I also just think the core user base (myself included) just grew up. I’m now a person with so many responsibilities and aims in life that I don’t have time to post anymore.
There’s plenty of hobbies I love to discuss that I have, that I still go to Reddit for because it’s got more activity. I don’t need a leftist perspective on Marvel Rivals, I guess.
I just do other things irl.
Good, this dumpster fire being small and pathetic is what we like about it.
Go back to Facebook or Instagram if you wanna do scroll.
