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.
You're viewing a single thread.
224 comments
Oh now we're cookin with gas
EDIT 4: I'm locking the thread. I tried my best to give some decent paths forward amidst the chaos. Someone else can deal with this.
It will blow over soon enough, it always does
Not sure if I saw many paths forward being presented lol, but ok. I'll be interested to see how it shakes out...from a safe distance I think
I've seen this same Admin say stuff very similar to this like 4 years in the past, its somehow kind of nostalgic in some strange terrible way lol
Honestly I'm here for it at this point, TC69 is a GOAT
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.
Yeah this struggle session has me questioning if this is the community for me.
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.
We prefer Knight-Warriors of TC69 rather than cultist thankyouverymuch
👌
edit: for all the "I love my trans comrades" from y'all you're suuuper quick to axe any trans person who questions TC huh
What did you catch a ban and thought "if you die on hexbear you die in real life"
I feel like this is exactly the irony poisoned toxic attitude that has led to this getting so bad :/
I wasn't around during the early days, heard lots of good things about TC69, purging transphobe wreckers and making people read is based :3
But is kinda wild and not a good look that she showed up again one day, the biggest struggle sesh I have ever seen kicks off, Carcosa steps down, half-steps back up, then while they're on break probably cuz of this whole stressful ordeal on this site they steward for us, she becomes head admin(?) again and immediately she and many of the new admins get so deeply involved in an obviously bad-faith way in this struggle sesh to the point of like 20 or 30 people getting bans where even the Lemmygradians are noticing that the site is exploding lol but ohhh this is all a joke ofc :) but it's also not a joke and this site needs to get serious and we need more mega-purges but also reply here and I'll use an RNG to decide how long to ban you, and also other random people with the same reason in the modlog
Now idk anymore, maybe this is what TC69-thought is
My main takeaway was that I still find pervasive irony just...so...tiring. My main concern was with the misgendering of people and weird accusations. People were upset, and I was concerned. I feel like I missed the humor (which isn't unlikely I suppose, I miss jokes all the time) when all these bits started to pop off. Just felt mocked for caring by the people who were supposedly famous for caring for their comrades. This is why we reject irony and embrace sincerity
I feel exactly the same way tbh, I can go to a trillion other sites if I wanna do endless
"actually, it's kinda cringe that you care tbh" bits that also aren't a bit where "you win" if you can pretend to be the most cool and detached i'm-not-online-i'm-just-here-to-observe-the-onlineness type person (I am also missing the joke here), I like Hexbear cuz of the sincerity
The misgendering ableist wrecker alts were rly exhausting tbh, especially when it seems like it's someone here doing it who has been banned for the same shit before multiple times but is still allowed to do it (as of now, I'm not in the admin chats so ofc idk for sure)
An admin has confirmed it wasn't the one who we all assumed
Ironically it was the attempt to tamp down the irony poisoning that actually led to this whole shitshow in the first place.
Admins fucked up TC69 fucked up especially, but the userbase also failed itself by deliberately misreading a good faith attempt to address how toxic some of the site culture has always been and how rising cynicism had made it worse.
I will say this though if I hadn't stepped down as an admin a while a go I would have either made things much worse or just purged a shitload of people and let the appeals sort it out.
deliberately misreading a good faith attempt to address how toxic some of the site culture has always been and how rising cynicism had made it worse.
The way I see it, it was more that there weren't really any attempts made at explaining what the last part of this sentence actually means. Plenty of people did sincerely ask for clarification, and got basically nothing beyond "this is bad because we've decided it's bad" or "go look at the modlog".
And when you say that things have actually gotten worse, I genuinely do not understand that because I don't share that impression. It's perfectly possible that I should, but it would have to actually be explained to me why.
Appreciate the honesty Nako. Wouldn't have expected you to fly off the handle but you know you better than I do. The whole thing is really just kinda silly and very regrettable.
Yeah most are pointing at the failure of admin and mods but feel like the wild speculation and bad-faith interpretation of every response from admins contributed in the struggle spiraling out of control.
Then there was someone (perhaps arouge mod)? making alts and harassing users that was adding fule to fire. The ban-bit which might have been intended to release some pressure got a mini-blowback.
but ohhh this is all a joke ofc :)
Schödinger’s joke gets the special hell, the one for insufferable adult tweens.
why are you shitting up their space like this? it's rude.
Nah, just that you're acting like an asshole to comrades for no real reason? Seems to be the theme of this whole debacle.