If so, was it polled somewhere?

  • Sharkwellington@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    I genuinely would like to understand what you guys at hexbear are about but every time I poke my head into that instance you guys are “dunking” every other instance with language nobody else understands. It’s very alienating.

    • dolphin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Lol that’s fair. We’ve developed a pretty insular culture over the past three years and I can see how it’s hard to decipher.

      • yuri@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        you guys are also like, just huge dicks without provocation. like all the fucken time. 99% of what i see from hexbear users is either condescension or outright hostility.

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          usually how conversations go is this

          1. I see a reply to a post by a liberal stating a point which we regularly debunk

          2. to help them see why they might be wrong, I politely, and in good faith, though often with a little force, push back on it and explain why they are incorrect

          3. they then smugly and condenscendingly reply with a sentence like “Oh, so you’ve come along with your CCP/Kremlin propaganda now / Oh great, the Hexbear horde has arrived / Actually, it’s much more complicated than that [refuses to elaborate] / Actually, you’re wrong because of [link to wikipedia]”

          4. we then start dunking given that they aren’t operating in good faith

          perhaps reddit’s typical style of “debate”, where you smugly reply thought-terminating cliches and decontextualized quotes at each other while being variously awarded and downvoted, is more harmful and damaging to actual discussion than our style of “You’re wrong, here’s why you’re wrong with a bunch of references included, hell, most of them are to western media because if I don’t then you’ll start screeching ‘CHINESE CCP XI JINPING PROPAGANDA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH’ at us”

          additionally, we have no downvotes, and haven’t for three years, because it just fosters anonymized disagreement and even harrassment without any constructive points being made. thousands upon thousands of times, I’ve seen arguments become people just saying quotes like “Well, communism works on paper but not in practice” and “If you sacrifice freedom for security then you deserve neither” or “Did you know that the Founding Fathers warned against parties?” and just a hundred other pseudo-points gathered from a lifetime of being exposed to various kinds of media and irl interactions, without even the slightest curiosity as to the underlying philosophies and ideas and complexities and nuances behind, say, what authoritarianism really means, or whether democracy is necessarily “when you have elections” or if there’s something deeper, or even just the basic histories of the USSR and China and Cuba etc. the average Westerner’s knowledge of anything beyond culture is as wide and deep as a puddle. I’ll even be a little self-depreciating and include myself in that, though I am actively working to improve.

          no matter how often you remind people that downvotes should only be used for comments that don’t “contribute to the discussion”, no matter how good their intention, downvote systems online always devolve into “I dislike you and/or the point you’re making and I’m not going to explain why. fuck you.” disagreement on Hexbear can only be done through posting and replying, and sorting these things out through discussions (or “struggle sessions”) rather than building up silent resentments over time that split everybody up, and because of that, it’s by far the healthiest online community I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. it’s also why we come across as overbearing - even if we had only a third of the members, the site culture of “if you disagree, reply and tell them, you can’t downvote” means that we’re all used to commenting a lot and could overwhelm other instances which are more used to downvote-and-move-on tactics.

        • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          honestly it’s a pretty friendly instance all told, we just have p strong feelings about politics and bigotry

          and admittedly a lot of us have little patience for the worst among you bc we deal with that shit permeating society at every level on a constant basis

          • yuri@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            hey ditto! i have very little patience for the worst among you, because when i look through comment sections looking for discourse i instead see you fuckers starting the same 5 arguments.

            also, coincidentally, i see a lot of folks from marginalized groups specifically complaining about y’all being insensitive and shitty. it’s hard to respect what you say your motives are when your camp is acting like it is.

            • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Really? cause when I look through comment sections it’s always liberals spewing the same fucking lines, and acting like everyone they disagree with can’t possibly also be from marginalized groups. (In fact most seem to take the fact that you disagree with them as prima facie evidence that you can’t be from a marginalized group!)

              The amount of casual misogyny, racism, and generally sickening comments I’ve seen has shot through the roof since we federated, and it’s exclusively been coming from lemmitors.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              hey ditto! i have very little patience for the worst among you, because when i look through comment sections looking for discourse i instead see you fuckers starting the same 5 arguments.

              If this is how you initiate discussion - with hostility - then that experience does not surprise me. Consider being less shitty yourself.

              also, coincidentally, i see a lot of folks from marginalized groups specifically complaining about y’all being insensitive and shitty. it’s hard to respect what you say your motives are when your camp is acting like it is.

              I find that very hard to believe. The websites modteam is majority LGBTQ+ we have a diverse group of users, and this is because the mod team takes bigotry very seriously. If you see any bigoted takes please report them, and also please give me some examples of this from hexbear users.

            • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              also, coincidentally, i see a lot of folks from marginalized groups specifically complaining about y’all being insensitive and shitty.

              Now that’s a lie if I ever saw one lmao

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I see a lot of hexbear users be provocative, but I’ve yet to see it without reason. It’s in response to someone else acting in bad faith. When you see someone act rude, take a step back and consider why they are acting rude.
          Not to say we don’t have users that are too quick on the draw of the ppb, but your website certainly has cantankerous assholes as well. Every site has.
          Hexbear just has an incredibly low tolerance of debatebros, smuglords and bigotry, which I would say has fostered a site culture that allows for a wide variety of opinions to be shared, a deep analysis of current event and which is a safe space for LGBTQ+ members - our modteam is majority LGBTQ+.

