I'm sorry, but if people are garnering resentment for "the [he/him] demographic" at the mod/admin level, that's a failure of having pronouns on this site, no one should be reading posts and judging them based off of the poster's pronouns unless they are engaging in misogyny or something else where pronouns would actually be a relevant factor, also you don't know whether these [he/him]s are cis or not, that is extremely reactionary for a leftist website

With that group being largely cishet white guys

How do you know this? There is not a cis box next to the pronouns, there is not a race box next to the pronouns, there is not a sexuality box next to the pronouns, people are just assuming this about other people who have not made this clear? That's kind of a fucked up thing to do, I'm not personally assuming whether any user is cisgender or not, or is white or not, or is hetero or not, based on how they post unless they explicitly mention it.

If this was going on on a widespread level some serious self crit needs to be had.

Hello users of hexbear, I have gone back and tried to unban everyone from the past couple days related to this struggle session.

I was offline most of yesterday so I missed what happened.

From the bottom of my heart I am deeply apologetic to everyone who was hurt by the statements and actions of the past few days. I know it will be a long and tough road to regaining back the trust of the userbase.

We are going to let this post sit for a couple of days and then move towards rebuilding. I'm back today and am happy to answer questions.

I still can't get past the fact that the admins lied to all of us about why they were doing the thing (which IMO was a BAD reason), then when they got caught there was zero contrition. Y'all are quick to apologize for the ban rampage and the chauvinistic brainworms, but this seems to be just slipping to the back of the conversation.

The admins/mods demonstrated that they think this is their site, not the users. That was only reinforced by the gleeful cruelty and ambivalence of the ban waves. I for one spent yesterday afternoon reliving the intensity of anxiety I felt when I was in an abusive living situation, because I felt compelled to speak out despite people catching bans literally just for being upset left and right.

None of the apologies coming from the people who did this are speaking to this, that I've seen. To me that means the status quo still stands. Decisions about the site are for making behind closed doors, a week before any of the users know about it, and can be lied about when the rollout happens. And by my measuring of the timeline, that's the point where the userbase went from sad to angry, so letting this fade into the background is just setting us up for another huge drama like this in the future.

I have no idea what's going on, but every time I check in, it seems to be worse

Oh hey, I'm unbanned. Neat. I don't know where it would be best to post this but my recent thoughts are as follows:

After all this I feel conflicted on returning to any sort of activity or interaction with the site. I don't really feel that seen or welcome as a non-white, trans, nd person and it has nothing to do with the tanks. Despite being here since the beginning, I've never been a poster of any renown(?), and as of late I feel like celebrating posting clout and reputation has often taken a higher priority in hexbear's culture than being a safe place for discussion for people like me.

The arrogant dismissal I and many others were recently confronted with is disgusting but, for me, unsurprising. I am disappointed but I expected something like this would reoccurr, as the phenomenon has been demonstrated many times since this site was chapo.chat.

The recent "struggle session" concentrated a lot of the feelings I experienced as an auDHD person throughout my life. Facing broad assumptions about how I felt and having to argue against a person built in the shape of me. It was uncomfortably similar to the arguments I've had with family, authority, educators, that have stemmed from them assuming the worst possible intention and refusing to hear otherwise. It was and is emotionally exhausting and simply not worth it for what this site has provided.

The worst was assumed of people because nobody in power bothered to ask or communicate, and when action was taken, founded on this blind assumption, not only were poc, trans, nd, people ignored but mocked, shamed, and banned.

The aspersions cast on me and others like me, in contradiction to years of our demonstrated cameraderie, have been disheartening. Ultimately I don't think it matters much personally as I've never been a celebrity or poster of renown, just someone who enjoyed the occasional dunk, art post, commiseration on the state of the world.

I don't have illusions of being some valued presence or improving the site culture or anything, and I don't mean all this to convey some high melodrama; for me it's just a dull grey disappointment.

Why wouldn't I be afraid that the admin team hasn't had some form of transphobia kicking around in it when I got banned shortly after I attempted to defend my trans comrades with the following text.

The admin team needs combed through for transphobia immediately. Between the anonymous comment and this where an admin misgenders AlaskaBall, there's clearly an issue that needs addressed. If you folks want to continue being known as the transfriendly instance, it's time to act like it.

