It has come to my attention that there is some minor unrest on Hexbear due to statements they believe I made that they did not appreciate. there has been some small misunderstanding regarding them, so allow me, dear reader, to make my position clear so these terrible rumors can be put to rest.
some time ago, another user on our matrix asked for tips on trolling Hexbear in their communities. specifically, they asked what might be said that would garner the most rage. as I generally consider myself to be the obliging sort, I offered what pearls of wisdom I could.
now, a thoughtful reader might wonder why I didn’t react with abject horror at the idea of someone trolling Hexbear, for that, I can only say that perhaps I thought it was proper comuppence for the brigading and harassment Hexbear used to perpetrate across the fediverse.
but I digress. the specific pearls of wisdom I offered were as such.
le gasp! how terrible! what scoundrel, what worthless cur would say that the soviet civilians deserved such a fate! genocide! fascist! liberal!
as you might have guess, discerning reader, Hexbear posits that such a scoundrel is me. they insist, that by saying the soviets deserved what they got, that I am actively supporting the genocide of twenty-seven million civilians. there are two problems with this, however.
one, I never said civilians. this is a word put into my mouth by tankies that are too fucking stupid to understand plain english. one would think that it is pretty obvious that it wasn’t some poor farmer that was invading Poland for profit, but if one were to think such, then one wouldn’t be a braindead tankie shitstain, and would instead be someone at least capable of the level of higher thought that evolution gave a jellyfish. it’s pretty obvious to normal people that the ones gleefully invading other countries alongside the nazis were, in fact, soldiers. here they were at least right when they assumed I was gleefully celebrating the deaths of those soldiers. they fought with the nazis, they invaded other countries, and they don’t get to absolve themselves of working with the nazis just because hitler turned on them, and tankies think that the country that supposedly single-handily fought and won WW2 are also the poor victims of the war, who had no choice in their actions.
two, there were no soviet civilians, merely innocent asian/eastern european souls that were held hostage by the soviet oligarchy and forced into starvation and destitution by an authoritarian system that valued propaganda more than human beings. the vast majority of those people probably would not have chosen to live in a dystopian hellhole were they given a chance, any more than the average North Korean wants to starve to death under the Kims. they were as much soviets as you or I, merely people with no freedom, and no other option but to live under the crushing boot of the imperialist USSR. they didn’t help the nazis, because they were powerless in the face of the state.
neither of these two points has stopped Hexbear from whipping themselves into a frothing echo chamber of self-righteous disgust and anger, and demanding that I be removed from my mod positions and banned. a demand which has, so far, fallen on deaf ears that are used to the utter bullshit so often spewed by these feckless internet warriors. if there was an award for arguing in bad faith, we all know the reeking denizens of the lower planes we all colloquially call The Triad would win it.
as you probably have gathered by now, this is not an apology. I did not do anything wrong, especially not what they have accused me of, and so I will not apologize for it. not that they would be willing to consider such an apology anyway, because for them there is only one truth, and that is that they are always right, and everyone who is not them is an enemy and always wrong.
now, they have banned me, and so they can’t see this, so I will instead tag @[email protected], a known affiliate of these heathens, who spent three paragraphs the other day downplaying the persecution of LGBT+ in the USSR before grudgingly using a mere two sentences in admitting the treatment.
my one regret, of course, is that since I have now blocked everyone from The Triad, I won’t be able to read the no doubt angry replies they are fiercely typing out, in which they’ll likely pour over my history to try and find something they can spin as damning evidence to back up their preconceptions. actually, now that I consider it, I find I don’t regret that at all.
in conclusion, I want to say thank you to the comrades that have supported me through these almost trying times, fuck you to the haters who want to be me, and thank you to the haters who made the thread about me on c/Slop like I asked. you’re the real MVP!
This is just more drama-baiting, I already explained clearly why everyone interpreted you as saying the civilians deserved it was because the number discussed was over half civilian. The rest of your comment is just creating a strawman of me, clearly bad-faith (I’m queer myself and you misgendered me originally, even if you apologized), and then running off. What’s your point?
Mad respect for your clear setting of boundaries and not getting baited into an argument/debate you specifically said you refused to have.
