Lots of people who are seeing top-level postings about Hexbear. Net are probably confused about what has been going on and I want to give an SRD-style overview of the whole thing.
Note: As a user of Blahaj.Zone, I am not a neutral party in this and I do not pretend to be. This is how the whole thing has played out from my perspective.
Hexbear. Net is another Lemmy instance that had relatively recently started to federate with Blahaj.Zone and other Lemmy instances. It had previously been known as Chapo.Chat because it began as an instance for fans of the podcast ChapoTrapHouse.
Recently users from Blahaj.Zone (as well as other Lemmy instances) began to complain about the behavior of Hexbear users. The complaints were about rude, obnoxious behavior: Hexbear users calling people "libs" as an insult, denying crimes of Russia and China, denying the crimes of Stalin,...
Such behavior was not necessarily forbidden on Blahaj.Zone, but certain sub-Lemmys had their own rules on these subjects.
One of the threads about Hexbear: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795?scrollToComments=true
After an ever increasing number of users calling for defederating from Hexbear. Net, Ada (admin of Blahaj.Zone) opened a thread to talk about it. The thread was quickly inundated with Hexbear users, complaining in turn about being called out in this way. Though many of their comments exploited a current bug in the Lemmy code which resulted in emoji's being embedded as pictures which results in lots of image spam.
Ada responded by removing top-level comments in the thread which were not from Blahaj.Zone's users, because she wanted to get the feedback of her own community, not from anybody else.
This happened originally in this thread: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1959801
The discussion on Blahaj.Zone was a back and forth: Lots of people calling for "leftist and queer unity", others complaining about getting harassed by Hexbear users.
Meanwhile, elsewhere: Lemm.ee, a Lemmy instance operated and managed by someone from Estonia, also opened a discussion about Hexbear - at least partially motivated by the admin's increasing unease of the rampant denial of soviet atrocities and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Russian propaganda in regards to the war in Ukraine was also an issue.
Lemm.ee was largely encountering similar problems as Blahaj.Zone, though the Lemme.ee admin admitted that the Hexbear admin was generally responsive to reports and complaints.
The thread on Lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536
The thread was also flooded with comments from Hexbear users. The admin of Lemm.ee also responded by hiding most of the comments from Hexbear.
https://mastodon.social/@brooklynman/110911292961470110
Back on Blahaj.Zone, a tangent opens up: A Hexbear user complains about c/196, the new home of Reddit's r/196 which had relocated to Blahaj.Zone and has been its biggest community ever since. The Hexbear user complains about their comments being removed, comments that called out the use of the r-word and other call-outs. The user posts pictures of the removal notices.
Blahaj.Zone's admin Ada steps in and intervenes on behalf of the Hexbear user, having a stern word with the c/196 mod responsible for the removal of the comments.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2136643
A Hexbear admin also gets involved and sends a message to the mods of c/196 demanding the removal of the sub-Lemmy's banner, because it contains "fuck tankies²", arguing that tankies is a slur. The c/196 mod refuses and publishes their message.
[²"Tankies" is a pejorative term for authoritarian socialists in the vein of Stalin and/or Mao.]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1961004
While the discussion if Blahaj.Zone should defederate from Hexbear is still ongoing, the Hexbear admins defederated from Blahaj.Zone without warning from their side, because of...
unaddressed ableist removals from the /c/196 moderators, defense of chasers, no-quarter rules regarding our users, leakage of good-faith DMs from our admin team, and a general lack of initiative to punish these behavior
In her a response to these events, Ada points out in a comment that she never had the chance to adress the ableist incident (she was in bed) while other issues had happened in the past and had been adressed at the time. Thus she could not react before Hexbear defederated.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135406
TL;dr: Blahaj.Zone's users complain about ill behavior of users on Hexbear. Net. A discussion about defederation begins on Blahaj.Zone. Meanwhile Hexbear users complain about Blahaj.Zone in turn and Hexbear. Net defederates instantly and without warning.
Hexbear is what happens when kids (I hope they're all in their early 20s or teens, because otherwise this gets much sadder) spend years reading on leftist theory but have zero real world experience. They get intense, volatile, argumentative and have no idea how those points reflect on themselves and in reality. This is why they go around prancing those absurd beliefs and fencing anyone who disagrees out, while also dogpilling and swarming communities that don't agree: They only know what its like to be leftists in theory.
The one person who made the """"""peace"""""" thread had an earlier post here in Blahaj saying that since working under capitalism is coercion then everyone who solicits sex workers is a rapist, and that's basically the level of being disconnected from reality that they operate in. Unfortunately for them, their echo chamber is going to go on and be the equivalent of a left wing /pol/. For us - and hopefully all other major instances - its a relief to be rid of such crowd.
Unfortunately that does not match my experience. Because Hexbear was a ChapoTrapHouse fan instance in the beginning (and still its largest community), most of these people are likely in their late 20s and older, because that is most of Chapo's fanbase (which rose to prominence in 2016).
It somewhat reflects who the ChapoTrapHouse hosts are: They are all "nepo babies", a bunch of people who came from relatively wealthy or at least well off backgrounds. They are all white people from the upper crusty suburbs who love to tell you what they think socialism is supposed to be. And their audience isn't much different from them.
I came from wealth. It certainly didn’t make me a communist. What did that, was the years I spent working in healthcare in various developing countries, and watching people die because they couldn’t afford proper treatment. Although I suppose thinking about where I came from also helped.
Good for you and all the props for you that you decided to go out there. The problem with the Chapo bros is: They really did not. They had not-particularly-successful careers as comedians prior to starting their podcast. Whatever your impression of them may be, I think it's hard to argue that they have a particular insight into poor people's lives or working class politics.
It really feels like the people who grew up on 4chan and later came out as queer, but never learned how toxic that was
That person isn't necessarily wrong. That's one of the reasons sex work is illegal in most jurisdictions, if I'm not mistaken.
I know this comment is kinda old, i hope you dont mind me responding.
The notion isnt wrong, but it is misguided and overly simplified. There is coersion under capitalism, but there is also personal choice about how to engage with that system. Sex work is not rape any more than working at mcdonalds is slavery.
Comparing the two reeks of too much theory with too little experience. It is over simplifying things in a way that is troubling because it devalues the intensity, horror, and evil of things like rape and slavery.
I would call the latter slavery, yes. Wage slavery, to be precise. Certainly no one aspires to flip burgers and not even get paid enough to afford to eat one.
Tell that to all the homeless people roasting on the streets of Portland right now. They may not be getting whipped, but they are suffering all the same.
Ive never been a slave, but i have been homeless & currently work low paying jobs. I really dont think my experience is anywhere even close to that of the countless victims of american chattle slavery, forced prison labor, or sweatshops.
Ive also been raped, and that was an entirely different experience than any sex work ive done. My experiences are also in a completely different category from people who have been trafficked or sold.
I get that its a rhetorical technique to use emotionally charged words to serve a point, and that the term 'wage slave' has a long history in communist writing. My goal was mostly to provide an additional perspective to other people who might stumble on a week old post like I did.
I appreciate that you obviously care about other people, and we clearly agree that the current system is terrible. I hope you get some good praxis in this week, cheers 🍻
Edit to add this reddit post with a good discussion of the employee / slave comparison. Lots of interesting points from both sides:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/y95be4/stop_using_the_word_slavery_so_lightly/