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CARCOSA [mirror/your pronouns] @hexbear.net

New discussion post coming soon re: Changes to Hexbear communities. mod statement in comment

Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to inform you that we are going to be locking the_dunk_tank and dredge_tank communities. We have created two new communities /c/gossip and /c/counterpropaganda to serve a similar but clearly distinct purpose than the dunk/dredge tanks.

Not only is the dunk tank a term that has racist origins, but also many posts there were almost no effort and often times requiring later edits to show how they weren't reactionary, not useful with regard to developing rhetoric and furthering dialectical analysis of that which we dunk upon.

To that end, we wish posts of reactionaries to be placed in !counterpropaganda@hexbear.net along with an accompanying explanation (as simple or complex as desired) with the intent of countering the reactionary propaganda in the post body, as of now comments are not subject to the same rhetorical rigor rule.

For the posts that are not "low-hanging fruit' of notable people we ask that you use !gossip@hexbear.net .

These changes are mainly part of a continued effort to remove the racist and misogynistic elements from our community and grow.

Any moderators of the dunk tank or dredge tank that want to be a mod in the new communities let me know.

Any users with questions or comments please use this post, this change was made at the behest of the entire Hexbear mod and admin team. We will be looking for more moderators in an organized volunteer drive shortly, if you wish to submit an application you may send it to me via hexbear or matrix direct messages.

Use this post as a place for discussion to these changes. We will keep things as they are for 2 weeks and then reflect on the feedback, including this post: https://hexbear.net/post/3858346

As a personal addendum I am sorry if the closing of the tanks these changes removes a beloved space on the site and if you want to suggest a community to replace them you may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.

Sitewide or community changes come from proposals put forth from the mod team, discussed, and voted on by the mod team.

Any users wanting to suggest a community to replace the tanks, may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net current discussion is here https://hexbear.net/post/3858346 or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.

You may also consider using !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml as a substitute for dunk/dredge tank posts as well

The mod statement can be found here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5613033

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1.3K comments

  • Collected statements of mods in favor of this change:

    “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes, and has the potential to shift closer to the reactionary reddit “snark”.

    It promotes misanthropy and, depending on the post can serve as an outlet for “acceptable” bigotry by copy/pasting the most heinous takes without pushing back and sometimes without a CW.

    We have all seen those toxic and reactionary opinions 200 million times, ultimately it is just getting really mad at other powerless people.

    Counterpropaganda is where you can post Mike83829293’s takes. Posts require clear effort being made in countering the falsehoods of the original post, or furthering the discussion. What this effort looks like will be a dialogue between the users and mods.

    Counterpropaganda posts cutting apart shitty Op-eds, MIC insider articles, journalistic stories, etc. are celebrated and encouraged, and will be separated from the shitpostier/chattier nature of the gossip community.

    Gossip is the new place to post about people with power. The person being dunked on must be a public figure, and be paid to be a public figure.

    The name gossip is because it makes the content seem deeply unserious, like the posts about Elon Musk, celebrities, journalists, all the streamer infighting, YouTuber arguments, podcast guys, etc. Locking the dunk/dredge tanks will help with toning down the irony poisoning on this site esp from white people.

    It is such a white internet communist turn-off for me and it permeates this site. In addition, a lot of people have mentioned that there's a definite air of misogyny around the way the site is currently doing dunks, and calling it like it is, gossip, should prove to be not only a method of finding out problematic users, but also a more entertaining way of letting people talk about other public figures besides just Elon Musk and US political candidates

    We absolutely need to be more vigilant about toxic behavior in these spaces, there's a non-zero amount of ironic bigotry that has slipped through the cracks to the point where I've independently had multiple different people mention it as a concern.

    Dunk culture is along the lines of doing mutual self harm, like a smoking social club. You all go in and smoke together and encourage one another to keep smoking, and you feel a sense of community and a sense that what you're doing is cool and fun, like putting a poster over the hole in the wall instead of fixing the wall.

    We want us to continue to be a fun shitposting forum. But there are tons of other kinds of shitposting.

    Remember "bad guy bit accounts" when we had like civility and neera_tanden and all those other bit accounts where they just posted and argued while larping as annoying liberals or chuds? We grew out of that, and I think the site is better for it. We still have bit accounts, but there's not really that kind of arguing in the comments anymore.

