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Childish? Kinda. Insane? No.
There are three relevant things to say about hexbear.
1. It is not a serious instance. Or at least not completely serious; they're mostly there for memes, funposting, "I know that feel" etc.
So they're less like the meeting room of a communist party than like the bar where those communists hang out and drink beer, after the meeting is over.
I feel like this is often misinterpreted, as HB users say something that is mostly a taunt and others interpret as actual argumentation. And it also tends to attract younger users, who... well, behave like young people?
2. Even if not a serious instance, they're serious about their views. Your typical HB user is communist, antifa, vegan, anti-cop, and interprets things in a very specific way. They're rather transparent about it.
And, because of #1, they aren't really willing to spend their time entertaining anyone's counterpoints. It'll be interpreted as sealioning or similar.
3. Hexbear was already its own thing before federation. As such it developed social norms that often conflict with the norms typically found in the rest of the Threadiverse (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed etc.)
For example, even if Lemmy as a whole is prone to intrusive political discussions, HB users tend to do it far more. Because they're used to an environment where this is typically taken as OK.
When it comes to dealing with HB users here, my advice is the exact same as dealing with other users:
Thank you for saying this in a more detailed way than I have been. This is exactly right. They built their own leftist haven and became a whole culture of their own, and then became federated. There is bound to be an initial clash, but honestly I think most of the people who hate on them never gave them a chance. All they saw were the shitposts and the in-jokes and you closed the door.
I see a lot of leftists (and leaning leftists), even on .world, who would be better off interacting with the users there (maybe blocking the shitposting comms). And outside of those most-seen comms (chapotraphouse and dunk_tank), there is genuine conversation and less shit talking and in-jokes. I believe, with more instances coming in that are federated with them (mine, .ml, and lem.ee? are a couple), some of the Hex-natives are understanding how to interact with curious left-leaning people with unintentionally wrong-headed ideas.
Downvote me all you want, I stand by Hexbear. o7
Answer me this: are they or are they not consistently in support of Russia/China? Because I've seen it a lot from them (and blocked the instance soon after joining Lemmy when I noticed the pattern).
Is it just some big joke that went over my head?
Support for PRC? Yes.
Support for the Russian Federation? Purely the anti-NATO role it takes, Hexbear hates Putin and the reactionary nature of the Russian Federation.
With China, mostly yes. With Russia, only in very specific contexts, otherwise they are VERY critical of it (as they are with most burgeois government, but particularly more due to the reactionary nature of the Russian government from what I’ve seen).
I'm curious about this, do you hold the same opinion about lemmygrad?
That is one of the few instances my instance is defederated from, so I haven’t had much interaction with them. I can speak about Hexbear because I see their posts and interact with them.
Lemmygrad.ml is a "serious" community of Marxist-Leninists, and are Dengists as well (or at least largely sympathetic towards Deng).
Hexbear is Left-Unity, and more of a community focused instance.
The views are largely similar, but the tone and goals of each instance are different.
well, views are pretty much the same. typically, grad users shitpost less and are less active as a whole but are more sectatarian because the rules of the instance allow for it, although there really isn't that much sectarianism on there, the comm with the most sectatarinsm "shitultrassay" has only 20 posts in the last six months, whereas the equivalent comm for dunking on social and conservative liberals has over 100 posts in the last month alone
This is the most reasonable response.
A lot of people here have long since made up their mind about hexbear based both on repeated meta posting on the topic and possibly a bad experience or two with them on a topic they assumed was uncontested but is a landmine topic for communists of a particular bent
I've personally never had a bad experience with hexbears, possibly because I'm more empathetic to their perspective, but more likely because I know when it's time to disengage. There are users on lemmy who feel strongly about a certain topic that's abrasive to hexbear users and dig in their heels when jeered at (or maybe feel a personal responsibility to stand them down) and are usually the users here who have the most complaints, because the standard reaction from hexbear users is irreverence (both the users and the mods).
Unlike a lot of liberals coming from reddit, communists often don't have delusions about the neutrality of moderation and so they'll ban you on a whim if they think you're there to stir shit. They use the ban hammer judiciously even with users on their own instance. That's often the biggest complaint both with hexbear and with lemmy.ml.
really well articulated. I feel bad for well meaning people, but so often they don't realize it comes across as the exact same kind of bad faith trolling that communist online groups have to constantly deal with and so mods and users have little patience for it if it's not explicitly a thread for that kind of conversation.
To be fair I've had a few bad experiences with Hexbears, but I think that most of them boil down to "unfunny guy interacting with unserious kids". But since I'm often lurking there in my political account, I feel like my opinion about them is a bit less ungrounded than this whole "Hexbear bad! EDIT WOW THANKS FOR THE GOLD KIND STRANGER!" echo chamber.
(I also have a few bones to pick with .ml [the people in charge, not the whole instance], but they don't apply to LG or HB, it's a matter of transparency.)
Browsing their coms can be a pretty unique experience, especially if you go in with a preformed idea of what their communities are like. There's a huge spread of interests and experiences, and sometimes you can be browsing a niche community and forget that these were the people posting BPB on lemmy.world threads a year ago.
Knowing the academic writings and history they're referencing helps a lot with understanding where they are coming from, even if you may not agree with all of it.