I don't care how much of a funny bit you think any of this shit is, but you need to gauge when shit is starting to careen out of control. It is not fucking okay that you folks banned me for that. As a transwoman, getting banned for that comment is a huge red flag for me. I've been here for a long fucking time and have been a mod of the traa community in the past. I'm still on there. I'm the only one without pronouns cause I deleted my account for opsec reasons. What was done and continues to be done is not acceptable and is purely childish behavior on the part of the people that run this site. You folks seriously need to all do self crit or get the fuck out.

I think the worst part about all of this is that the ban reason given made it seem like I asked for it, obfuscating and giving absolutely no real reason as to why I was banned. This is clearly because there was no reason and you folks just wanted me to shut up for whatever reason. Fucking figure out your shit admins.

this is not in response to you specifically @Lyudmila. I appreciate the work you and @CARCOSA are doing in this thread to sort things out. thank you.

effortpost preface:

I started writing this at 5am this morning after checking to see if I was banned (confused? keep reading!), seeing @Aradina had been unbanned, stumbling onto the horrifically sad comment that apparently @morte made from an alt after being banned, and crying my eyes out. I've been working on it (and crying! 😂😭) off and on all day, in between reading the comments here to catch up on What Happened.

I have to get this out, and presumably we're supposed to keep all of this contained to these threads.

admins, mods, fellow users – this is not an attempt to restart The Shit.

I'm posting this to get it off my chest and hopefully get some clarification from some people on it, so I'm gonna leave it and close Hexbear and maybe see you tomorrow.

ATTENTION, FELLOW HEXBEARS:

telling me anytime after Friday to logout and let things blow over was ableist, actually.

also, saying this is just a website is callous and fucked up.

please allow me to elaborate. get your clicking fingers ready, because baby, I got links.

I am autistic as fuck. I only just realized this last year, and got diagnosed last week.

justice sensitivity is a well-known neurodivergent trait, and it has been a defining part of my character for my whole life. one of my earliest memories is getting whipped with a spatula for "talking back" because I questioned the justice of adult decisions, for responding to "life isn't fair" with "why aren't you trying to be? why don't you make it fair?"

I have been repeatedly socially ostracized for sticking up for others or finding repugnant behavior intolerable. I lost my hometown friend group when I wouldn't attend functions to which they had invited the asshole who abused another person in the group.

my husband and I lost his hometown friend group when nobody gave a shit about covid. they stopped inviting us to things because we were masking and distancing. I'd rather have no friends than friends like that.

it's the biggest reason for having left most of the two-dozen jobs I mentioned – somebody outside the management clique is unjustly fired or otherwise punished, and I quit in solidarity with no backup plan. 🤦🤷

it made me unwelcome in the glass program at art school because I reported the head instructor's abusive treatment of a fellow student to the program director.

it's the reason I left Christianity as a teenager. the adults wouldn't stand up for anything. they didn't give a shit about "love your neighbor." they were too busy gossiping and backstabbing each other while jockeying for positions in the social and institutional hierarchy. there were people with country club memberships while some of the other members of the <100-member church didn't have enough to eat.

it has made me the outsider in my conservative evangelical family. they thought it was super fun to get me all fired up about this stuff when I was younger, and then they'd make fun of me for caring until I cried and fled. they also hated that my best friend was a gay boy I met in band class. why should it matter that he was gay? didn't Jesus love everyone equally? I didn't understand. I still don't.

it's what drove me from the Republican indoctrination of my childhood to the Democrats as a young adult. it's what made me ditch them over the way they treated Bernie. it's part of what drove me from DSA. it's what has driven me further and further left.

it's why I would never have employees. it's why I pay for any little indie apps I use. it's why I left reddit during the API fiasco. it's what made me investigate Hexbear when you federated instead of just accepting the warnings about you as facts. it's what made me abandon my other fediverse accounts and live here on local on my previous account and this subsequent one. it's what made me start contributing to the Patreon the day I found out it existed.

