Hello users of Hexbear, there have been many changes and some drama the past few months.
The recent changes we’ve been making have been an attempt to create a more safe and welcoming environment for many demographics that have been overlooked in the past.
For any of our comrades that have been unintentionally hurt in this process, we apologise and hope to find a solution that accommodates as many people as possible while still meeting the needs of the marginalised groups who need a space like this the most.
The intent of this post is to provide a space for all users to air grievances with regard to the site. As well as provide suggestions for specific things that could be changed to address your grievance. Comments insulting the mod team or those without a specific means to address your problem may be removed. No commenter will be sitebanned, unless it clearly breaks the code of conduct.
I used to be a shithead. people can change.
edit: all joking aside – genuinely, if you don’t believe people can change, then there is no hope for human society and we should all euthanize ourselves immediately to minimize destruction to the rest of the biosphere.
I would prefer to believe that it is worth trying to help people to change. I grew up deeply indoctrinated in evangelical bullshit and here I am, a mostly-anarchist commie-leaning bi poly lady with a trans son 🤷 change is possible
I want to be completely respectful to you, because I have seen you around and I like you, but I might fail because this is a topic very close to me and I very much disagree with you. It is not the onus of the oppressed to treat anyone with good faith. frauddog had a massive L with the military history brought up when it was that was not held and that is very unfortunate and does indeed color null at least a little bit differently for me, but even with that in mind and in regard to null’s conduct in pretty much every other instance, null had my respect because null never held water for anyone, and that energy is what is actually needed to affect change. I am not going to hold water for fools that want me dead in action or in spirit, and that’s a whole lot of fucking people right now, even well-meaning people. It was the case for frauddog, too. I haven’t gotten anyone to go back to wearing masks by being nice to them, by giving them the grace I am always denied. I tried that for 4 years and it got me chewed up and spat out. They deny my humanity either way; that is the default mode. So why would I be nice about it? If they want to change they have to want to change, and a lot of people, especially in the imperial core, simply are not there. That includes a lot of people here, too. There’s a reason this place is hemorrhaging POC users, and I think we should pay attention to that. I grew up a stupid evangelical Southern Baptist as well, but changing my behavior was never supposed to be on anyone else; I don’t blame anyone who heard me talking about evolution like it was the devil’s thoughts incarnate on the serebii.net forums in 2003 and decided I was some dumbass not worth talking to, and you shouldn’t either. None of them talking to me with kindness changed my mind then, only my own curiosity and dissatisfaction much later in life led to me seeking this out for myself. I think this is a much more complicated issue than simply “we must treat everyone with patience and kindness because people can change”; people are dying. We are at war and the time for kindness to those unwilling to show they deserve it is long past, and frankly vanishingly few people deserve it. Kindness is not a given at all times or by default. I deal with everyone who isn’t already in my good graces with immense distrust and vigilance. Believing people can change does nothing for me, but it sure is a nice idea, isn’t it? I trust in what people do, in what they show me, and when they show me, I don’t believe in anything else. That is all there is.
you are one of the people I respect the most on this site. I was not kidding when I said that I think of you every time somebody looks at me weird for masking in public. I care about you and your opinion very much, and I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me. in advance, I want to say that I have tried hard to make sure there was nothing hurtful or dismissive in this message, but if I failed in that or otherwise made this come across poorly, I would very much like to talk it out because the absolute last thing I want to do is hurt you.
or anyone else, for that matter. I have debated deleting my account a lot over the last few weeks. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I was only here for companionship and news; I don’t need either so badly that anyone needs to suffer for it. I would rather disappear than hurt any of you.
I am not advocating for anyone to be okay with anyone who dismisses their needs and agency. I am only advocating for the idea that it would be good to interrogate further to ensure they’re actually being dismissive and aren’t just an autistic person having a Theory of Mind moment.
I just learned last week that difficulties with “Theory of Mind” don’t necessarily mean that a person is incapable of understanding another’s point of view, but that it is also responsible for autistic naivete.
for example: the possibility that someone would purposely fuck with a /c/mutual_aid user for unknown ends just never even entered my mind until the fact of it was presented to me. how many other things do I just not even know about because the idea that anyone would want to behave that way seems crazy to me? lots. tons. this is why autistic people are so vulnerable to scammers etc. the idea that anyone would do that just doesn’t fucking occur to us until it is hammered in.
I am sure that there are a lot of conflicts generated from this deep misunderstanding, especially considering how many users are white people coming from the thoroughly-propagandized imperial core.