I can’t help but feel you’re being sarcastic because I did get a bit swept up, even if I tried not to be, but thanks if you’re being genuine!
Honestly this petty drama mostly comes from a handful of users, most people are more chill.
Yes, exactly, it’s all so pointless. The manufactured outrage, polemic arguments, and bad faith takes on both sides is nothing but a waste of time and effort. Particularly when it’s over grievances that happened generations ago. It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that a lot of anarchists hate stalin’s ussr and regard the molotov–ribbentrop pact as a disgrace. And yes, it was also disgraceful that european leaders spurned a deal with the soviets to counter hitler when one was on the table. We don’t need to re-litigate the whole topic because I know we view this differently.
There was simply no need for it to descend into an self-indulgent orgy of manufactured outrage over this topic as happened in c/slop - but that’s kind of their MO I guess (free tagline? lol). And crytagion and kittyroll did kick all this off, so they brought it on themselves and I don’t have much sympathy for them. But why bother going through the same old motions with nothing to show for it? I’ve refrained from responding to questions in c/slop because its completely obvious it would turn out badly, no matter what I said in there.
I honestly like having some ml and hexbear users around our instance nowadays, including yourself, because they often have some good takes, deep historical knowledge, and good humour. But they have to appreciate that most of our users are not very sympathetic towards the USSR (particularly during the stalinist period) or to modern day russia either because of, you know, the whole authoritarian dictator thing. Again, surprising nobody I would have thought. But there’s also a whole bunch of stuff we do agree on. I think as a matter of inter-instance harmony, there are some hot button issues that are best avoided when posting on an external instance.
Do you have any ideas how to defuse or avoid these situations in future? I’m open to suggestions.
I’m not going to get into where we disagree here, if people want to get into that then there’s a time and place for it, and they can just ask me or others about it.
In my opinion, you can avoid this conflict a few ways:
Ban Marxism, become an explicitly anarchist instance. Hex and Grad don’t fight even though Grad is anti-anarchist, and it’s because lines are clear. Obviously I don’t like this idea, and I know some of your users wouldn’t, but fighting may go down. Not a great solution, though.
Ban sectarianism, and be stricter about civility. Adopt a more hex-like stance on banning leftist infighting. Again, not really your MO, most likely.
Ban or give users that do this drama-baiting a slap on the wrist. Give them a timeout, temp ban, or just try to talk to them and get them to stop.
Those are the best ideas I’ve got, if you want to avoid defederating, or if you don’t like things as they are. If things are fine, by all means, wait for this to blow over, maybe block the thread, and things will go back to normal until they flare up again. The dbzer0 users that like Hex and such already go to Hex, the ones that don’t avoid it, and the reverse is true for Hex users and dbzer0.
For what it’s worth, I try to leave dbzer0 to y’all unless it’s a thread I think most of us can agree on in comms like ye power tripping bastards, and then it’s a toss up if dbzer0 users or sh.itjust.works users swarm me just for being there (like the thread goat drama-baited on a few days ago). I think boundaries are best when they are clear.
It’s pretty low stakes, so I’m happy to let it blow over, but thanks for the ideas. Our admins did previously discuss the idea of banning certain topics on the instance that almost always provoke arguments / drama, and instead have a dedicated community with posts for each of those topics where such discussions can be contained (and easily avoided). But it’s not gone past the concept stage yet and we would obviously need to gauge community support.
Amen to that.
Yeah I felt bad for ya on that one. Seems like a high proportion of canadian conservatives on that instance, who are basically MAGA-lite.
That could really help with limiting this type of drama.
No sorry, not trying to be sarcastic at all! You started responding to some of the things op said, then in the comment I replied to pulled back and reinforced the fact that you weren’t playing that game with them. I was expecting the conversation to get more heated, with longer and longer circular replies saying the same shit back and forth from both of yall, and was pleasantly surprised to see you hard stop entertaining that bullshit.
Oh, then thanks! I appreciate it. Yea, usually I would be far more willing to clearly answer everything he said but in this case it’s clear that the drama is the point of it all, and nobody here is going to gain anything.