It was about 6 months into the covid crisis. I was browsing the chapotraphouse subreddit through a VPN while on the clock. It was one of my favorite subreddits because it was one of the only places which was completely uncritical in its support for the George Floyd uprising (the true reason for the ban, in my opinion). It got banned while I was reading it. A couple hours later, I was called to a meeting and told I was being furloughed because of the pandemic-induced economic standstill. In the meantime, someone set up a "lifeboat" discord server. Within a day or two, about 10,000 people ended up there from the 140,000 subscribers to the subreddit. I joined a group of a dozen or two people who decided to grab Lemmy, an emerging Fediverse platform (which was very bare-bones at the time and did not even support federation yet), kick the tires, and do what we could to make it suitable for such a chaotic situation. About a month later, we got chapo.chat online. We had dubbed our bespoke Lemmy fork "Hexbear." Eventually, the site name and domain was changed to match when we decided the community had much broader interests than just a podcast.

hexbear found me, an abandoned cub on the bank of the great yenisei. she nursed me into the mighty warlord you see before you

Similar to you, but the reddit version "Wow, people sure hate these chapotraphouse leftists but won't go into any consistent details as to why. I'm going to see for myself."

i was on some forum for the mexican drug lord el chapo and they changed the theme to communism

I have always been here. When they banned the chapotraphouse subreddit and we all went to the discord, I was there

During the Long March from r/chapotraphouse.

Everyone said they were awful but the memes kept making a lot of sense to me so I went to askchapo with a few questions. Anyway I'm a communist now

Chapo reddit got banned. Came here.

Me:

cth oldhead

Straight up some comment on Bluesky mentioned it amongst all the recent bans. So far it seems like the kind of old internet vibes I enjoyed about early reddit and digg with a progressive focus. Very cool.

The same way from .world. I was horrified, it was from Chapotraphouse but I was curious enough to stay and like it.

I used to be on the chapo sub but missed the lifeboat discord when it got banned. I finally left reddit when they broke the apps that worked, tried a couple other lemmys, then encountered hexbear when it was briefly federated with blahaj.zone and switched over here when they defedded.

::: cw suicide

:::

I’ve been here the whole time

Reddit broke apps and that was the final push I needed to run away. Heard about the fediverse and when researching instances I heard about one that was full of trans communists. Sounded like my kind of people.

some homeless guy was standing outside the train station yelling conspiracy theories and said he learned about them here.

i was trained and conditioned to be a hexbear poster from the age of six

~~it was from r/chapotraphouse though~~

Damn lots of fellow old heads still repping the old CTH sub. Respect

I was the original bear in the inspiring photo. I changed my account for opsec.

I was actually looking for the crypto coin website but people here were funny so I made an account

Admittedly, I was part of the 2023 Reddit migration to Lemmy. Spun up my own server and invited some friends. One of them bought into the idea that the Lemmy devs were “red fasc”, their source was a Raddle post they found on Reddit lol.

So I read that thread and saw Hexbear mentioned specifically, said “lol that place feels like the old internet minus the bigotry”, so I joined. I was not disappointed and have been here ever since.

I never had a reddit account, but I lurked on r/cth for a year or two. I think someone put the link out on one of the chapo offshoots reddits that werent banned yet. so I lurked the site a bit and made an account finally.

Showed up after /CTH got the boot for taking the controversial stance of believing antebellum south slave owners should be kilt.

Im a liberal and i found this liberal social media site when it was recommended by other liberals after the liberal subreddit r\chapotraphouse was banned for liberalism

r/chapotraphouse oldhead here. I remember very clearly being a heavy reddit user, finding r/cth, effectively stopped engaging with any other part of reddit because the rest of it was trash, and then getting on the lifeboat when the sub was banned. Reddit has only gotten worse, I’m glad this place exists.

I browsed r/gzd and people mostly mentioned lemmygrad, and the occasional hexbear mention. I lurked grad but thought the community here at hb seemed more active/fun so made an acct here few yeaes back

a user and friend of mine named moon invited me here ,shes banned tho

I don't remember. I was on r/chapotraphouse and I somehow found my way here very shortly after it was banned. Maybe someone posted a link in the chapo discord?

Saw a link to this place from a leftist meme subreddit after chapo got banned, then I just stayed here because its pretty much the only place on the internet that I don't absolutely hate

the liberal wankers were going on about how evil they were - wanted to see for myself

I heard about it on the chapo post-ban discord, which was a feat since it was impossible to follow.

I found hexbear after I had trouble signing into lemmygrad.ml. Which I got into through r/GenZedong.

I type in random strings of letters to find new websites and landed on shrekland.net somehow

Edit: RIP shrekland

They rebranded from chapo.chat aka chacha due to liberalism and now I’m stuck here

I was always here.

A very dear friend of mine reccomended that I check the site out back in '21 but it wasnt until last year did I start going on here regularly. They would send me posts from here fairly frequently and in retrospect I think they were trying to nudge me in a better direction once I started to drift towards the NAFO nonsense in '22.

Im glad they showed me this place. I think its been a positive influence.

Didn't someone message a bunch of cth people on reddit at some point after the ban or did I make that up? It's been a long time.

When chapo was delet I bounced between the lifeboat discord and the actual chapo discord (they bullied Will lol) until I heard they were looking for beta testers for the new site. volunteered, mostly shitposted but found like maybe one-two bugs to make the forum experience less annoying for users, then forgot about the site for a hot minute and missed joining on the official launch day by like a day or two.

Been here ever since

I got banned on for quoting a guy saying violent things and that got me perma-banned , so I started looking for alternatives that weren't Fashbook or Twitter.

Not having to deal with weirdos and bigots dogwhistling bigotry and passing it off as "memes" 24/7 is genuinely refreshing

I saw a pinned post in r/dankleft and i remembered the fun times in chapotraphouse