I saw a post that talked about racism towards people and when I talked about it the response I got was very heated and a person even called lemmy.world a community of ‘hitlerites’
I have been around for a week or so and this is my first time seeing such explicit vulgar reaction towards another community, is this a one-off or should I block hexbear?
A place with a high amount of queer and trans socialists that all the cishets on the fediverse mald about. The instance is something like 66% queer / queer adjacent and 51% are trans / trans adjacent. Essentially, a lot of people are very aggro about the fact that they have carved a safe space out for themselves prior to lemmy becoming popular recently. Tldr:
Here’s some of their demographic surveys.
I am trans and hate hexbear. It’s not because they’re largely queer, it’s because they’re tankies.
Blahaj is dope, hexbear is not.
Well, cool, but you’re a highschooler so you don’t have much real world experience, though being a closeted queer as a highschooler is definitely a hellish and radicalizing experience, I’ve been there. Also, as a trans person thats been transitioned for a long time, you begin to realize the number of allies you have is very few and debate is very much a waste of time (fun for cis people, terrifying for trans people) and its far more important to build independence and resilience for the community and remove awful people from your life. Hexbear has mutual aid drives and housing support groups that have saved many trans people from homelessness and even their lives. Think: does SJW or lemmy.world do the same, or are they just all hot air and complain about ‘tankies’ in a vague way while doing nothing? Is it fine to be rude to people who think debating your existence and the existence of other marginalized people is good fun?
I don’t think that’s why I find them so unpleasant though?
I don’t come here to talk about sexual preferences.
Hexbear, together with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml are left wing, communist instances here on Lemmy.
A lot of (new) users of Lemmy have very strong - as in negative - feelings about them because of their ideas. Which to me makes sense because a lot of these users tend to be more centrist in their views and have never read Marxist literature before.
I will be honest with you and tell you my experience: they can be dickish and straight up trollish in their behavior, but not anymore than your average online trolls. The actual main reason people dislike them, is because they stick together and sometimes “brigade” post which nominates them and talk shit about them.
I personally was on the receiving end of their trolling when I first joined Lemmy too. But among the trolls, there were also very nice users who gave me friendly replies. And I had great conversations with them.
Eventually I even decided to open an alt account in one of those instances to learn more about their views and engage with them on their political knowledge. I really enjoy learning from them and having open conversations about politics with them. Even when sometimes I see their more extreme opinions, I still try to always be open minded at first. More often than not, I will learn that something I used to think on a subject, was the result of historical misconceptions or straight up propaganda. That is not to say that they can’t be wrong of course. But it pays off to be receptive about new points of view.
There are some elements that can be considered extreme, especially to someone from the general public who has never engaged in political conversations with someone who is very much to the left. It takes a little adjustment if you want to try and engage because so much of the media and literature we consume reinforce our views on the system while they specifically try to be critical of it.
Bur FOR SURE you will never see that instance be racist or bigoted. I have lost counts how many times I’ve seen that in other instances, but with them, you know exactly where they stand on that. As in, they do NOT tolerate that.
Tldr: Hexbear (with Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml) are openly communist instances on Lemmy. They are very vocals because they have a large userbase. They can be trolls that stick together sometimes. If you are politically interested/involved, I instead recommend joining one of their instances to see for yourself.
Edit: you can also tell how much people here have a negative feeling about those instances by the reactions in this post. Everything remotely critical is upvoted, while anything that even hints a positive opinion of them, will be downvoted. And then more and more users will start downvoting without even reading the comments. And they will start attacking users because they disagree and feel the need to attack them because “that instance bad”…in a way not too dissimilar from the brigading I mentioned before for some of the users from those instances. Showing you a real life example of how there are extreme users in every online community
Sorry this is not true. They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly when it disagrees with their very radical beliefs. The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation. Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation.
Sorry this is not true.
It is true. That’s MY experience with them
They are very aggressive and attack every viewpoint harshly
And? I do too when I’m heated about a topic. If your viewpoint is to defend fascism, why not attack it? And I’m not talking specifically about you here. But if we’re debating, I expect someone to bring a good debate.
The reason instances ban them is they are not here for the conversation
Sorry this is not true.
And I already gave my explanation as to why in my original comment.
Nothing good comes from that community, only confrontation
So just like your comment? Lol jokes aside, I already addressed everything you said before. But I’m happy you were able to disagree and get it out of your system. I’ve noticed a lot of Lemmy users have this weird obsession with those instances, when in reality they are just instances. They have both shitty and normal users. It’s always more nuanced than that.
Just cleaning up after your whitewashing. Good try though. Their community is just a bunch of trolls like you said. I’m glad the instance I use block overtly toxic ones.
You ever see the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise is about to get ripped apart by an energy wave that responds more and more violently the more power they put into their shields?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_Worship_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
There’s an analogy for your disparate experiences in the context of your dickish attitude.
I think this is probably the fairest description. Hexbearians are dickish trolls sometimes. Unfortunately, because Hexbear was the biggest Lemmy instance for the longest time, a lot of communities found this initially overwhelming, plus the big jump in political perspective is too jarring and can seem nonsensical.
But I believe anyone who takes a moment to engage in good faith with the cool users, and ignore the trollish ones, will see you can have constructive, interesting and caring discussions and realise what the attraction of the community is.
Actual leftists mostly, with a few crazies.
Do not interact with them destroy it with fire
Hexbear.net, lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad.ml have a lot of extreme leftists who have very wild takes that could be mistaken for right wing takes.
I personally don’t recommend blocking them because outside of political threads they make up a lot of the content/memes/discussions, but up to you if you want to try that out.
I’ve blocked all 3, I see comments from them but not posts.
Most of the communities are are slowly moving away anyway, given how many users don’t want to engage with the instance at all.
There’s honestly a lot of high quality posts on lemmy.ml. Maybe some from Hexbear if you’re into leftist niches like veganism