    We can grow out of dunk culture too, and I think the site will also be better for it. We don't have to have a site culture defined by our flailing opposition to mainstream pop culture and politics, uselessly posted where nobody else will see it.

    This change has the potential to make HB a lot less toxic improve the quality of posts, we are assessing these changes over the next two weeks and will open the floor for discussion at that time.

    Collected statements of mods against this change:

    "dunk' culture" isn't inherently unhealthy for the site.
    there are aspects of it that need to be cracked down on, and I don’t discount that some reformations to it will probably need to be made, but even after sitting on it for a bit I still think it's not the best idea to strangle the aspect out of the site.

    It is not an inherently progressive move for the site culture to totally exclude it. I think a third space for it should exist, with the primary purpose of a space for 'dunk' content is mutual catharsis.

    As a leftist, online and a bit offline, is a bit of a maddening experience. A 'dunk' space, even one filled with low hanging fruit, allows me to vent my anger and negative emotions off in a way that gives a shared space for it. It serves these little capsules of exasperation that keeps me from sort of overdosing on those emotion

    • @ whoever is making the debatebroxyz@thelemmy.club accounts to harass users in this thread: stop making alts, argue on your main or shut the fuck up. all of your alts will be immediately purged the moment they are caught. your behavior is egregious and you are not welcome here, especially if you are too cowardly to attach your main (if you even have an account here, a shame if you actually do, how embarrassing) to the rhetoric you are using.

    • I gotta say, "adding a gossip comm will make the site better for women" and "dunking is like giving yourself and your friends cancer" are some takes I was not expecting to read on here today

    • gives off white cishet man vibes

      ??????????? im too autistic to understand "vibes", but i feel like saying everyone who likes making fun of bigots and such are giving off white cishet man vibes is, kinda gross and weird?

      idk i do that with my afab friends a lot, we just call it "girl talk" instead of dunking.

    • "making fun of stupid shit people say is only liked by white cis men" Ok, just call me male socialized faketrans while you're at it.

    • I'm sorry, this is fucked. So really this is intended as a major intervention into site culture by the mod team in order to make the site less "white" and "cis"? By removing dunks? I'm sorry, some of you are absolutely huffing your own farts, and the total lack of transparency in rolling this out is very telling. It was completely unclear how removing these comms was going to make the site less chauvenistic, and now that I've finally heard the actual rationale, I'm floored.

      Given the tank comms were some of the most active areas of the site and a major part of its culture from the beginning, it's clear that a significant portion of mod team regards the userbase here as undesirable and inimicable to the kind of site that they want this to be. You (collectively, not CARCOSA specifically) could come not even come to us straight with the reasoning for this and have tried to conceal the reasoning behind it.

      As someone who has posted a lot in the tank comms, I'll just say it's nice to know how I'm regarded by the mod team. Not as a long-time valued member of the community, but a toxic Reddit debate bro that's shitting up your site. Good to know where I stand.

      I initially regarded this as a poorly thought out decision that needed to be discussed in a comradely fashion. Now I see it as the opening salvo from an anonymous clique of moderators who would like to remake Hexbear in their image regardless of what anyone else thinks

      This should be a separate post rather than being buried in here if you're serious about wanting community input on changing the whole fucking character of the community. And the mods who drafted it should consider putting their names on it if they're not too cowardly to say this shit to my face

      Edit: They are, in fact, too cowardly

      • it's clear that a significant portion of mod team regards the userbase here as undesirable and inimicable to the kind of site that they want this to be. You (collectively, not CARCOSA specifically) could come not even come to us straight with the reasoning for this and have tried to conceal the reasoning behind it.

        I'd also like to point out that any time some of us actually saw through this shit, we were harassed and even banned for pointing it out. I received my first ever comm ban for pointing out how the mods were unwilling to openly and honestly engage with questions about the motivations and intentions behind the implementation of the dunk tank's "rule 8." I was then harassed by a prolific mod of many comms and by regular users for it for several days. To their credit, Carcosa reversed the comm ban as soon as I pointed it out to them, but that nonsense comm ban was later used as one justification for a site temp ban. The moderator who harassed me is still a prolific poster because they're of course good friends with the mods.

