I must admit I mostly lurk there and never quite made the jump culturally to lemmygrad, but I do respect your opinions and the last few days are making me feel a bit insane and wanting an outside perspective. I’ll explain and provide links for context
A longtime user got banned for bad behavior in live chat on hextube. That part isn’t all that surprising. But then we got dueling impersonators one and two making meta posts about the ban and a notorious also-banned user he had conflicted with a long time ago (melina).
This was… mostly just annoying, clearly someone was doing a nasty bit, but mods just banned them both and the site moved on which I guess is fair enough.
Fast forward to today, and we have an account (not brand new, but not a longtime account either, only a few weeks old with limited post history) purporting to be our resident China guy (and China doomer, to some extent) from the news mega, posting a long winded story about going to xinjiang and getting 1984’d or whatever. It starts to feel like it could be a bit as it gets more and more absurd, but this user was always very serious from what I recall.
If this is a troll/psyop I guess it’s a good one because this garbage is giving me a fucking headache. What do you grad’ers think is going on? Were any of these real or all impersonators (and relatedly who? melina?) Am I just too autistic to get the joke? Is this a fed psyop? what else could be going on?
Imagine going anywhere outside of the news mega and community.
These “WTF is wrong with hexbear” posts are starting to show up like clock work. I love my Hexbears but there’s some rotten apples in the admin team and I don’t expect any good changes.
There is a systemic issue in the moderation/administration team. Anonymity has made the admin team completely unaccountable to the user base and also to each other. Until that issue is rectified there will continue to be bans issued for minor issues and misunderstandings as well as serious infractions that are not properly addressed.
I am under the impression that this issue has been exploited by an intentional wrecker or group of organized wreckers. Though the use of alts or backchannels these wreckers are able to maintain one or more constant admin positions that they use to sow discord. Sometime around september last year they fortified their position and begun to hunt for reasons to ban some of the most prolific members of the community.
When Awoo was banned was there ever any action taken aside from her getting reinstated? Or did the petty vindictive admins that fought to keep her banned (and all the others they banned because of unrelated disagreements) just take the L and maintain their authority?
I won’t go back to hexbear. I love you all but the system of moderation makes me feel gross. Users shouldn’t have to tiptoe on eggshells for fear of being banned because they fear a vindictive mod interpreting what they said in the worst possible way. Incorrect views should be challenged in order to foster growth not used as an excuse to shut people out. Admins should have to have their name pinned to their arguments in a struggle session so that when they ban another user for something petty they can be held to account.
The admin team needs a complete overhaul but people who abuse the power they have never give it up willingly and so I see no method of fixing Hexbear. Instead Hexbear will keep banning ideologically correct posters until it is a withered husk, a mere shadow of itself.
If you take the view that these constant struggles are just a extension of the operation that got R\CTH banned as I do, this new phase of destroying leftist spaces on the internet is a master stroke. What is going on now is way more effective because destroying trust that individuals have for the community is more effective than burning down the meeting place.
Well stated.
We banned mfs for thinking Luigi is cool and mods started a struggle session because our dunking wasnt ideologically pure enough
On hexbear you either hate the bits or you hate the mods, and the mod team has triangulation the worst position between both camps
Can you sort of hate both?
I think 80% of the bits since I’ve joined hb have been relatively stupid. Some of my favorite actual bits disappeared into the ether…I miss the disco-thought-cabinet poster…
disco-thought-cabinet poster…
easily top 2 best bits of all time on that site and it aint #2
We banned mfs for thinking Luigi is cool
Edit: Oh, probably something about his online past, I’m guessing.
deleted by creator
This is so finger-on-the-pulse accurate, my god
The wrecker(s?) back there again? Maybe they can ask lemmygrad’s admins for help. (to infiltrate the wrecker hideout, like they did with wisconcom)
I left Hexbear years ago for Lemmygrad. I got tired of the endless “bits” and similar feelings you described. I think the bears main problem is the fact that anyone can just make accounts willy nilly and if you get banned so what? Just make 10 more accounts. No vetting either. At least when I made my account(s) there wasn’t. So it’s just ripe with feds and wreckers. That’s not to say we have some bad people on the grad. There’s some users here that post occasionally and every time it’s drama and then they randomly go psychotic in a post, it’s just way less constant over here cause out mods and admin actually try to do a good job with it.
there’s been vetting for awhile now
It’s sadly a bad time to be autistic on Hexbear. These are, AFAIK, all bits.
if these are all bits fuck whoever’s making them. ruining any social cohesion or solidarity on this site
“bits” are so annoying sometimes. They’re unoriginal, and it’s not a “bit” to post something that can be taken as sincere.
