i hope I don’t come across as too aggressive when I say all this, because I genuinely do like most of the interactions I’ve had on the extended lemmy-verse and I’ve been pleasantly engaged with a lot of folk here. hope we can stay federated and lots of y’all are cool as hell

So i’m personally biased here but I’ve noticed a lot of folk outside of Hexbear take internet discussion way, way too seriously. It’s treated as if we’re academics writing papers in an institution, or we’re politicians being moderated in a debate. People get very, needlessly upset over frankly harmless personal insults, like being called stupid or childish or whatever. Outright bigotry and slurs shouldn’t be used, of course, and that shit should get banned ruthlessly. But calling someone stupid or a baby? Or being shown an emoji of shit? Come on now, grow up. It’s not something to think about for days or weeks afterwards. Go outside. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a web forum, it’s not senate and nothing we’re doing here is genuinely changing politics or the world by posting. It’s just a forum to pass the time and relax. The most impact I’ve seen is when we do mutual aid like the recent indigenous fundraiser that comrade @Nakoichi@hexbear.net has been doing. Sometimes we’ll add stuff to online discourse, but that’s about it, but that’s fine. It’s not shameful to just be an internet forum.

It’s very strange to me especially since I’ve been on the internet for decades now and just gotten used to it. People online will insult you, they often won’t take you seriously, and they don’t have to either unless they feel like it.

Maybe I’m an interloper in a specific kind of posting culture I was never involved with. I never posted on reddit at all, but nothing about my time on Hexbear has felt any different than the countless other forums or IRC channels I’ve been on in the past. But from comments around other instances, you’d think we’re feral goblins spraying shit absolutely everywhere, only speaking in strings of random gibberish spam and death threats. You’d think we’re some malicious group of hackers or a coordinated culture jamming effort rather than just…a bunch of disaffected leftists using an insular web-forum in a tale as old as the internet. The only real difference between hexbear and other forums I’ve been on have been: There are more users, there’s more of a hardline ban on bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc), and it’s stuck around for a lot longer and there’s more of a chill, cooperative vibe.

The accusation of trolling and lying about our beliefs is the most confusing thing to me. Y’all don’t think there are leftists out there? You think it’s unthinkable to have genuine admiration for places like China or North Korea? Well there’s a big wide world out there with people of every stripe, every single conceivable opinion is held by someone out there, and some stuff is a lot more popular than you’d expect. You don’t have to respect Marxism or whatever, I don’t honestly care, but you probably should admit that it’s a real political ideology with real supporters in the world. Don’t automatically assume someone is being dishonest or trolling just because they have a political stance that’s inconceivable to you. Like I don’t respect liberalism or fascism, but I do acknowledge there are a lot of liberals and fascists who are earnest in their views.

in any case I hope we can all stay federated because I do like that aspect of the internet, wide interactions with people who want to interact