        This site has long had a big, big problem with the same thing most internet forums have a problem with at some point. The kinds of people who desire to be the moderator of an internet forum are also the biggest losers you can imagine, and they form disgusting little toxic cliques and do shit like this all day.

        • I lurked for a few (omg a few!) years on hexbear but the dunktank eventually got me to make an account. Oddly enough it was one of those random deep comment threads that went off into theory that convinced me. In the past few months I noticed a progressively more vocal group of wreckers posting. They seemed to have the mods blessing. The manufacturing of drama, accusations, hostility, projection, and demand for obedience has only gotten worse. It's a bit cult-like. I've encountered this situation in other leftist orgs and it usually meant a split was incoming. I've seen Hexbear shake ups but the mods typically sorted the drama out. This is different and feels deeply intolerant. I'm glad you, Regon, and PMYF are saying what a lot of people have been thinking but were afraid to say for fear of being banned.

      • Incredible to see how some people who have modded the site for a few months think they get to decide the entire frame of the culture. There's a reason I didn't apply to any of the mod-drives, and it's because I didn't feel for the entire site culture. The lack of introspection from this group is incredible. Literally doing the "Am I out of touch? No it's the users who are wrong" simpsons meme

        • Perhaps this is tangential to your point, but I never understood why modship is opened to anyone and not people who are in good standing and have been here for at least a year. This is also why I didn't like when Pluto was suddenly mod of like 7 comms after only spending a week here (and I think they came here after getting banned from lemmygrad).

          • NGL I haven't paid attention to any of the mod drives or the process of becoming one so my bad if I'm wrong but it would make more sense if mods were voted on by users that have been here for a certain amount of time. It doesn't make sense to me if someone can basically just pop up and become a mod

            • I just kind of automatically ignore mod app posts because I’m not like a power user, and the idea of even asking for a mod role seems presumptuous

              • Yea, it's tricky because to me those who really want to be a mod (anywhere, not just hexbear) probably shouldn't be a mod.

                Maybe we need a civic duty style mod team where we take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer mod for the week.

                • Active user sortition for moderator roles would low key be as uniquely based as our emotes

                  • It's like Marx said

                    In communist websites, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of posting but each can become accomplished in any comm they wish, society regulates the general posts and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to shitpost in the morning, mod in the afternoon, slurp up slop in the evening, effortpost after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming shitposter, mod, treathog or effortposter.

          • I mean they need mods, so I understand it from that point of view, but I don't understand this whole anonymous thing going on. There's a lot of things in place that facilitate this loser set of mods behaving like losers. Wish we could see who removed what for example.

      • its totally bizarre

    • Damn, this reasoning is even more baffling than what I initially thought. I thought you all were pulling the "Trump got elected and so many liberals are now disillusioned about the electoral process, making them a good target for radicalization. Therefore, we're pivoting Hexbear towards being more serious in order to seize this window of opportunity. And also, the tweets of genocidal libs airing out their genocidal grievances at POCs who refuse to bend the knee to the genocidal party are bumming out the POCs in this website."

      But this? I'm sorry, but this is so terminally online. Like cmon, POC shittalk irl. Now the nature and target and punchline might be entirely different from the way white people commiserate, but cheap dunks with the punchline being "Man, crackers ain't shit lmao" or "pinche gringo" are a thing, and ime, a good way to build camaraderie and weed out people who would otherwise suck up to whitey.

      I can't believe I even have to type this, but POCs talking shit about white people is a thing and is a common bonding experience. In general, people gathering together to talk shit about a mutual target, be it their shitty boss or their sports team that always chokes or the fucking weather or traffic, is a thing. Like, this is just basic socializing. The jobs of admins and mods ought to be that the targets are deserved.

      • Most of their response is just "coating your shitty opiniong in leftist rhetoric to make it acceptable." Like wtf are they even talking about with trying to make it a race thing lol. Isn't almost the entirety of this site white anyway? Every single comm reeks of white leftist, that's not in any way unique to the dunk tank. Guess we gotta get rid of c/food as well then, since most of the food posted is white people food.

        It's alienating as fuck as a person who isn't "just" a cishet man to be told that enjoying the comm "reeks of cis white men". Ffs whoever was the moron who wrote that should do a massive amount of self crit for their bad faith brain

        • It's alienating as fuck as a person who isn't "just" a cishet man to be told that enjoying the comm "reeks of cis white men". Ffs whoever was the moron who wrote that should do a massive amount of self crit for their bad faith brain

          Anonymous coward, show yourself and self crit

        • It's alienating as fuck as a person who isn't "just" a cishet man to be told that enjoying the comm "reeks of cis white men".