It’s the left version of “it’s just a prank bro”
yeah. I mean anything can be taken as sincere but you don’t have to actively deceive people for it to be funny, you can give up the bit if people are genuinely upset or believing it
I get that jokes are about misdirection, but I thought we kind of had an understanding not to push peoples buttons here. I feel like it becomes a “bit” when the OP absolutely refuses to give up the game even after the humor is gone. It’s family guy levels of beating a joke to death. Maybe I’m just crotchety and joyless, but damn, some people can’t read a room
It’s a method of wrecking. There’s some pretty famous examples online of how far you can push boundaries on websites with the use of irony and “humor”. Refusing to give up the bit until as much attention has been gathered as possible is usually a sign of that.
You get to encourage other people to push boundaries ironically, have a chunk of users who are less prone to checking comments/verifying believing the contents and you can pass it off as a bit. How convenient!
But yeah, I’m thinkin’ about it too much, probably. Guess we’ll have to wait three years to find out if the website doesn’t magically fuck itself up again.
That’s interesting. It makes a lot of sense though. It’s plausible deniability stretched so thin but it allows you a little more time to really cause damage.
all? damn wtf
I’m not 100% that the first post you mentioned really wasn’t the actual banned user, but because of the way they engaged with the other account who claimed to be them I think it was all a bit from someone else.
It definitely feels similar to some of the bits around losing the domain. There was someone posing as one of the domain bidders. That got a little heated until folks started to figure it out. But the OP kept going even after this point. Like read the room, dude.
yeah. I was hoping that wasn’t them tbh.
We call this an average Wednesday
I enjoyed the Xinjiang bit post. The thing they got banned for was Impersonation, which isn’t really the main funny part IMO, and the ban is totally reasonable, but I can see how the impersonation facilitated the joke’s delivery.
I don’t know anything about the rest. Hexbear has a lot of active posters so it coule just be normal stuff that any community has to deal with.
Idk if it is explicitly a hexbear problem, but it kinda seems like it might be. I feel like I haven’t been around long enough to know.
I think a possible reason why the Xinjiang post upset people is because of the fakenews comm we have. A LOT of people hate it and it seems there’s a lot of lore and drama surrounding it. I think with a lot of our autistic users, they kinda get whiplash from that stuff sometimes, especially if the comm isn’t blocked and they don’t notice that it’s a fakenews post, a lot of people are really convincing on there. My guess is that, especially if the bits seem TOO real, and it is politics after all that very deeply impact people’s lives, that it can really wear on people emotionally.
The Xinjiang bit was wildly well done. Thank God they FINALLY threw the pants pissing in at the end lol. I had an idea in the beginning that it was a bit because of how ridiculously verbose it was, but some people may not have gotten it, and to be really trusting and to see that possibly, your entire firm stance on human rights abuses and a genocide could be false??? That would feel SUPER jarring…Especially, intiutively you know that it’s BS, but what if? What if you keep saying “Pfft! This is fake garbage!” but you question your beliefs because we can all be wrong on things and that can be pretty distressing. So I get why some people may have gotten really worked up about that in particular
From my perspective, the morse code stuff was already unbelievable as was the 1.5 hour car ride. The first hint was probably the idea of being imprisoned for months for comparing the situation in Palestine to what Uyghurs face.
I think the bit would’ve been funnier without the over-the-top end in the sense of testing how much an instance that prides itself on rejecting such flimsy anti-China stories would end up believing. And maybe the internalized orientalism it played on would’ve been constructively self-critted out. Opportunities for friendly education!
I think badposting is a bad comm. Mostly because it’s kind of annoying, usually not very funny, and pops up way too often by default. I forgot how to block comms on other instances but this is a good reminder to do that! But of course it’s y’all’s instance and it’s no skin off my nose if that comm is around forever.
I’m not sure if I understand the full picture of the autism angle. Insincerity and sarcasm can be difficult for some people with autism to notice or process, so I see that angle. But Hexbear has a somewhat sarcastically mean and dunking culture already which I would think to be way more confusing than posts in a clearly marked “badposting” comm or a story that gets progressively silly. But maybe those who have trouble connecting with that culture are already filtered out, alienated by a decent chunk of the posts on their first day.
I think the bit would’ve been funnier without the over-the-top end in the sense of testing how much an instance that prides itself on rejecting such flimsy anti-China stories would end up believing. And maybe the internalized orientalism it played on would’ve been constructively self-critted out. Opportunities for friendly education!
the problem is this: the bit was only possible because of years of crediblity that the real xiaohongshu built up over various accounts. if someone made a new account it would get discarded immediately. you could try building credibility on a bit accounts for years beforehand (which i dont actually think anyone in the world has the dedication for), but to build up your account(s) credibility to a similar level to what xhs has, would take even more effort. xhs has years of history speaking about china and things only someone who has lived in china for a decent chunk of time, and none of the other chinese users have ever called out anything xhs has said as being something from someone who has never lived in china. if whoever did the bit tried to do something similar, make all these claims about china for months/years needed to build up credibility for this post, its very likely someone would catch on. it would be unfair and not as funny if people were getting tricked by a post that while flimsy rode off the back of trust off of someone a lot of users have grown to trust over the years. it would be really fucked up to do a post thats more murky like that if you’re impersonating someone else. basically, i think the only way to do a bit in a way that you’re describing is it was actually coming from xhs or someone else from china who builds a similar amount of credibility
Having been there myself, the moderately cheap 400 yuan per night hotel comment right at the beginning immediately tipped me off. Hotels at that price point are palacial.
