Lately I’ve been seeing posters here express some form of the sentiment that Hexbear has fallen from its previous heights of glory and now we post amongst the ruins of greatness. This is not a response to anyone in particular, and I don’t want to call anyone out. In fact, it seems to be a normal human tendency to romanticize the past. But I’ve been here since the beginning and want to provide an alternate view.
1. Hexbear just isn’t like it used to be. 
This is one I am particularly suspicious of, since people started posting this after the site had been around for a couple of months. Before that they posted about how chapo.chat wasn’t like the old chapotraphouse subreddit. If the good ol’ days ever existed, they always seem to have been just prior to the current moment. If anything the site culture and vibe have been remarkably consistent since its inception, for better or worse. Faces have changed, people have come and gone and sometimes come back again, but Hexbear remains.
2. People used to be nice here and treat each other as comrades. Now there is just a culture of shallow dunks. 
Seriously? Be for real. I’m not going to deny that we love a good dunk around here, but let’s not pretend that this is a new phenomenon. It’s a big part of the culture around here that predates the site and even arguably even the subreddit. You can be free to like it or not, criticize it or not, say its productive or not, but its definitely not a new development. There’s always been a lot of love and mutual support, but also a lot of vicious arguments intracommunity arguments here. If anything I think there’s less of this now. The early posters would laugh at what passes for a struggle session around here these days. The VCJ struggle session seemed at the time like it might legitimately end the entire site.
3. This site had the potential to be a place for organizing and building something rather than just posting. 
This one is an interesting counterfactual. From the beginning there was no clear agreement on what the ultimate purpose of the site would be, and there were definitely people who saw the site as having revolutionary potential. There were also people who saw it as a place to hang out and shitpost among comrades and were skeptical of its potential for organizing. Over time, I think it’s become clear that we’re closer to the latter than the former. I’m okay with that, personally, but more than that I think it’s worth considering why despite having a lot of smart, determined people on the site, organizing never really materialized, or if it ever had that potential in the first place.
4. People used to post effort posts and stuff and now its just a bunch of shitposting. 
It’s always been mostly shitposting. This is one of my first comments on this site. It’s hard to say if there really used to be more effort posts or not, but what’s stopping you from writing an effort post if you feel like Hexbear needs more of them? I’m doing it right now, and so can you.
One thing that really has changed is that we used to have more comrades actively working on developing the site. Hopefully more people will step up to do that (not me though because I can’t code).
In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been. Enjoy your time here without worrying about whether it measures up to some imagined glorious past. If there’s something you feel is lacking, step up and contribute it. This site is nothing more or less than the sum of our contributions.
- Hexbear just isn’t like it used to be.
Does anyone actually miss how Hexbear used to be? I’ve been here since day one, and most of my memories of the first twelve months or so are of endless drama, Kerryposting and people being awful to each other. Remember when people hated the mods so much that a lot of people called for “mod elections”, and then the mods called it a “colour revolution”? That shit was ridiculous. People on hexbear are really good to each other now compared to the chapochat days. Look at any of the trans threads, mental health threads, self-improvement comm, anywhere in the megathreads.
personally my favorite memory was the vegan war because holy shit was it easy to dunk on carnist arguments, I was like fuckin Lebron James for an entire week until the mods had to shut it down because we were too powerful
Oktherebuddy
When I first found this site back in 1999 by opening Netscape Navigator and typing “Can bears have more than five sides please?” into AltaVista, it was perfect. I think the Y2K bug hit this site particularily hard.
hexbear was better when it was a bbs
Eh it was really at it’s peak back in the 70’s when it was an underground zine. It turned downhill fast when it’s main editor got kicked out of the scene for creeping on little girls - It was a different time!
Pshhh, everyone knows that we were at our prime when we were the main delivery service for Yippie activities to be coordinated without USPS surveillance
- This site had the potential to be a place for organizing and building something rather than just posting.