          Yea ngl I don't really care about most struggle sessions 90% of the time but it really really rubbed me the wrong way to be told i was giving off cis white man vibes.

          Would have probably made me spiral if I was AMAB ngl

          • It's genuinely upsetting. The anonymous nature of the post also means that I have to assume literally all mods that haven't disavowed the statement agree with it, and are thus complicit in the inherent transphobia of misgendering.

          • Seriously that shit would cost anyone who isn't a mod a ban. It should cost the mod a ban and the admins knowing a bit more about the mod, should stop working with them about this site in general.

            Fucking dweeb ass coward posting this behind a shield of anonymity, making carcosa take all the flak. Children.

      • literally, like the dozens and roasting have been a long time tradition in black culture, it is definitely not a white thing. Also when I lived elsewhere and my friendgroup was mostly Mexican, roasting was a HUGE part of how we got along....And dunking isn't even roasting or the dozens. Maybe I'm missing something and the way that it's done here is white or something, idk..

        • Go look at some of the newer comments. That was a bullshit excuse. The real reason is because the admins don't want us dunking on Ldditor losers.

          • Ohhhh yeah that's right, so fucking ridiculous. I joined Lemmy when that Reddit exodus happened last year, and then hopped on Hexbear when it refederated or whatever. Wasn't there a big struggle session about dunking on redditors then? Lol. Even WITHOUT dunking on them, a bunch of instances defederated from us simply because we're "tankies". You can try to be as "serious" and welcoming to libs but at the end of the day it's an anarchist/communist space and no amount of civility/welcome/seriousness is gonna change that and magically make those people want to study revolutionary theory unless they were already thinking about/flirting with the ideologies in the first place

    • We have all seen those toxic and reactionary opinions 200 million times, ultimately it is just getting really mad at other powerless people.

      I, for one, am not on twitter and all that so the_d*nk_tank posts provide some insight into the kind of batshit crazy views and opinions being propagated.

    • We have all seen those toxic and reactionary opinions 200 million times, ultimately it is just getting really mad at other powerless people.

      1: i don't think people are really getting all that "mad" about these posts, we're having a laugh, which often relieves stress.

      2: I've seen mockery of

      morph into more serious analysis of said
      thats often quite illuminating.

    • For the record I am putting my name down as publicly against. Reason being that I feel this has been entirely unnecessary from the start and undemocratically discussed both privately and publicly.

      Edit: Also every time the strongest proponents for both the rule 8 change and the closure for dunk-dredge pushed their actions forward, I was traveling and didn't have access to the mod chat to push back because I'm a techno-barbarian who can't be bothered to figure out how to get the app thingy to work on my phone.

      Edit the 2econd: I played with the gizmos and whatschamacallits in the mod tool box and found you can't actually completely change the comm name, its just a superficial change.

      Edit 3; Please post more on main losers. Preferably silly animal pics

    • Honestly wtf, I thought it was just a mild disagreement/miscommunication, but this is just deranged. This reeks of shitty people using leftist terminology to disguise their abhorrent personalities. How many of you dickheads argued for stacking rocks? NOOOO EVERYTHING HAS TO EXIST FOR ME is what this response reads like. Do self-crit dork ass losers.

      “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes, and has the potential to shift closer to the reactionary reddit “snark”.

      It promotes misanthropy and, depending on the post can serve as an outlet for “acceptable” bigotry by copy/pasting the most heinous takes without pushing back and sometimes without a CW.

      We have all seen those toxic and reactionary opinions 200 million times, ultimately it is just getting really mad at other powerless people.

      Lmao wtf is this line of thought supposed to be? There's no real reasoning beyond "I don't like it". I can also just say shit. This line of reasoning promotes "acceptable" bigotry by ignoring the most heinous takes and insisting we engage bigots by way of rigorous debate, which just elevates them. We have all seen the toxic and reactionary opinions get discussed thoroughly 200 million times, to which the only result has been further empowerment and legitimisation, on top of that, the lack of any space to just breathe and acknowledge that these things are toxic and crazy is something we all haven't had the chance to experience.