        • Staines [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Hexbear - “that’s true, I see how our culture can be hard to decipher”

          Lemmylib - “you guys are huge dicks without provocation”

          Hexbear - oh well fuck you then :)

          Lemmylib - “see, so hostile!”

          If we respond to people being needlessly aggro with quip derision it’s “so uncivil!” If we respond to people in good faith by trying to explain our differing views it’s “wow im not going to read that!”

          So what should we do?

    • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Honestly your best bet is probably to do some reading first, unfortunately. A lot of Hexbear dialect is that way because it’s tied to concepts that come from books and thinkers we’re broadly familiar with.

      If you’re more into video stuff you could try this guy. I think he’s pretty approachable.

      Actually if you went into the megathreads and asked most people would probably give you suggestions too. We are fiesty but in my experience we also like to be helpful to people with questions.

    • Venus [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      We’re literally just communists. Read any introductory text to communism and 99% of what we say will make sense in context.

        • Nama [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I’ll oversimplify a bit, but here you go. In economic terms, liberalism is a market oriented economy, and the current iteration of neoliberalism is marked by social welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich with “trickle down” effect in mind (allegedly). That ideology is shared by both the democratic and republican parties. The difference between communists and liberals in the sense the word is most often used, is that economic approach, and from that perspective both liberals and conservatives are “liberal”.

          Now the common use of the word is a bit different, but that’s almost exclusively US from what I can tell. Hexbear is also international though, and liberal is a common term for right wingers where I’m from for example.

          Hope I could help.

          • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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            1 year ago

            “The colloquialisms from the place I am directly talking about don’t matter as much as this one I am using, everyone who disagrees is propagandized”

            This is what I’m seeing when I read your comment. I can call the sky green all damn day, that doesn’t make it green, you dip.

            • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Wow what an insightful response to a user answering your question in good faith! I cannot imagine why you would ever be treated with derision or condescention

              • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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                1 year ago

                You reap what you sow. I figured a tankie would know about planting things but I suppose I was wrong again.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Funny because the other user sowed a civil and good-faith response. I’m used to that resulting in a response in good faith as well, and yet here you are with shit in your diapers acting like a pissbaby. Must be something in the soil

            • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Exactly the same as a chud saying college biology is fake pseudoscience because of the biology they were taught in 5th grade.

              In any decent political science education in the states you will also see these definitions. You can stop having a tantrum about it.

            • sawne128 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Let me oversimplify even more. Donald Trump upholds the American Revolution which turned British America into a liberal republic.

              • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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                1 year ago

                I think Donald Trump is a communist. He takes care of his own, disregards the status quo and talks mad shit about libs just like hexbears.

                So it must be true, Donald Trump is a communist liberal.

                Suck it westoids.

            • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              This isn’t a colloquialism. This is a basic definition used within political science.

              If you’re going to talk politics on a serious level then using the terminology of political science matters and, if that’s too much of a stretch, then at least avoid colloquial terms which contradict the terms used in political science.

            • Staines [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Americans can call the sky green as much as they want. In the rest of the world, Liberalism = Liberalism, not “democrat”.

              Liberals are people that believe in liberalism, which can be summed up as “everyone has the individual right to be an asshole, even if it fucks everyone else over”.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Socialism is when the government does stuff and the more the government does, the socialister it is, and if the government does a whole lot if stuff, it’s communism!

                  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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                    1 year ago

                    Trump quotes Karl Marx regularly and if you can get a look at his left butt cheek you’ll see a Che Guevara tattoo.

                    Total communist, Bigtime, his socialism is yuge.

        • SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Liberalism has a couple of different definitions. The one you’re thinking of is the one in US politics where “Liberal” is synonymous with "Left’. This isn’t how it’s being used here though.

          Liberalism, as a broad ideological trend that came out of the enlightenment, contains within it, Conservatism. Conservatism was theorized by people like Edmund Burke who, seeing that the previous feudal hierarchy was dying off, sought to preserve it, at least as much as was possible, by accepting Liberal notions of property rights and capitalism.

          So, instead of a social hierarchy being ordained by God, it’s decided by the market, and social conflict is meditated through the liberal, Lockean, Republic.

          So when we call Trump a liberal, we mean it in this broad sense. He’s still a conservative, but conservatism is a subset of capital L Liberalism.

          This is in contrast to Leftism, which also contains a lot of things within it, but breaks from a lot of the philosophical assumptions that undergird Liberalism.

    • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      If you ask good faith questions and give context for why “Hey, I’m a liberal and I don’t understand X could you explain what you mean?”

      You WILL get excellent engagement and people will give you very good answers

      its easy, and if you genuinely want to learn give it a shot

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      New tagline dropped @CARCOSA@hexbear.net

      Seriously though you are more than welcome to ask, I would recommend the news mega. If you ask questions in gold faith there’s a wealth of users willing to interact with you

    • epicspongee [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      To be clear in the dunking threads folks are not usually engaging in good faith with us. When I was on another server and replied with actual questions to stuff everyone was incredibly nice to me and explained stuff super well. Can agree though that folks can see dunking as alientating. I promise though if you can get past that it’s one of the friendliest communities I’ve found on the web.