I'm not online all the time, so I know there are plenty of things I miss, but since I joined last summer, this place has been fair, it has been caring, and it has been wonderful to see so much good come of this place. people have been fed and sheltered because so many of us are willing to share what we have, even when it is very little. lots of very little bits of goodness added together can make something great.

I'm 42, which makes me older than most users here; many of you are much closer in age to my 17yo son than to me. I don't bring it up because I think it makes me inherently wiser than any of you – far from it, I know I'm a dumbass, I have a lifetime of failure and fuckups to prove it. just because I've been fucking up longer doesn't mean I have learned more from my fuckups than any of you have from yours.

I bring it up because I'm fucking tired, and life is hard, and I genuinely had very little hope for the future until I made a post begging for distraction from terrible thoughts, and so many of you came through for me. 😭 it still instantly makes me cry when I think of it.

the months since then have been physically harder – I had to stop hrt for perimenopause due to life-threatening side effects, and I have been expecting to slide back into the abyss, but I hadn't yet. I really think the community of care I have found here is what was keeping it at bay. @morte's comment let me know I'm not the only person who feels that way about this place, and I don't want her to put herself out there alone.

some of you have become very dear to my heart.

a long-time user I have barely interacted with DM'd me yesterday offering help with getting my son T if Trump bans trans care.

there are no words to adequately express my gratitude for that sliver of hope.

Hexbear, I love you, but I care about things being "fair" or "just" more than anything else. I will stop caring about the way other people are treated when I stop breathing. you might as well tell me to stop getting rashes when I'm stressed.

wanna see what it looked like after I saw that @REgon had been banned?? 😂🙃

pic

this might actually be the worst I've ever seen it. it was definitely the worst my husband has.

🏆🥇

you might as well tell me to quit loving my son or quit being 42. it is physically impossible. my parents couldn't beat it out of me.

"don't take it too seriously, it's just online, it's just a website!" friend, right now I wish it were just a website, because I would say fuck this place and never look back. no mere website is worth the amount of anxiety and stress I've felt and tears I've cried in the last 24 hours.

it's not just a website, it is a lifeline for my family and so many of my comrades. it has been a sanctuary for me, until this past weekend. really, until yesterday. "don't take that tiny sliver of hope too seriously"??

if you think that, then buddy,

with all my heart,

with every fiber of my being,

FUCK YOU.

is that hostile? good. maybe if someone who is usually kind to everyone gets hostile, this stuff will fucking matter to you, too. I'm glad that some of you are socially privileged enough to have enough support to not care what happens to this place. I'm not.

those of you who were applauding the behavior of TC69 and her Cool Kids Club this weekend should be deeply ashamed of yourselves.

I know I'm ashamed of you. I finally understand why so many people warn about this place. You Eat Your Own.

and for what??? what was the actual point of any of this? rename the comms plus change the comms equals change the site culture?

was the culture genuinely that bad?? this is a real and sincere question, I'm autistic, I'm sure there are problems that I don't pick up on.

most of the time irl, I don't realize a skillful bully is fucking with me until it's too late, so certainly I'm not gonna catch all the shittiness on here, where I don't have body language to help.

(continues below)

For the love of god stop posting please.

I mean this with love, for this team and this site.

Context for my take:

https://hexbear.net/comment/5620189

https://hexbear.net/comment/5620267

Just stop fuelling this whole thing. It's that easy.

I’m sorry, but as a mod on this site I feel like I have to say something that I don’t seem to see any other mods/admins saying:

The mod/admin team are never going to remediate relations with the general site user base if this post is indeed how things will be working moving forward. There is no self-crit at all regarding the main thing people are upset about, which is NOT closing the tanks, but that mods/admins get to voice their opinion on this site and what it should look like/how it should be run via executive action that is not available to the average site user.

I’m sorry to tell any of my fellow mods/admins this, but your experience as a mod/admin does not make your opinion inherently any more or less valuable in regards to what the site should look like than that of the average user. Yes, you may see more of what happens behind the scenes, lower quality/aggravating posts, etc. but that is something you took upon yourself as a gesture to the community you are a part of, not a leader of. Not thinking posts are high effort enough is your opinion. Thinking posts dunking on libs are boring is your opinion. Thinking Hexbear needs to change this way or that is your opinion. If you have a problem with things, you must act AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY and voice your opinion on necessary changes just like anybody else. You should not get to be a more privileged user than the average person here and go ahead and talk behind the scenes with other people who have the power to change the site and decide what needs to happen without user feedback. Mods/admins exist to enforce a site’s rules and act as maintainece, not to be a leading body of powerusers who determine what the site should look like and how it should be run. The reason there was so much pushback on these decisions is that they were never (and still haven’t been, for that matter) presented to the community as something to be discussed at all, and changes were made by executive decision.