      The name gossip is because it makes the content seem deeply unserious, like the posts about Elon Musk, celebrities, journalists, all the streamer infighting, YouTuber arguments, podcast guys, etc. Locking the dunk/dredge tanks will help with toning down the irony poisoning on this site esp from white people.

      I look down on this, therefore it has to have a the name of something I also look down on. This is because everybody who enjoys the dunk tank is white, and enjoying it is inherently white.

      It is such a white internet communist turn-off for me and it permeates this site. In addition, a lot of people have mentioned that there's a definite air of misogyny around the way the site is currently doing dunks, and calling it like it is, gossip, should prove to be not only a method of finding out problematic users, but also a more entertaining way of letting people talk about other public figures besides just Elon Musk and US political candidates

      things I dislike are white and I am incapable of using the "block" botton. Everything has to be for me on this site.

      We absolutely need to be more vigilant about toxic behavior in these spaces, there's a non-zero amount of ironic bigotry that has slipped through the cracks to the point where I've independently had multiple different people mention it as a concern.

      Look thru this thread and tell me it's the "pro dunk tank" people that have been toxic or bigoted. Jesus christ just say you don't like it.

      Counterpropaganda posts cutting apart shitty Op-eds, MIC insider articles, journalistic stories, etc. are celebrated and encouraged, and will be separated from the shitpostier/chattier nature of the gossip community.

      They are neither celebrated nor encouraged, since it's a new comm dumbass. Just say you wanted that content from the dunk tank, but you can't, because that is the content that was in the dunk tank. Wtf is this argument/statement supposed to say?

      Dunk culture is along the lines of doing mutual self harm, like a smoking social club. You all go in and smoke together and encourage one another to keep smoking, and you feel a sense of community and a sense that what you're doing is cool and fun, like putting a poster over the hole in the wall instead of fixing the wall.

      Liberals and making wack analogies that make no sense instead of relating to the topic at hand (which has several people arguing directly about "health") name a more iconic duo.

      We want us to continue to be a fun shitposting forum. But there are tons of other kinds of shitposting.

      Okay? Then ban those too? Either shitposting is fine or it isn't. Just because you like it doesn't make it better somehow.

      Remember "bad guy bit accounts" when we had like civility and neera_tanden and all those other bit accounts where they just posted and argued while larping as annoying liberals or chuds? We grew out of that, and I think the site is better for it. We still have bit accounts, but there's not really that kind of arguing in the comments anymore.

      Civility is still around. We have two comms dedicated to the concept of "bad guy bit accounts" (badposting and fakenews). Just because you dislike it doesn't make it inherently bad. Mods learn to utilise the block button ffs.

      We can grow out of dunk culture too, and I think the site will also be better for it. We don't have to have a site culture defined by our flailing opposition to mainstream pop culture and politics, uselessly posted where nobody else will see it.

      Libs and describing things they dislike as childlike, despite the things not being different from the things they themselves enjoy, name a more iconic duo.
      This makes no sense. Yeah we don't have to have a site culture defined by dunking, but we do, by account of that being the basis of this site. The site is an offshoot of r/chapotraphouse. It's in large part about low effort shitposting. It drives massive amounts of its' traffic. If you don't want that, why are you here? This is the place I go for dunking jfc, that's what this place is for you mockery.

      This change has the potential to make HB a lot less toxic improve the quality of posts, we are assessing these changes over the next two weeks and will open the floor for discussion at that time.

      Considering the fact that the most toxic users in this thread have been those that dislike the dunk tank... What? How will this make it less "toxic"? How was the dunk tank toxic? Once again: Just because you personally dislike content, does not mean it is toxic or bad.

      To all of these mods:

    • I love our mods/admin team but this is honestly shit lmao.

      I will be calling anyone I see dunking/shitposting/having any fun on this site a white cishet cracker from now on thank you.

      Remember "bad guy bit accounts" when we had like civility and neera_tanden and all those other bit accounts where they just posted and argued while larping as annoying liberals or chuds? We grew out of that, and I think the site is better for it. We still have bit accounts, but there's not really that kind of arguing in the comments anymore.

      LOL what users were legitimately arguing with @Civility@hexbear.net or @neera_tanden@hexbear.net??? I'm sorry but if we still have the Chapo comm, it's kinda insane to point at bit accounts and be like "THIS is the site culture we're trying to move away from".