It’s a place to go when something happens in the world and you need a sane evaluation of it, either found and posted or talked about in a comment. That’s what it is
Hence why I’m here every day
Only three things have ever really annoyed me on this site (aside of course from the wreckers and libs)
The site’s knee-jerk takes on 40K lore
Certain “POC-related” analogy arguments used as a bludgeon in certain “vegan-related” threads of all things (tho that was three years ago, and it could’ve been the work of wreckers)
And finally the persistent efforts of a small group of wayward souls to wokeify what I will diplomatically call “light skin identitarianism”
Aside from all that, this site is a marvel of forum engineering
What’s your take on the current state of 40k lore?
It seems to transitioning to a living setting (stuff actually happens), but it’s starting to feel like they ran out of space in 30k and they just want to play with the primarchs to sell more fancy models.
This risks losing the last remnants of social satire that they hadn’t dustbinned yet.
I’m gonna be honest the social satire from the 80s is at this point in time the weakest element of the lore (aside from the Matt Ward garbage that still hasn’t been purged from the canon) the resurrection of Guilliman and his reaction to the imperium is the most interesting lore of the last ten years and is a decent examination of imperial folly and its long term consequences and is way better than the tired “hardy harr Thachter is an ork” stuff lefists treat as the pinnacle of satire
The 40K crime books are pretty good too with the more mature and subtle satire, especially one scene involving mutants being burnt alive that had a strong racialized element to it that made me wince (in a good way), the artistic risk made by that author pissed off some chudy fans so the direction is pretty good
Horus Heresy was hit or miss but I’ve been happy with the Siege of Terra series because FINALLY the writers appreciate the scale of the universe, plus damn good characterization
It’s time to let go of the 80s and accept the franchise on its own merits both good, bad and cringy
Those are good points, tbh I think my fondness for the 80s stuff is they actually took swipes at existing politicians. Imagine a franchise doing that now
.I’m like halfway through Abnett’s Battle of Britain in space book, but it sounds like I need to check out the crime and SoT books. I’m a sucker for siege stories anyways.
the artistic risk made by that author pissed off some chudy fans so the direction is pretty good
People actually treating the books like literature is to be applauded, I hope the author continues getting black library gigs. It would be really cool to have a better BL author cover the Votann at some point. Somebody who knows how to write well could do some cool shit about <current trends> with a culture that worships a malfunctioning AI.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on the topic. It’s nice getting to talk warhammer in a chud free zone.
In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been
i remember the early days being full of infighting and I didn’t like it. There were a lot of transphobes back then, and arguments over slurs. I’m glad there’s been such strict moderation, because many of those initial people were just the worst sorts of wreckers and troublemakers.
Also 2020 and 2021 in general were full of tension in general and I think it reflected on the site culture. No one then knew what was going on with covid, people were losing family and friends. There were still quarantines and stuff. 2020 still had the crash of the Sanders campaign fresh in a lot of people’s heads. The 2020 BLM protests had just happened and had dissipated after getting usurped by liberals without much gained (although we’re seeing gains now, e.g. no one wants to be a cop anymore). It was the perfect confluence of misery. 2020 was a year of gaining hope, then suddenly losing it as something good would seem to happen, then get demolished. No one was happy, defeatist attitudes ruled the day.
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In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been.
More emotes now though, and they’re categorized!
looks like anti-rate-limit-action threw some bricks into emoji-picker’s windows
I don’t understand this joke but I appreciate it nonetheless
Previously the bottom half of the emoji-picker wouldn’t show up, ever, because you used up all the HTTP requests the webserver would allow you to have (aka rate limit) just to scroll through the first half. At least, that’s what I think happened.
Just to clarify, because maybe I’m doing something wrong, but the emoji picker can’t be accessed through apps like Eternity, right? I try to save posts with emojis for later use or search for them on the site but through the app if I want one, but I’d love to use the emoji picker if possible.
Oh that’s fun lol
I have not had my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist of the site and perhaps it was to my own benefit. hexbear’s fuckin lit and the biggest change I’ve seen is that now picking emotes is fuckin swag
I post the things, I get the upvotes, some people post funny little replies and I get a dopamine notification. Hexbear is not only as it has always been, but it is as it should be. Life is good
In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been
At one point there weren’t any posts, and quality has gone do precipitously since then.
