Hexbear's new head of operations just dropped, and their way of dealing with the fallout of their last struggle session is to hand bans out like candy to their concerned and disillusioned users while throwing out "epic" quips like insecure teenagers along the way coupled with their communication (and seemingly contempt) towards their own userbase which isn't helping their allegations at all and the revelations that were learned about Hexbear's moderators and admins from their most recent struggle session.
The last few days have honestly shaken my faith in Hexbear and their team and I hope the mods and admins at Lemmygrad are monitoring the situation closely.
Eh, never really interacted with TC69 or the cult around her, except once during the post-pronouns shitstorm. A friend, who is trans, ND, long time user and friend to many, asked if the daily "I love my trans comrades" felt "a tiny bit rote/performative" and got fuckin murder-dogpiled and banned instantly. Called terf, chud, etc., by the TC69 adjacent crowd. Was pretty upsetting and she never came back even after the ban was lifted :(
Part of the reason I really don't like the power user/celebrity culture on HB
After I saw the one or two posts TC69 wrote I could immediately see they're not a good person. TC69 is an insufferable jerk, being part of a marginalised community doesn't give them the right to behave like a shitty person (in fact, they should know better).
I am like, actually baffled by the ridiculous hostility this generated! Glad I already had this acct in the back pocket, guess I'm full migrating to the grad >_>
to be fair that is pretty much textbook concern trolling. And understand the context of this was the height of the red state rush to pass anti-trans laws. There's no harm in positive affirmations like that
Right, but as in this exact situation, no matter how long a person was a known poster with no such opinions, horrible shit got leveled at them when they crossed the clique culture. I can understand why someone would think it's concern trolling, but again: known trans, autistic user asking a question. Transparent discussion is what was needed 4 years ago and not all that rabid shit, and here we see it repeated with the same culture today.
It may be, this stuff is definitely not indicative of the hexbear day-to-day; I think that the return of a "celebrity" poster (for what niche forum e-celebrity is worth), the American election, and the discourse about the tanks, happened to coalesce into the perfect storm. You've been around a while though, you probably have a good idea of the current culture and whether or not it's worth it for you to stick around through this silliness.
Personally, the mod drama convinced me to just eat the ban amidst all this noise and dip. I never really had any personal connections or friendships with hexbear users (that didn't already happen to be friends elsewhere anyway), and I wasn't some "notable". It wasn't worth the drama and stress arguing about hurt feelings and transphobia caused by mod squabbles.