    • “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes

      Jessie, what the fuck are you talking about?!

      We queer people have made shit talking a core part of our culture for centuries at this point. Polari was an entire pseudo language that queer folks used to communicate in, and it's full of ways to dunk on people!

    • I'm not naming names, but one of the most prolific posters of this kind of content is not cishet and it's kind of fucked to portray it as such.

    • “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes, and has the potential to shift closer to the reactionary reddit “snark”.

      It promotes misanthropy and, depending on the post can serve as an outlet for “acceptable” bigotry by copy/pasting the most heinous takes without pushing back and sometimes without a CW.

      Literally almost every post I've made to the dunk communities consisted of making fun of, calling out, and mocking racist white people, mainly racist white South Africans...

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      It catharsis. When this racism is in your face everyday, it's nice to have a place on the internet with like minded people to call it out and mock it. And I don't see how a high effort post is needed to explain why the opinions being presented in the above posts are bad or worthy of mockery, it's self evident. If people need an explanation as to why apartheid and it's prevailing racist attitudes and surviving structures are bad, they honestly need to educate themselves, it's a base level of knowledge we all should have on a left wing, socially progressive website.

    • Using "content isn't cw'd enough" as an argument and then calling dunk culture "mutual self harm" is dishonest at best age deeply unserious at worst. Furthermore, calling culture "rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes" makes so little sense as to the point where I cannot possibly believe that is the reason for this change. Lastly, cultural changes happen from the bottom up, not the top down. This change is probably just going to result in the revitalization of main posting.

      In summation:

    • I am disgusted. The justifications for this change are full of patronizing and infantilizing comments and, I cannot believe this, actual racism and transphobia from the admin staff. The discussions are rife with ableism as post after post instructs users that they must log off and do praxis with no regard whatsoever for the differing abilities of the user base. Crude assertions are made that the dunk tank is harmful to users mental health, with opponents assigning themself the role of mental health provider to others in a disgusting manner. Numerous heartfelt testimonies that the dunk tank, far from being a source of misanthropy and doom, provides an important role for many users in finding a sense of balance and sanity in a brutally liberal and fascistic world have seemingly gone completely ignored. For some users it is the only place in their lives that they can have honest discussions about the horrors in which we are trapped.

      Discussions of effort and praxis totally miss both the way that the site is viewed by the users and the hard fact that effort posts require more effort than exhausted people, people struggling with mental or other illness, or just casual users are able to put in at any time. Effort posts require effort. When I'm up at 3am wracked with bipolar depression I cannot expend effort.

      I was initially accepting of this change but seeing the casual indifference, contempt, and ableism, and I cannot believe I am saying this but casual misgendering that has been allowed to permeate this discussion has raised a cauldron of disgust in my belly. It does not seem that the needs of the users are being considered so this amounts to nothing but a testimony, but at least it has been said.

      • I'm rapidly getting sick of this power user/mod clique thing that's been an undercurrent to the site since the chapo.chat days. I can't believe people are allowed to say some of this shit without getting nuked off the face of the planet

        • I'm usually willing to cut The Clique™ some slack since they put in the work and drive activity, but I'm unironically concerned they might kill the site with this one lol

          • I'm unironically concerned they might kill the site

            At this point it kinda looks like they're actively trying to do exactly that.

            Fuck knows why.

      • As usual, Frank is 100% correct.

    • The battle against Chapo is coming about 8 years too late. The mods in-favor make it sound like the heyday of the Bernie bro. Most people here don't even listen to Chapo or care about it in any way that shapes their interactions.

    • Big self important reddit mod vibes here.

    • Mods coping

    • at least when TC69 unilaterally forced changes to site usage and culture and strongly enforced it, it was for something coherent

    • “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes

      lmao okay

    • I articulated the case for against here, so if anyone wants me to clarify anything w/rt the latter half I can provide some more context to what I was thinking about with it.

      • I like your "against argument," but I would add just one thing to it: the "Spoonful of Sugar" argument. A spoonful of sugar really does make the medicine go down. I don't think that anyone here is trying to argue that low-effort posts (screenshots of right-wingers on Twitter or Reddit) are revolutionary or will change the world. Low-effort posts are just supposed to be fun. They give you a little hit of dopamine. And then the rest of the site is the "fruit and vegetables" of the website. Personally I go on c/theory to look at the Das Kapital reading club, and I also click on low-effort posts to have a little laugh at how the conservative right-wing cancer is evolving in real time on social media.

