this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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hexbear was unfederated for three years, are you saying they just sat around all that time pretending to be queer communists to each other with no audience? Would thousands of people really check in to a website daily or weekly for years just to do that?
I don't think they are pretending to be those things. They truly believe themselves and their interpretation of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, communism and socialist projects to be true and just.
The only issue is that they come from a specific strain of western leftist that got into the "uwu dank Soviet club" meme of the mid-10s and never evolved past that understanding of the people, projects, policies and states they stan like a fandom. They could take some lessons from the anarchists tbqh, but they'd rather post PPB and "liberals get the wall". Very annoying.
what do you want from them, a good faith response? when half the people they talk to are people like this guy? or people like you, who dismiss their views from a distance and respond with with superficial vibes-based criticisms while having little or no understanding of what they actually think or why?
I dismiss their views out of hand because I have history with people who espoused very similar views and they showed themselves to have a very superficial understanding of leftism, socialism, communism, and various leftist writers. They exalt historical figures of communist movements to apostolic, sometimes even deity-like status, and throw theory at people like it's scripture. They take the counter to the west's propaganda against communism to be full-throated propagandists for communist projects, even for valid criticisms.
But really, even if their political lens was the truest and freest, I still would not like them because they are fucking obnoxious and utterly insufferable. They larp on their local instance about "performing coups on other instances" and "doing the emotional labor of educating Lemmy users" when in reality they are abrasive, unpleasant people hamfistedly applying leftist social and economic critiques as a cudgel to dunk on people if they don't automatically agree with them, be they fascist, racist, liberal or even leftist.
I saw the debacle with Blahaj and how Hexbear users acted. Whatever critique of their adminship could have been made is completely drowned out by the manipulative yet dense behavior of their accusers during and after.
What I want from them is to not immediately look for reasons to take the least charitable interpretation of someone's point and derail threads, stop acting as if they own every single instance, stop larping as if they are building a leftist revolution across the fediverse and go outside, and to stop posting obnoxiously large server emojis all over every fucking thread.
It's a distinct blend of the worst of Reddit communists and Twitter users and I don't appreciate it when they decide to pull that nonsense in other instances beyond their own.
I don't care what comes after this. I still read it, but I don't care. "You knew some people, therefore hexbear is those people."
what do you say about the guy I linked to in the last comment? You don't think hexbear's obnoxiousness might be a reaction to years of talking to people like that? You don't think maybe at this point they expect it and that's why they're flippant?
look at how your own instance talks, this is absurdly hypocritical.
Cool, I suppose I shouldn't take any of your arguments seriously then.
No, I knew some people who showed bad behavior, and Hexbear users are showing similar behavior.
Yeah, they're somewhat obnoxious. It's annoying to see communists lumped in widely with fascists. They aren't 14-year-old Stalin-fancam sea-lion-posting-in-every-Lemmy-instance obnoxious though.
Maybe it is a reaction to to people like that. I do not give a fuck. Unless they're picking beef with long-storied rivals, everyone else has been here for 2-3 months, maybe less. We are not the collective animus of every anti-communist they've ever met. We're people here to form link aggregator communities, and it's unacceptable for them to treat people here as punching bags for their past frustrations just because they have a bit of social power here.
There's a wide range of people with political opinions here, and left-wing populism is quite popular here. If they changed their engagement, more people would be amenable to their community. But if they insist on acting the fool, they will eventually be sent back to the circus.
Talk like what, furries? They're mostly nerds, not much political discourse there. Small twinge of liberalism/leftism maybe.
they're not past frustrations. look around. In fact, look at yourself, with your "I already know what hexbears think and why without ever talking to them" dismissal. That is frustrating, right now in the present, because you don't know what you don't know. Hexbears are well-read and have detailed, serious takes, which they generally do not post outside their own instance because no one gives a shit and no one will read them. You actually can't just understand them at a glance based on vibes and some people you knew once. And it's obviously arrogant to think you can. And that arrogance is fucking frustrating, especially since you don't even realize you're being arrogant and you're bewildered that people react poorly to it.
Sure. Fellowship is an important part of maintaining a weird cult-like ideological stance.
Also we can't ignore the fact that there's some national interest juice behind this. China being a fascist country that's claiming to be communist to maintain legitimacy (and maintain power for the elites in that country) means there's significant resources that can be used to maintain the narrative that fascism branded as socialism is a good thing.
And dumb people love the idea that they're the small group that is getting things right, it's just the rest of the world that's wrong. See flat earthers, qanon, etc. They get in their little community where (unlike the rest of the world) no one tells them they're an idiot when they say their stupid bullshit. All they have to do is conform to the overall narrative the community is centered around and they don't need to do any critical thinking, and gain a sense of acceptance despite being an idiot.
imagine how awful it would be to spend hours in a long back and forth with someone like this trying to convince them that you have a nuanced perspective and justifications for it and you are not a stupid, monstrous, cult-like fanatic, all while they do not listen to you because they already know you are those things and therefore nothing you say is worth considering
Kind of what political discourse is on social media. Saying things to appease with the network your account is in so you can continue to accepted by them. Most prominent social media "personalities" don't care about the issues, but only want to appear to care about the issues.
I'd much prefer to talk to someone that honestly disagrees with me rather than someone who's disagreement is performative in order to please their friend network. It's possible (though maybe still unlikely) to convince someone who is honest about their views. Someone that's performative will continue to disagree because you aren't the one they're really talking to. It's the "friend" network they're always speaking to regardless of who's comment they're placing theirs under.
Such is social media.
it's not performative when hexbear disagrees with you, that's just you assuming things again.