The only power the average user has to voice their opinion on how the site should look is via posting, and that is the only way mods/admins should get to voice theirs. Acting otherwise is a classic leftist org blunder that cultivates a massively toxic culture of powerplayers and in-groups at the levers of power that leads to growing tension and eventually fractures both within the in-groups and between the in-groups and user base at large.

A whole host of other very important issues (notably transphobia, misogyny) have arisen as a result of the initial actions taken by the mod/admin team, and there is no reason they can’t/shouldn’t be addressed. That being said, the ignorance/arrogance of the mod/admin team of marching on forward after their wrongdoings have clearly been outlined is concerning and needs to be undone as soon as possible. The only thing worse than making a bad decision is committing to it once it’s well known that it went poorly.

Undo the changes, bring them up with the community just like any average user would have to, gain valuable feedback from them, and take action from there. To genuinely save face + demonstrate that this site is for its user base at large and not just for a few elite users who want it to be their pet project, this the only way forward.

I think the main takeaway from the Melina/Beluga/dsplayer situation is that the correct way to handle a consistently shitty user isn't to make them a moderator. I mean come on.

I go for a run and TC69 deletes her account

Anyway I'm back from the gulag. I've got thoughts, but I'm gonna chill out and not post for a little while - Trying to embrace @[email protected] thought - so it's only going to be a short novel of a post.
Thanks for the support y'all, it's warmed my heart to see all the people who wrote about me getting banned. TBH I was being hostile, though I felt like my hostility was an appropriate response, and it was not like I came out swinging. It ramped up slowly as this situation became more... Situationy.
I'm really happy to see the direction things are going right now. @[email protected] Is handling this how it should've been handled from the start. Truly doing a great job. 10/10

I wanna say I don't think there's a shadowy mod cabal, that's not what I meant by "clique", but I guess it could be read in the commnist way.

I didn't expect immediate action, I still don't.

Renaming the comms for a joke was not okay. Renaming them because of racism was very okay.

Just how we gotta be watchful for transphobia, we gotta be watchful for ableism. The infantilizing "you can't take care of yourself, I know best for you" attitude of a lot of people is ableist. Even when the sentiment is rational, speaking like that to other users is ableist and it creates an environment that is not welcoming for ND people. Extra sucky to tell someone who was a back- and knee injury that flares up and makes them literally unable to walk at times - that they should walk outside. This wasn't completely relevant this time (hence the run), but still, it has hurt to be told to do so before.

Embrace Awoo thought.

Main.

Go kiss your dad on the mouth y'all <3

edit: forgot to say that banning me was fair. Not for the post I got banned for, but for how I treated @[email protected]. I apologised later, but I was way too much. I do not think I was too much elsewhere, since I believe I gave back what was passed around. I do not respect Ben Shapiro and I do not respect people that behave like him. Also death to redditors.

This is the first sensible post to come out of the admin team since the start of this insanity.

Still a lot of room for improvement - not sure that “associating behavioural trends with pronoun tags” is a route we should ever go down, to be honest.

But after the past few days of being entirely baffled by whatever the hell was going on with the rest of the admins, this is a step in the right direction.

Here's my super serious thoughts and my attempt at effort posting. I have fibrofog pretty bad right now so apologies if I ramble or make shit points.

I think one of the big lessons here is to avoid having power-users. The initial, relatively small, issue was quickly blasted out of proportion when it could have been stopped by a simple "We're sorry, while we didn't intend to say those things, our intent is irrelevant in the face of our actions. We'll work on it and get back to you." along with unlocking the comms and involving users more in the process if the issues with the comms are really so severe. I still think the tanks should be unlocked until a choice is made, as a show of good faith. It'll do a lot to assuage fears that they don't care, and show that the top down community defining isn't going to be how things are done in future.