        Isn't that the whole point of left-wing social media? Invite as many people in as you can with "sugar" (comedy and community) and then introduce them to "fruits and vegetables" (Marxist theory and real-life organizations)? Is there a single website that exists and functions that only has the fruits and vegetables, with no sugar? If Hexbear is going to be a "no fun allowed" website, why not just make it a straight re-direct to the collected works of Marx and Engels? https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/

        To be fair, did I roll my eyes when I saw UlyssesT make his 1,000th Elon Musk dunk? Yeah, because I had seen it before. But then again, it seems like that was their hyper-fixation, and I don't ever want to insult someone or put them down for being passionate about something. Not clicking on a UlyssesT post costs me nothing. Anyone who wants to avoid low-efforts posts can just unsubscribe from low-effort coms.

        And like, people are always going to find a way to make low-effort posts. If you ban recess at school, kids will run around in the hallways. Kids need recess! You can't just tell them, "Sit in a chair all day, and learn all day, and don't do anything fun, or else you're a terrible person." That attitude will obviously lead to resentment among the students.

        This whole situation reminds me of the Bolshevik-Menshevik split. The Bolsheviks wanted to be serious and disciplined, while the Mensheviks wanted to let amateur socialists (mainly academic professors) join in. I guess it worked out for the Bolsheviks. But at the same time, Lenin spent a good deal of time "dunking" on people. So did Marx. And one of the reasons Lenin and Marx won people over is because they were funny. They had some sugar.

      • So this is how I find out that you are one of the toxic Redditors who is ruining the site

      • Good case, well argued comrade.

    • As another moderator, I'd just like to piggyback this comment and talk about this.

      First, what is (hopefully) the least objectionable part: the creation of c/counterpropaganda. It does have some degree of overlap with c/effort and c/agitprop, but I envision it as a place for stockpiling useful counterarguments and framing devices for use against liberals, whether that be online or when talking to friends and family, where c/agitprop is about creating spreadable images and memes. I might end up posting things from citationsneeded in there. That being said, I wasn't the one who came up with the idea of the comm, and how it'll actually evolve remains to be seen.

      While I also did not come up with it, the naming of c/gossip was made intentionally frivolous because what X streamer is saying today is fairly unimportant. In fact, there was an idea that naming it c/gossip would help ferret out people who were like "I'm not doing gossip, that's feminine! I'm a very serious politics understander who is talking about the very important issue of what neo-Nazi shit [streamer] has said today!" I would be fine with a name change (and tried to come up with some in the mod chat but couldn't really find something in the same vein) but the fundamental idea of what it should be is fine in my eyes - if you like discussing what a shitty public figure is doing then you can do that there, and those that don't want to do so can block the comm.

      The reason behind locking the dunk/dredge tanks is, as stated above, due to concerns about the impact of things like toxicity and irony poisoning leading to chauvinism and bigotry, even if it's accidental. Dunking is not, in my personal view, inherently bad. It is one tool in the toolkit. The ability to dismiss an idea without effort, using all the lovely techniques in the Logical Fallacy diagram, is awesome for when libs and chuds come along with ideas that have been debunked and dismissed for tens if not hundreds of years. It's also a great way to build a community, as chapotraphouse's (albeit terminated) existence demonstrated. Many of us came to chapotraphouse or to Hexbear directly either through being dunked on, or by seeing somebody else get dunked on, and seeing that there are indeed people who have some real passion about politics who aren't seal-clapping chuds. I personally object to an attempt to just stamp out dunking, at least as it's defined as "refusing to take a person or idea seriously and instead insulting them" (what would be the alternative - a hundred lemmy bots that each respond with a 10-paragraph argument that you could summon for every eventuality?)

      However, we've seen complaints from people about how the vestiges of reddit that remain here are turning off people, particularly non-white and non-cis-male people. There's just a zeitgeist of masculinity and reddit background radiation that people can detect and they then choose to go elsewhere, and we should do everything within reason to try and make the site more appealing to those people. Mandatory pronouns was a great initial step in that direction, but we must continue down the path. We have black and/or LGBTQIA+ moderators who are trying hard to fix these issues. I am neither of those, so I've largely gone with their expertise on the matter.