1: Hexbear is dialectics in action. Shit is constantly changing. Stagnation is death.
2: we’re all in a polycule marrage with everyone that posts here. sometimes we’re nice and kind and loving to each other. other times we’re catty bitches that take really mean swipes at each other and won’t talk for days at a time afterwards.
3: Lol no.
4: The one constant I remember all the way to CTH sub is a bunch of shit posts that are more often than not X, formerly twitter, screenshots with the occasional real gem of an effortpost. We are all content hogs digging through the muck and sub-par slop with our snouts looking for truffles.
you are getting older and getting boomerbrain when you nostalgiapost. keep your brain young and go out and learn something new.
I would like the old active alg back but all things change over time
My contention was the declining frequency of political and sociologically insightful essays, posts, comments, and content of Hexbear/Chapochat.
I agree with all your points made here though. Nostalgia bias might be corrupting our perception of the site culture; maybe we were just more active because this site was born of Covid-lockdowns and exiles from the chapotraphouse reddit and therefore the site really was more active with a higher frequency of insightful posts and comments.
But that is no longer here nor there. The insight I’ve learned is that we, as people, romanticize our childhoods and adolescence because it was also the period of our life we were constantly improving and changing. Hexbear’s energy is thee comparison to growth and energy of a 17 year old vs the energy of a 35 year old, I said.
The insight I’ve learned is that we, as people, romanticize our childhoods and adolescence because it was also the period of our life we were constantly improving and changing.
damn
I meant from tabula rasa; the rate of change and maturation is faster, impressive, and more drastic as a child than adult.
yeah, I know
Hexbear and its predecessor CTH have always been shit, will always be shit, and that’s the way I like it thank you good post.
also - because once again it is relevant and it is funny
Hexbear has to be serious at all times and we cannot find any humor in the absurdity of hell world. The last time I smiled was on June 29th, 2020. I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence. Every day at exactly noon I have the same DunkTank posts of a 200 follower twitter account saying some dumb shit that wouldn't be paid attention to in even an 'open discussion' 100-level Political Science course at a private university. I sleep in a bed made of meta-jokes from every banned ChapoTrapHouse subreddit so that they are never forgotten. In the evenings I stare at a picture of Matt Christman by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to chuckle because there is nothing to laugh about. Every Hexbear comm has banned me after I dared to make a 'sectarian' joke about assassinating the Anarchist mods. There is no plumbing in my house. I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it. My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin. I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism). My source of income is various MLM schemes in the former Soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money. I have not paid taxes since Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of Tylenol. I own 29 copies of Capital and three crates of translated Maoist writings entirely incompatible with it or any other theory I own. My double PHD in Marxist Economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that outdoor cats use as a litter box. I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist. During the latest BLM protests I was posting on Hexbear in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil. Virgil Texas and I wrote hatemail to one another for 7 years until my final letter made him realize that disappearing from the internet completely was the only way he could salvage his leftist persona after his alleged pedophilia was discovered. The only leftist podcast I listen to these days is Well There's Your Problem. Bong Joon-ho and I dropped acid together during a visit to the Korean DMZ and he went on to write the movie Parasite about our time together. The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor. Every time a liberal mod removes one of my comments, I carve a mark into the wall. I am running out of walls. When Amerikkka finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution thanks to the serious discussion curated across Hexbear. I am very smart and people like being around me.
I’ve been here since the r/cth days and imo this place is about as good as it’s ever been. There was a 1-2 month period right around the start of federation where it became 100% dunking on idiot libs 100% of the time, which got a bit tiring, but I think things have stabilized and this is a basically good place to hang out online. Honestly I’m really happy with the state of the fediverse in general, I’m enjoying mastodon & lemmy more than I ever did twitter or reddit. We did it! We fucking did it! We built a real actual place to hang out online that doesn’t just feed into some VC’s pockets! And all we had to do for that is do what we do best: posting (and a lot of unpaid work on the part of people building & maintaining the infrastructure lol).
Mastodon, like Tiktok, inexplicably becomes good if you stick to images of pics of wildlife, zoos and landscapes etc
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