That and the ludicrous writing style
I think with a lot of our autistic users, they kinda get whiplash from that stuff sometimes,
I can’t speak for all autistic people obviously (and I’m not very active in the ND comm) but I personally find it useful to have to check my skeptic skills in good fun. There’s reactionaries posting fake stuff that’s a lot more sinister than posts like the Xinjiang post, so it’s good to avoid letting my guard completely down. Obviously it does beg the question of why it wasn’t posted in fakenews but I think there’s a level of artistic license you have to grant to make a really good bit work.
I feel like a lot of it is bits but it’s hard to know. (also it’s ironic that only hexbears are finding this post so far)
I think its because we have diferent algorithm from lemmygrad
Idk what’s going on but the past few weeks really feel like hexbear is getting ruined for me which fucking sucks. I get some of the bits and all that and like the jokes but this all just does not feel good, and it seems like there has been an abundance of struggle sessions and fighting and its just not fun anymore.
When there was the struggle session over the Admins/mods getting rid of the dunk tank, there was a separate struggle over problematic behavior with the mods and site culture in general that has not been touched since and I really, really think that discussion needs to happen front and center, not just as an appendage to other stupid struggle sessions.
I put the problem back to around september-october last year. I didn’t notice it till Awoo got banned but a bit of digging in the mod showed that the administration issues got markedly worse around then.
fakenews and badposting ruined hexbear
Neither add much, but I think a bigger issue is so much conversation getting shunted into megathreads. You end up with:
- Mega (700 comments)
- Post (40 comments)
- Post (15 comments)
- Struggle session (400 comments)
- Post (30 comments)
Because megathreads aren’t all that coherent – there are dozens of different topics, people posting chat-style missives, etc. – the biggest points of focused discussion wind up as the struggle session threads.
Seems like a lot of people feel that way. I personally don’t mind bad posting, every once in a while there is some good comedy. Fake news did start to wear on me though because I get got every time lol. I think you can do satire and irony and it can be clever and funny! But I think there is a limit and once you see that people are getting upset you need to stop otherwise it feels like bullying
I had to block that com
Yea, it’s definitely been less fun lately, the vibe has been off for sure. We definitely need more transparency when it comes to mods/admins
This whole WTYP thing and the aftermath has just left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s because I never use the tubes and didn’t see what was happening there but at least with most bans you can see what the person said/did.
Yeah, I dunno this seems to be a long standing problem which sucks. Hoping it’ll blow over because it seems that the userbase can’t really do much about it
For real. Either this is a dumb shit posting site for socially awkward leftist nerds and shouldn’t be taken super seriously, or it’s a well organized community that is sorely lacking any sort of cohesive structure and bar for entry.
They need to pick one so we know how to behave.
If its like Chapo Traphouse it was never meant to be a serious site & they didn’t even care that the domain was expiring. The only serious leftist of Chapo is Matt Christman. The others come off as wealthy irony posters that don’t care much about any movement or history. Maybe people should come to one of the actually serious lemmy servers that has memes as well as reading groups and history posts and contribute to them.
I don’t think we model ourselves after chapo anymore basically for the reasons you stated. But yeah it has gone really downhill and it makes me glad there are certain federated instances I can see. They hold down the fort when he bear is getting particularly out of pocket.
I said this in another comment but like I enjoy a lot of the bits and humor and shitposting and that its not a super serious vibe all the time, and I like reading the very articulate analysis and learning more about geopolitics and such. I feel like it’s possible to have both! It’s just this particular brand of “humor” feels weird and kinda mean spirited, thats the only way I can think to describe it. Like you can see in the comments that people get upset, but then its thrown back on those people for “not taking a joke”. Making an alt account to impersonate another user to make fun of them isn’t fun to me, its bullying and weird
I agree there is a balance between goofy and serious that can be struck on hexbear. In fact, that’s what made it so cozy. We had a great thing going until fairly recently. I’ll never understand why we federated with a bunch of instances that we knew were full of wreckers and trolls. We federated once, had a huge problem, and then there was that moment where we lost the domain and it was actually pretty peaceful for a while.