      Is Hexbear a serious political platform? Is it a bar where you hang out after work with your friends and shoot the shit? It is both and neither. But it can definitely be better.

    • But if we're still allowed to post dunk content on the lemmygrad comm, and that comm is still allowed to federate with Hexbear, then what has actually even changed given all dunk content ends up there eventually? Like it's still on the site, our users still see it, its still under Hexbear mod jurisdiction.

      The only thing that's changed in that scenario is that anarchists aren't welcome to post dunk content anymore

    • There are some wild opinions in the pro-side. It really seems like there's some rot buildup in the mod team, if all of these takes are getting posted for banning this content. Do they just hate this website and the community?

      So many of these complaints are a) things that have been a part of the community for years, or b) smears against the community

      Like seriously, if these are thoughts they have, why are they mods on this site?

    • Remember "bad guy bit accounts" when we had like civility and neera_tanden and all those other bit accounts where they just posted and argued while larping as annoying liberals or chuds? We grew out of that, and I think the site is better for it.

    • “dunk culture” can be fun but it’s rarely constructive, gives off white cishet man vibes, and has the potential to shift closer to the reactionary reddit “snark”.

      ???

      If "dunk culture" gives white cishet mam vibes, you haven't spent enough time behind the Great Firewall of China.

    • My vision for the site is the weekly news megathread, which has it's own comm, and only 5 people and 1 Dane are allowed to post in it, and one other comm which is just for posting on the birthdays of Masc presenting Genshin Impact characters. Everyone can agree this is the highest ratio of quality to content with the lowest toxicity possible.

      Happy Birthday, Kinich!

    • I guess we need some kind of retirement home for all the white millennial chapo reddit irony style posters

      • Tbh I think the othering of “dunking” as if it’s a unique to white, now millennial, and an implied I’m sure men, or some mixture of this is kind of silly and somewhat infantilizing to people who don’t fit in these categories. I’ve been in communities that were largely bereft of people that fit that identity and there’s still plenty of dunking on people that the group finds agitating or wrong, whether the community be made up primarily by black men and women or trans people or whatever

        The fact is, this is a niche in-group and we do some shit talking about people who are out group in the same way every other community does. I think there should be some stuff in place to protect people catching strays which seems to be the concern from some people, those rules are kind of already in place, ppl call ppl out on that shit and our mod team is pretty active but if it needs to be even more formalized than great I can respect and stand by that. But by and large the dunks are directed towards reactionaries and like others have said, I see toxic shit and lib shit everyday on the internet. I see people talking shit about us and our beliefs, it’s nice to go somewhere and see some pushback be treated as the correct position

    • You have to be fucking kidding.

    • Counterpropaganda is where you can post Mike83829293’s takes.

      Phew, narrowly dodged that one

      In all seriousness,

      It promotes misanthropy and, depending on the post can serve as an outlet for “acceptable” bigotry by copy/pasting the most heinous takes without pushing back and sometimes without a CW.

      This is why I don’t frequent those com’s so personally I’m happy to be seeing this addressed.

    • oof, double the jice

    • I am a newly appointed mod to a few comms (I sent the application after Carcosa posted this thread) and I half-heartedly agree with this. While I have enjoyed the old dunking, I do partially agree it fosters irony poisoning which is a hell of a drug, and the higher bar that c/counterpropaganda requires you to clear can help with more constructive/less misanthropic takes. I mean I will absolutely miss some of the wilder dunks, but I think it might lead to a somewhat healthier atmosphere in here

      • Since there's a total of 3 posts to c/counterpropaganda at the moment I'm assuming there's just going to be a lot less posts in general.

      • This is extremely patronizing. I, and I would venture most users, do not need the mod team to protect me from irony poisoning and misanthropy. And, frankly, dunking on ghouls is an assertion of the value of humanity by recognizing that liberalism is not a neutral or natural belief but rather a highly artificial ideology enforced and maintained using hellish and inhuman violence. Rejecting the liberal worldview is an assertion both of one's own humanity and of the potential of humanity. It is a direct rejection of Capitalist Realism that tells us all of this is natural and we must accept it to be part of society.

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