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. doomjak

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. doomer

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. marx-doomer

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. internet-delenda-est

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.

    • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      9 months ago

      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.