I don’t think anyone should tolerate shitheads. I just think that sometimes we are quick to assume shitheadedness of each other, and I wish that were not the case. and tbqh, considering how often frauddogg called out other em_poc users as settlers or crackers just because they didn’t post regularly in the em_poc megathread (is that required for all em_poc users?), I think it would help reduce the number of friendly-fire incidents.
it’s also part of the CoC, which I know you know better than I do. you’ve been here much longer, and you’re a mod.
That’s very flattering, thank you. I was not hurt by anything, for the record, but I felt compelled to respond anyway. The “be kind because people can change” idea can be a conduit for a lot of unintended damage, I think, but this:
is sensible, and I agree. I recall something happening recently with @[email protected] where I got on her case for what I thought was very typical COVID minimization, but she responded very openly and with a mind for actual change, so I changed my approach afterward. I hope my apologies were good enough in that moment, but I’d like to think that’s how it can all be handled… maybe that is my own autistic naivete.
Well, being a mod in any community on this platform doesn’t mean much for site-wide policy unless you’re also an admin, and I don’t even really do much in the first place, hah.
I was saying at the time that interaction happened, I think, that I was still culpable for not having been diligent enough in looking into the situation beforehand, and that I understood why what I wrote would’ve come across as the typical sort of COVID minimization. As I remember it, you’d said something like “none of you listen!”, and I understood this as speaking to a general trend. So the choice was then whether I would choose to adhere to this general pattern, or to break with it, right?
So frankly it would’ve been the same whether you apologized or didn’t, because the words you wrote as you wrote them were what worked in the end.
I think maturity is founded on self-awareness, so that’s what I try to aspire to. And this means knowing when you’ve got something in your mailbox that wasn’t meant for you, so to speak, right? So if someone is very rightfully frustrated about COVID minimization and ends up taking it out on you, then anything hostile that person might say to you should “slide right off”, because that sort of comment isn’t really aimed at you as such, or at least it isn’t aimed at any sort of fundamental trait of your character — it’s really only aimed at you if you choose to make it so.
This isn’t necessarily to defend “friendly fire”, but I guess what I’m getting at is that “remembering the human” goes both ways: that when someone is doing something you find rude and unreasonable, that there is always a context for it, even if you might not be aware of that context.
yes, this very much.
learning that frauddogg had been a troop made void’s behavior make a lot more sense to me. sometimes, when people leave religion, they become militant atheists; it doesn’t seem strange to me that someone would leave the military and be passionately anti-imperialist and ready to attack any inkling of that evil.
I’m with you on everything. Don’t delete your account! Your voice is heard and valued ❤️
I don’t think assuming people mean the worst is a great way to grow a movement, which is what the left needs to do. I don’t want us fumbling these historic radicalization moments because we have a chip on our shoulder from all the shit the world has thrown at us. I totally get why people would have that chip, I feel that rage myself, too, all the time. I love throwing it in the face of people from other instances who are clearly bad faith, or making edgy jokes and stuff.
But applying it to others in hexbear feels bad, because people usually find their way here because they don’t have many other places. They’re trans, communist, anarchist, autistic, etc in a world dominated by a bigoted liberal world order. Not to mention it proves what people say about us in other places, which would be a shame after that random guy who wandered in said we weren’t as bad as they thought we would be. If they ran into the wrong comment before, like one of the example ones posted above, they might have run away saying how we’re all as scary as the legends foretold.
That’s not what I meant, I do believe people can change
! However, people who are still harboring viewpoints that are in favor of imperialism should not be allowed on this site. If users like this do a lot of self crit and acknowledge their mistakes, I would not be apposed to them being here. However, users who actively believe that the U$ military is not a reactionary force, and that its soldiers should be treated with any level of respect should never be able to make it past account creation. This would be pretty easy to screen for with a question about the applicants views on American soldiers.
You and Ivysaur both mentioned that you would not have been welcome here at earlier points in your life, but you are now. Frauddogg is still in that earlier stage, and null have not rejected their indoctrination in favor of capital. If frauddogg was willing to change, I might accept them back in a few years, but I doubt that will happen.