The second big lesson is that moderators and admins need to be vigilant of resentment toward users building up. I've been a moderator for a very active community before, and it sucks. You do see the worst of the community and that can lead to resentment and cliquishness. The other mods understand, the users don't. It makes it easy to mentally create an in group and out group, we're all humans, and the human brain sucks ass at most things. Perhaps moderators and admins should be strongly suggested to take time off and be a regular user on occasion to prevent this? Obviously there are privacy concerns, and the admins need to protect themselves from doxing, so I'm unsure how to implement this.

I think that overall this might have been a good thing. It's clear to me that there were tensions bubbling below the surface just waiting for this to happen, and now that it has we can identify and rectify those tensions better. A learning experience is always a good thing, even if they rarely feel good in the moment. In fact, they usually feel absolutely terrible in the moment.

AlaskaBall banning themself as a bit and then accidentally misgendering themself is funny in retrospect, but seemed to confirm the idea that there was a shadowy take-over of transphobic mods. Very poor timing as a thing to do, but great comedic timing. People are already looking back and laughing on it, so I don't think that'll be anything long term.

The cult of personality being character assassinated is a good thing in terms of my anti-power-users stance, but a bad thing in that TC69 did stumble face first into this, and didn't instigate it(though she clearly made it worse). She obviously did some great things for the site before my time, and the outcome of her actions is part of what drew me here. It's a space that isn't shit, and she helped build that and should be recognized for that. She shouldn't have returned from such a long break and been given admin straight away. Admins should be people who are currently active in the community, not niche internet celebrities. The fact that she was given admin right away strongly supports the idea of adminship being a big club that you ain't in, which I'm sure the admins don't want.

I'd say there's no hard feelings, but there are a few. I'm willing to try and work through them though. I can't speak for others who are less willing to, and I know I wasn't hurt as much as the others were. I'd have preferred an apology from her directly, but if deleting and purging her account was the choice she made, then I respect that and wish her well. But as said, I can't speak for others.

As others have said, there's also the issue of assuming all he/hims are A: white, B: cis, C: het, D: men, and E: wrong for having those pronouns. This loops back to the resentment thing I mentioned earlier I think. Brainworms are part of the human condition in our world today, it's not your fault for having them, but you do need to put effort into removing them. This is a very hard process that feels shitty in the moment, because you have to catch yourself and stop yourself. Telling your own brain that it's wrong is difficult. Self improvement feels like shit a lot of the time.

Large amounts of users also cited the demographic surveys that show Hexbear to be very white, and seemed to use that to excuse the assumptions, which was clearly quite hurtful to our POC comrades. I'm white, and thus not very qualified to talk on this issue, but I felt it was very worth noting that harm so that it isn't forgotten and can be worked on.

From what I've seen, Lyudmila and CARCOSA have been handling the aftermath quite well I feel. Putting yourself as the face of an unpopular group is very difficult and I'm sorry for the stress you've likely felt.

That's my wall of text. I hope we can all move forward together as better people, better comrades, and better posters to build a better community and world(eventually.)

If you can be banned for a bit, or for expressing reasonable dissent, why would we put effort into anything more than shitposting on this site?

Likewise if decisions are made on a whim from the admin/mod team, it is reasonable for the users to feel and act like they are just along for the ride.

I’m sorry but it’s amusing to me that one by one the admins are having to come out to be individually yelled at like the two minutes hate

I don't like the implication that some of the admins apparently check every time you say something that annoys them what your pronouns are and tick a running tally until their grudge gets big enough to do something unpopular. Is this the sort of thing people brought up as concerns when they didn't want pronouns to be mandatory? back then it was [none/use name]s who "weren't beating the allegations". I really don't like puppygirl stuff. Do you think it would be productive to take that as an excuse to have a discussion about whether we blame [she/her]s or the [she/they]s as the source of more inappropriate kink comments?

All I'll say now is that this reminds me of the good ole days. Back when a struggle session was the main attraction of hexbear.

I was told we had to ban the tanks because in part they serve only to create drama and attract users who like drama. Well I guess they were right. Good thing there's no drama now.

toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks

Behavior such as?

