Don't get me wrong. This site's dunking culture is good and it serves an important purpose. It's an immune system that stops bad-faith trolls and fascists from getting a foot in the door. Just like a biological immune system, though, it can get overactive and start attacking its own body. This is called an autoimmune disease and it can severely damage or even kill its host body.
What's appropriate for a lib or a fascist who refuses to even consider whether they might be wrong about our fundamental ideas isn't appropriate for a comrade who, in good faith, is voicing an opinion you happen to disagree with. This is very similar to something Mao talks about in his essay "On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People." Mao's essay splits contradictions into two types:
- Antagonistic contradictions are those between class and political opponents with irreconcilable interests. There's no real debate to be had here. They're enemies. You don't engage in dialog with them. You defeat them.
- Non-antagonistic contradictions are those that occur within a class or movement. The interests of all involved are fundamentally aligned, but there's disagreement on how to advance those interests. These disagreements are resolved through discussion that improves mutual understanding and allows for arrival at a consensus.
Applying the analogy to posting on Hexbear:
- Antagonistic contradiction: A chud wanders in to lecture the site about how Stalin killed 50 quintillion people / Hamas is an evil terrorist group / the transes are corrupting the youth. You can't convince these people and it's not worth trying. Post dunks, express hostility, drive them off. That's community hygiene.
- Non-antagonistic contradiction: A comrade who's been on this site for years voices a concern that you posted something bigoted / disagrees with your interpretation of a work of media / advocates engaging with people politically in a way you don't consider effective. You both want communism, you are both anti-imperialist, you both want Hexbear to be a welcoming space for marginalized people. Good-faith dialogue is a way to share information and enhance mutual understanding. Responding to these people with insults and dunks just pisses them off and discourages them or anyone watching from engaging with the site except to post their own insults and dunks. The site becomes more toxic and hostile.
If credible objectioncan only be issued by people who haven't been attacked in this manner, then virtually no one can credibly object.
Speak for yourself. I've never been dunked on and never will be.
There is no circumstance in which I can interpret that as not being a bad thing besides one in which dunking is disposed of (or perhaps one where you have left the site, which I am not suggesting), but besides that my point is that it's just not a sensible model for rejecting criticism.
Especially when the site is often where many is a new communist or a person in need of support, dunking couldn't be farther from what is actually needed, even just writing the points where you might disagree with is better to not compromise if you couldn't bother, I can't imagine a single scenario where dunking achieves something actually material when done to your comrades, is shame meant to build a revolution?
People here have unironically argued that it is, but it doesn't make any sense because while some people in some circumstances take it well, it's not generalizable. It would if anything be generous to say the attitude is shaped by survivorship bias, that it's because people who respond well are those that stuck around and it had warped the community's perspective on how people react. While that's surely an element, I think a lot of it is just wishful thinking on the part of users that they can self-righteously vent all of their aggression on whoever they like and that's what agitating is.