This isn’t representative of frauddog at all though? Like maybe I’m misunderstanding something but it sounds like you are saying this is the kind of person frauddog is and that’s obviously untrue. Frauddog joined the military as a teenager, and now as an adult is very aggressively against imperialism and colonialism. It’s not like null is an active troop secretly infiltrating this place. I think null should have had more humility in void’s last interaction on this site, like obviously having been part of the us military is pretty fucking shameful even if you were ignorant at the time, but it’s really bothering me how people have been acting as though null was like, a secret fed who actually loves the us military or some shit. And it’s frustrating to me that this is how null went out, because null had been talking about wanting to delete for a while due to the frequent racism from white users on this site, but since it went down like this if feels like that racism, that continues to harm users here, is being ignored in favor of pointing out a gotcha about a user they didn’t like. Idk, I know my thoughts are disorganized here but hopefully I’m making sense.
you are making sense and you’re not the only one who’s seeing it. you honestly said it much better than what i can say but yeah i think that some people on the site (except for those who spoke on it in the em_poc thread) are taking this one blunder and characterizing null as wholefully in bad faith as possible, especially those that may have had previous arguments with void.
i liked frauddogg and agreed with void a lot of the time and i think it’s fair to say that nulls time on this site has been void on nonstop defence, not without reason. i remember when null first posted on the site void literally got attacked alongside other poc users for hours for discussing racist white queers as a Black queer and some white queer users got fragile about it and claimed null was homophobic when null was obviously speaking to voids experience with racism in queer communities but some just didn’t like voids tone.
yes, null probably should’ve shown more humility in voids last conversation on the site and I don’t know the extent of it but people of colour don’t have to be perfect all the time!!! and the jumping to disregarding void’s very real issues with the site entirely and making void out to now be one-dimensional is not it!!! there’s a reason people voted for frauddogg in that new years thing, null spoke up when other marginalized users on the site were too tired and burnt out to.
also it wasn’t just frauddog that left and are thinking of leaving. driving away almost every Black hexbear user that i know of on this site is shameful!!! how many more poc need to leave before other white hexbears see that there’s a problem and humble themselves as being a part of it??
i just think it’s shitty and unproductive and inappropriate to keep talking about frauddogg in this way after void left, especially because null didn’t leave entirely because of voids last conversation but also because of enormous issues of white fragility, chauvinism, misogyny, and racism from other hexbears on the site.
anyway i really agree with what you said is what i mean. i’m really really bad at articulating my thoughts but idk whatever i’m just :deeper-sadness:
edit: added ‘also’ to paragraph five for clarity
to you and @[email protected] and any other em_poc user reading this:
I want to apologize for anything I’ve said that has given you the impression that I think frauddogg was a secret troop infiltrating the site or harbored reactionary views.
I absolutely do not believe that. I like to lurk the reading club threads sometimes, and null made some deeply moving and thought-provoking comments that I can’t imagine were anything but genuine. void made good contributions to the site.
on the surface, our personalities couldn’t be more different, but I have been known to get in faces about injustice irl and I’m sure there are people who know irl frauddogg as a sweetie. it takes all kinds, we all contain multitudes, etc. I won’t pretend I was a fan of null’s tendency to jump to insults in interactions with other local users, but I saw void’s popularity and understood that there were social dynamics I was just not comprehending. the popularity of that behavior became a puzzle for me – I wanted to see it the way others were seeing it, especially considering how many people were saying that everyone who didn’t get it was a cracker or fragile or part of the problem etc.
I don’t want to be part of the problem. I don’t want to be one of the white users making the em_poc users uncomfortable, and I worry a lot that my empathy comes off as apologia to you all. I worry in all my interactions, both online and irl, that my confused questions seem obtuse or judgemental because I get that feedback a lot, and idk how to fix it. after 40 years, the best I have come up with is apologizing thoroughly and often and hope it doesn’t start to sound insincere. I’m sorry for anything I’ve said that has hurt you or made you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.
I mentioned the specific users I did because
the Code of Conduct is pretty clear about how we’re supposed to behave, and it reads to me like it’s not just about not hurting others but very much also not hurting ourselves. would frauddogg have expected grace from the community about the troop thing if null had been more willing to offer it to others?
I hope so. I would like to think it would have been given to void. I know I’m not the only person who read those book club posts and saw a beautiful person they were glad to have on the site.
In that case you’d lose most of the userbase. We should not expect perfection or lack of brainworms of each other. Go look thru old/controversial posts if you want to see how much the site vibe has changed and how much current users have grown. Heck even recently there was the post about users cheering on the US if it invaded Greenland.
As long as people aren’t being assholes they should be welcome. (Not arguing for a marketplace of ideas or debate or anything silly like that.)
Yeah that’s the vibe I mean. I guess this comment was pointless, sorry.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: