![axont [she/her, comrade/them]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/2289d3c4-69f9-40ed-a21d-cf84b32ccd85.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
Why does such a large portion of lemm.ee want to block hexbear.net? And, how can Hexbearians improve?
What am I supposed to do when I see political content I agree with? Am I supposed to avoid interacting with it? If I see something I find disagreeable, am I also supposed to ignore it? How am I supposed to interact with political content? We're not doing any kind of malicious manipulation. You make it sound like we're hackers unfairly using the website and that's not happening. We upvote things we see that we like. We can't downvote, since our admins disabled downvoting. We comment on political stuff we don't like.
Am I just not supposed to be here at all?
Why were you called a fascist? Almost everyone I know on hexbear who uses that term knows what it means and the implications of it. So why were you called that?
i hope I don't come across as too aggressive when I say all this, because I genuinely do like most of the interactions I've had on the extended lemmy-verse and I've been pleasantly engaged with a lot of folk here. hope we can stay federated and lots of y'all are cool as hell
So i'm personally biased here but I've noticed a lot of folk outside of Hexbear take internet discussion way, way too seriously. It's treated as if we're academics writing papers in an institution, or we're politicians being moderated in a debate. People get very, needlessly upset over frankly harmless personal insults, like being called stupid or childish or whatever. Outright bigotry and slurs shouldn't be used, of course, and that shit should get banned ruthlessly. But calling someone stupid or a baby? Or being shown an emoji of shit? Come on now, grow up. It's not something to think about for days or weeks afterwards. Go outside. It's not a big deal, it's just a web forum, it's not senate and nothing we're doing here is genuinely changing politics or the world by posting. It's just a forum to pass the time and relax. The most impact I've seen is when we do mutual aid like the recent indigenous fundraiser that comrade @Nakoichi@hexbear.net has been doing. Sometimes we'll add stuff to online discourse, but that's about it, but that's fine. It's not shameful to just be an internet forum.
It's very strange to me especially since I've been on the internet for decades now and just gotten used to it. People online will insult you, they often won't take you seriously, and they don't have to either unless they feel like it.
Maybe I'm an interloper in a specific kind of posting culture I was never involved with. I never posted on reddit at all, but nothing about my time on Hexbear has felt any different than the countless other forums or IRC channels I've been on in the past. But from comments around other instances, you'd think we're feral goblins spraying shit absolutely everywhere, only speaking in strings of random gibberish spam and death threats. You'd think we're some malicious group of hackers or a coordinated culture jamming effort rather than just...a bunch of disaffected leftists using an insular web-forum in a tale as old as the internet. The only real difference between hexbear and other forums I've been on have been: There are more users, there's more of a hardline ban on bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc), and it's stuck around for a lot longer and there's more of a chill, cooperative vibe.
The accusation of trolling and lying about our beliefs is the most confusing thing to me. Y'all don't think there are leftists out there? You think it's unthinkable to have genuine admiration for places like China or North Korea? Well there's a big wide world out there with people of every stripe, every single conceivable opinion is held by someone out there, and some stuff is a lot more popular than you'd expect. You don't have to respect Marxism or whatever, I don't honestly care, but you probably should admit that it's a real political ideology with real supporters in the world. Don't automatically assume someone is being dishonest or trolling just because they have a political stance that's inconceivable to you. Like I don't respect liberalism or fascism, but I do acknowledge there are a lot of liberals and fascists who are earnest in their views.
in any case I hope we can all stay federated because I do like that aspect of the internet, wide interactions with people who want to interact
why would we give a good faith argument if we see someone saying something stupid? If I see someone saying something aggressively stupid, or they're being transphobic, racist, or whatever, why would I engage them as a serious person? At that point I just want to have a laugh because I don't respect them and have no faith they'll ever change unless subject to public embarrassment.
if someone approaches in good faith I'll talk with them but at a certain point you gotta realize some people enjoy being clueless and they deserve mockery until such point they decide they'd rather be more well-informed
There are people who say things like "I don't know what this is and would like to talk about it." That's not being stupid and shouldn't be mocked. That's good faith. Then there are people who go "I don't know what this is, but I'll act like an expert anyway and refuse to be corrected." That's aggressively stupid and doesn't deserve a respectful argument.
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
Death to America
Denis Prager and everyone who works for him should be arrested and then buried in a pit in the ground
Oh cool, that's neat. Wow. Personally I'm only socially communist. But in terms of economics I'm radically communist
Well hopefully landlords and capitalists are offered equal prison cells and/or spots in the guillotine
I love my trans comrades. Hate transphobes and hope they die.
