YOU are speaking!

As many are aware, there has been a lot of site drama in the past week or so. This is NOT a post to discuss that, and I ask that you keep all serious discussion about it on the pinned posts it belongs in. What I am looking to do here is ask the community what they would like to see from c/agitprop going forward.

There have been ongoing discussions on Hexbear regarding making more serious posts, having a place for effortposting to get noticed (and thus incentivizing more to be made, nobody likes spending hours working on en effortpost for 5 upbears), and having a more focused place for less casual/more academic discussion. The nature of this comm, or at least what the intended purpose was supposed to be upon its inception, was to give Hexbear users a place to produce and find agitprop for use in everyday discussions. Given these two statements, last week I made an impromptu U.S. Election response/commentary resource Megathread here on c/agitprop. I figured that perhaps this was the place to open up to users for less casual/more serious analysis and discussion regarding the U.S. election, like… for actual traditional agitprop purposes.

The post was a huge success, and the community received tons of high-effort posting from individuals into the Megathread posting their own takes on the U.S. election, many references and direct links to highlight other Hexbear user’s great effortposts elsewhere on this site, and good resources from outside of Hexbear. In my opinion, this post/style of post could be a useful and engaging format for effortpost generation/congregation of larger news events in the future.

Now finally for the purpose of this post: What would you like to see from c/agitprop going forward? Feedback on the U.S. Election response/commentary resource Megathread is of course appreciated, and I’d love to hear any ideas regarding how it went/if you (dis)liked it/holding a similar thread in the future, but please do not limit your input based only on what you have seen so far from this comm. This community is, of course, only what we make it, so any and all feedback is greatly appreciated and goes a long way towards improving everybody’s user experience.

Below I will list a few ideas I have seen floated by the community for c/agitprop in the past. Additionally, I will try to keep this list updated with any ideas that are provided in the comments of this post as well in order to highlight them for discussion.

•Effortpost Megathread for larger news events (frequency/guidelines for “larger” TBD here)

•Agitprop Megathread running parallel to the Weekly News Megathread for more nuanced discussion/analysis to be used both on Hexbear and elsewhere

•Ongoing Agitprop workshop/resource thread to organize the Hexbear community’s many skills and have relevant, ready-to-go agitprop for current events ready for dissemination outside of this site

•Reference guide for left/left-adjacent spaces to crosspost agitprop material to

•Agitprop field report for returning to Hexbear (potentially contest style) and seeing where agitprop is reaching the widest audience and receiving the most engagement

•”Quick Draw” style + up to date archive of good agitprop in order to quickly debunk common talking points

•Keeping on top of current events by preemptively posting Effortpost Megathreads for known upcoming events (Major elections, for example)

•Keeping a calendar of known upcoming events to help prepare agitprop ahead of time

•Highlighting past major events or public figures to conduct a postmortem effortpost analysis

  • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
    10·
    14 days ago

    All good ideas. I think we certainly have the ability to organize non-online action without risking being doxxed or something of the like. Standing good causes like food banks and Zapatista coffee, etc. are all good ideas. We could probably even boost the net amount of aid delivered by dropping a weekly aid request for very simple things like orderable refreshments for strikers on a picket line, which go a very long way and majorly boost morale, though I feel that this is something that belongs more in c/mutual_aid, especially with the part about trying to organize Hexbears to contribute actual labor.

    An agitprop crossposting reference is definitely something we should consider. It would be easy to compile a list of left/left-adjacent communities to make sure Hexbear posts get delivered there in higher numbers.

    A current events thread running parallel to the news Megathread should also be considered. Agitprop’s effectiveness really drops off if it isn’t being seen when these issues are being discussed in the first place and people are starting to form opinions.

    I think your final two points can be combined to work more effectively. The “contest” can essentially be who has taking agitprop content from Hexbear and gotten the most engagement on it elsewhere, which also acts as a report back on its effectiveness and encourages spread of agitprop to wider reaching communities.

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      14 days ago

      especially with the part about trying to organize Hexbears to contribute actual labor

      To expand on my thoughts a little here: I imagined the target audience for the agitprop created here on this site would be people outside the site. I imagined we’re agitated enough 😏 lol. My thoughts were more centered on creating Agitprop that can motivate the politically unmotivated / disillusioned. Like, creating tailored agitprop for the r/somethingiswrong2024 people, or for the r/antiwork or r/latestagecapitalism communities. Targeting places like r/florida with agitprop centered around the disaffected groups within Florida (women, queer people, etc.) and attempting to use that agitprop to direct them to these localized support networks, or even encouraging them to create support networks of their own. So not necessarily Hexbearians being mobilized to contribute their labor, but the frequently online liberal progressives who need that push into more leftist spaces. After reading a lot of content in r/somethingiswrong2024 I just have this sense that there is a group of people out there looking for anything to hold onto, and if we can direct them in some way to these local places, they’ll fill that void and maybe work agacent to more leftists.

      That is a very specific kind of agit prop campaign I would say, so obviously, we should also be creating more generalized agitprop as well that would work in places like r/antiwork and r/latestagepropaganda. Antiwork had a post recently that was linked here where there were a lot of “Maybe communism isn’t as bad as I’ve been told” sentiments with many upvotes. So I think you’re right about keeping things current. So, in line with those adjacent communities, it might be valuable to write up (given enough time) an effective guideline or guidebook for agitation in those spaces. What works, what doesn’t, what themes resonate with the communities, how reactionary are they etc.

      In the case of “local” agitation (r/state_name), the more targeted the agitprop is, the more effective the message is. If the message is “the 1% are going to kill us all” well, yeah, I think people would see that and agree, and that would be it. If the message was “Floridians! The 1% are trying to destroy your communities, build them up where they won’t! Join {{local aid network}} today!”

      This is basically a stream of consciousness at this point and not really well-organized thoughts haha. I think you get where I’m coming from, though.