This is my thoughts that I have transpired:

1. This drama has resolved two pressing contradictions: whether Hexbear should be a shit-posting site or a more serious and political site and whether Hexbear should be a space for dunks or a comfy space. From this point forward, Hexbear will be a shitposting site and Hexbear will be a space for dunks. You can't have pretensions about Hexbear being serious and have some incognito admin create an admin account and ban their mod account. This is shitposting territory. It's shitposting par excellence. And as for the contradiction between a space for dunks or a comfy space, the space for dunks has won out. The people want their dunk tank back and in a poor attempt to argue otherwise, the admins more or less misgendered and done the racial equivalent of misgendering many people. Is this not an admission that Hexbear is not going to be a comfy space but a space for dunks? The admins dunked on the users for being cringey cishet white dudes and the users dunked back at the admins for being wildly out of touch dipshits with their heads up their collective asses.

2. The megathreadization of Hexbear will accelerate. Throughout this dumpster fire, I lurked at the various megathreads up (news, trans, disabled, em_poc, general) and the drama was almost completely absent. I feel very sorry for the trans users who have to put up with this shit because if they had just stayed at the trans mega, they wouldn't have seen any of this shit. Trans users who browse outside the trans mega got misgendered by the admins as cishet white dudes while trans users who stayed in the trans mega and mostly hang out at the trans matrix are blissfully unaware. What's going to happen to the behavior of trans people from this point forward? You can apply the same shit to all the megas. People are just going to migrate to the megas, and non-mega Hexbear will slide closer to closer to the character of the dunk tank. I suppose it's a bit of an open secret, but the various megas have been better than general Hexbear for a good while. Most seriousposting is done in the news and trans megas. Trans, em_poc, and disabled megas are good safe spaces. General Hexbear is just for cheap dunks where you'll occasionally catch strays, and if you don't have a thick enough skin, you'll eventually burn out. In this sense, the dunk tank perfectly encapsulates general Hexbear and to clamp on the dunk tank is to clamp on general Hexbear. The dunk tank is general Hexbear and general Hexbear is the dunk tank. Far from clamping down dunk tank culture, the poorly thought out actions of the admins have only accelerated the dunkification of Hexbear. Something something dialectics.

3. ~~Given that the completely deranged alts turn out to be done by Melina per the modlog, I don't see any possible justification for /c/fakenews, a comm that many people already dislike for various reasons, still existing. That comm is understood by this website's community to be the brainchild of Melina. The fact that one of the recent prolific posters turn out to be another one of fae's alts only reinforces this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the mod team outside of Dirt_owl are alts as well. Here's my advice to the admins who have taken a tremendous hit in their credibility. You could start regaining that credibility by getting rid of /c/fakenews, a move that many people have been clamoring for months now. Melina wishing that aaaaaaadjsf would get murdered should be the time for fae's presence, including fae's comm, to be completely purged from Hexbear. Or is the shitposting nature of /c/fakenews a complete fit with Hexbear's shitposting culture, meaning that it will never be removed?~~ This is in dispute. See further comment.

Are there any updates with regards to figuring out who spun up all the alt accounts and started harrassing users? That's what I care about most to be honest, I only had one comment on this entire issue before that happened.

just wanna put this here, it was a reply I made to Yukiko in another thread, I deleted it to not do struggle-posting in another thread:

it is very ironic, I typed up a reply to your last post in that thread, saying that I was hesitant to criticize the situation or even report the post in question for misgendering, out of fear of catching a stray ban because of it. I didn't end up posting it because of that fear, and then you got banned. never felt that way on Hexbear before, of all places.

it's very fucked, for the longest time I always felt Hexbear was a place where I could come and speak my mind with comrades who are all generally on the same page as me. conversations can happen, behavior and choices could be criticized, and we could all grow as a group. I honestly no longer feel that way. I appreciate everything the mods/admins do on a day to day basis, it's a thankless gig you volunteer for, and it's fucked what you have to deal with sometimes. but the behavior in that previous thread felt simply disgusting.

Please bear with me if I fail keep up with questions and comments. It's quite late here, but I'll do my best to address things and will link and pin Q&A's here