People were starved for content on here so we federated again and surprise, surprise the same problems have come back. Hexbear is a ghost town when there aren’t other instances to look at, but can’t we be a little more discerning?
I only hopped on to hexbear because of federation, but I switched my default homepage to “all” and I notice just how boring like 95% of posts are out there lol. I have also heard that it could be user-favoritism on the part of admins, so who knows. I just want the chill vibes back damn
First one was just the banned user and a someone trolling them.
Secong one is a bit since it ends with XHS pissing their pants in solidarity
Its fine to ask others to explain you the joke/bit/troll if you didnt understand it
Its not a psyop/fed dont worry about
Its fine to ask others to explain you the joke/bit/troll if you didnt understand it
Sucks that I just have to assume everything is some irony poisoned bullshit and try to parse it as an inscrutable joke, and then fail, and then ask everyone else to explain to me like I’m a baby. I don’t have this issue anywhere else in my life, even online, I never have. Frankly I don’t think it’s good or acceptable behavior, it just feels socially corrosive, but I probably just need to log off.
I’m not gonna judge hexbear on this cause I don’t really go there much, so it wouldn’t be fair to try to judge based on limited info. But FWIW, I can say as a general principle, that I think “bits” and lefty politics tend to go together like oil and water. Jokes are cool and normal in my book, and the occasional sarcastic representation of the opposition’s views is not going to end the world. But especially online, if it’s not a person others are familiar with for having clear lefty views, and the goal of the bit is to lean into it so hard that some people could be fooled, the priorities are off IMO. The normalization of that stuff is one way that Schrodinger’s Douchebag style messaging can get through. (Whether any of this applies to hexbear is not something I can properly judge. Just saying “generally”, how I feel about it; you aren’t the only one who doesn’t love certain kinds of clowning.)
The normalization of that stuff is one way that Schrodinger’s Douchebag style messaging can get through.
I was trying to say something akin to this in a comment above. Well said.
I’m sure everyone has their own tolerance level for it but I don’t completely disagree. the grad can feel a bit stuffy but times like this I wonder if that’s not for the best.
But I will say hexbear is 98% fine for me, as an insider. I mostly get the jokes, and there’s some social norms about what is and isn’t appropriate in which comms. its a relatively few people who take things way past where I’d draw the line, both in bits and in just like, sheer aggression and uncharitability/uncomradely behavior
Gotcha, so sounds like a fringe issue of things going too far then. But nevertheless something that bothers you, which is fair.
assume everything is some irony poisoned bullshit and try to parse it as an inscrutable joke, and then fail, and then ask everyone else to explain
Times like these I think “I’m glad I’m not online enough to get all this”
Yeah and being extremely online still didn’t save me from the embarassment of making this post. its highly overrated.
With trolls like this who needs feds?
it’s very likely just melina/the fake news folks. nothing to get too alarmed about. just kind of annoying.
Idk if it’s “nothing to get too alarmed about” when it genuinely ruins peoples experiences on the site to the point they just leave. Like yes we can block the fake news comm but if that kinda “humor” it whatever is constantly spilling over into other comms then what can one do, yknow?
yeah sorry i didn’t mean to imply it doesn’t suck, just that it’s not a psyop or anything so serious. i’m personally not really a fan but idk what can really be done.
Oh gotcha, no need to apologize! And yeah, it just sucks that it seems that people who get rubbed the wrong way appear to be disregarded when it comes to this specifically. I like the shitpost side of hexbear, the jokes are why i use it, but its like this specific brand just feels more like, mean spirited I guess? Especially to ND folks I think. It’ll probably subside soon tho
it just sucks to have to weigh whether any given post is their anti-social behavior or genuine. at least right wing trolls get bored and leave us the fuck alone after a bit.
it’s pretty obnoxious but i don’t think they’re necessarily being intentionally anti-social (even though it sometimes ends up that way). i think they all just have the same sense of humor. honestly you can kinda tell when it’s one of them bc they tend to post about the same subject; off the top of my head i remember them all getting pretty fixated on making jokes about smoking crack, sounding rods, and now piss. i vaguely recall melina specifically kinda having a thing about people taking themselves too seriously on the funny bear website.
…i really gotta go the fuck outside.
A “bit” culture on a pseudonymous social media platform. What could go wrong, time and again? Dirtbag left malarkey grinds my gears sometimes. An irony-poisoned house of mirrors.
yeah I think the “just make a new account ethos” mostly works except that rather than a community of mostly faceless medium trust level users you also get a sprinkling of power users who never or rarely rotate accounts who everyone ‘knows’, and a sprinkling of outright malicious users who use anonymity to sow chaos in various ways. the latter two groups seem to also be where the worst irony poisoning comes from
The Uyghur psyop imposter just got banned: https://hexbear.net/modlog?userId=2579194
oh good.
is it imploding again?
Id say “Still”