Dolly Parton is a rich theme park owner who has abused her employees and she pals around with mass murderers like George W. Bush.
At a certain point she had credibility. She came from a poor Appalachian background and made music reflecting that. After a certain point though, after decades in the industry, she completely flipped. Her 9 to 5 song used to be a genuine anthem for struggling working class people, then she flipped it a few years ago as "5 to 9" for a Sqaurespace commercial, glorifying the idea of working a second job after your main one.
She's the exact problem of modern country music. It's made and financed by people too rich to be connected to humanity anymore.
Florida becoming the foundation of American fascism over the past 20 years is such a weird development. It used to be the party state. It did and still does have a huge supportive queer community.
I can only point to wealthy retirees shaping Florida's trajectory
It's a pretty reliable statistic that whenever anti-trans legislation goes to a public referendum, it fails. When this kind of stuff is a genuine public vote, the public almost always votes in favor of trans rights.
It's also a reliable statistic that the more a politician talks about being anti-trans, the worse they do electorally.
Anti-trans legislation is being pushed through by appointed judges, unelected committees, state cabinets, shit like that. It's not being pushed by a public vote.
I guess I don't see much of a distinction between those exploitative parasites and the state actors. I'm on the side of Althusser here, where the state is both a structural arrangement and a set of ideological norms. In that sense, you could say all culture is a conspiracy, as in a conspiracy to replicate the content and character of one's class interests.
I don't mean to say there's a shadowy group creating it, rather, there's a shadowy group that gives a platform and representation to things that promote their own interests. Or something they can flip around and sell back to you. Capitalism is crafty like that, like Che Guevara t-shirts.
Oh no, absolutely not is country music self inflicted. Modern country music is part of the same propaganda network as everything else in capitalism. The whole Nashville and Georgia country scenes have been connected at the hip with conservative money since at least the 1970s where Nixon had a country campaign song. Then there was Reagan showing up at the Grand Ole Opry. It's a useful vehicle to spread and satiate the thirst for white supremacy.
There's also Clear Channel Radio (currently iHeartRadio) which is run by ideological conservatives.
Also there's some kind of money floating around to suddenly promote the odd country song or two, like that Rich Men in Richmond song, or that stupid Jason Aldean guy. Every now and then you'll see a random headline like "country star fights back against woke-ness in new song." And that's the propaganda.
I can't put into words how much I despise modern stadium country. It's like the opposite of art. I grew up in the south around people who could only stomach country music like that. Everything else to them was too weird, or not white enough.
The closest analogy to country music are the movies fascists made, like the ones Hans Steinhoff and Goebbels directed. Completely banal plots and lack of artistic value. The only reason they were made as to communicate fascist rhetoric and fulfill a quota of cultural markers.
That's all modern country music is. It's the music of boring middle class white people who feel uneasy if their specific cultural touchstones aren't constantly reinforced. There have to be trucks, land ownership, high school football, generic American jingoism, glorification of alcoholism.
The most common thread in this shit music is that anything outside of a middle class conservative white lifestyle is to be mistrusted. The girl from a small town who goes off to college in a big city, but realizes her home was truly out in the sticks. The song about how country values make a person more virtuous or fun. "Don't go over that hill, don't go looking for anything further." It could possibly be a sweet sentiment if it weren't for the target audience: comfortable white shitheads who drive a $80,000 Ford truck in the suburbs.
It's not trolling to have different political opinions than liberals
Democrats are useless bureaucrats who will never do anything good. Servants of the capitalist class, all of them, including the supposedly good ones like AOC.
Joe Biden owes me another stimulus check. Joe Biden owes me $20,000 in student debt relief.
Abolish the American capitalist class and immediately stop their ruthless destruction of lives and planet Earth
Make something vibrate fast easier than make something vibrate slower
Push heat into something is easier than pull heat out of something
yeah as much as I comment on stuff like this, it really doesn't go anywhere. I fundamentally do not understand where the intensity is coming from or why people are so upset
the only thing I know to recommend is that if a user is not having an enjoyable time online, or if they're still thinking about forum arguments for days/weeks, they should take a leave of absence from the internet entirely. Maybe it would be difficult but I think perhaps moderation should look for people who seem to be using these websites in an unhealthy way and send them a DM asking if they're ok. Ask them how their experience with the site is going and ask if they're becoming obsessive or find themselves often feeling angry or tense. If that's the case then the best thing is to recommend taking a break from being online for a while