The thing that makes all 3 of those places good is that the userbase is talking to each other authentically instead of writing comments to secure votes.

On the wider internet most people are writing their comments not for the person they're actually replying to, but for the audience that will be voting on the comment. Social media has now trained people into this mindset and it has produced a rancid style of inauthentic interaction.

Even with people I fucking hate and disagree with I prefer an authentic interaction where they're actually responding to me and having a real conversation compared to where they're responding for a perceived audience of voters. This is now almost impossible to find online.

I will say however, the times where that hasn't been the case here on Hexbear have been some of the most toxic experiences I've ever had online. When a hexbear turns bad-faith it gets really nasty.

just popping in to say fuck discord.

Hexbear reminds me of the old internet. People being their authentic selves. Doesn't mean there's no nastiness but the ratio of performative or inflammatory bullshit to people talking is much lower than the average internet.

I also maintain that an extremely low tolerance for bad faith or cruel behaviour is necessary online. Since the regulatory mechanisms that govern social interaction elsewhere are not available.

Whenever I look at lemmy outside, or worse reddit, it's just performative grandstanding, normalised bigotry, garbled repetition, and in "jokes".

I kept saying it. Internet is an ocean of bigotry and ignorance. The worst possible place for an LLM to learn from.

Pirating shit is becoming harder and harder and google is basically unusable now

Yeah, I’m trans and it’s depressing how hurtful every other social media is, can’t follow any trans creators because the comments are just hate speech that is totally okay and allowed by the site, apparently. And those same people being hateful will turn around and pretend the world caters to trans people and “you can’t say anything anymore!!1!1” Reddit is maybe okay when I stick to the subreddits I follow.

hexbear is the only place on the internet ive joined where i had to tell them my political views and be approved first. something about creating a place where everyone fundamentally agrees with each other and differences in opinion are usually complex technical things probably makes it nicer. im in some private diϟϟcord servers that are really good, i think its about curating a group of people you know you'll get along with

I used to visit reddit regularly in the past, and the ridiculous and monstrous stuff they always said had become normalized to me; I hated it, but I got used to it; but then I discovered chapo and LSC and now every time I go back for a visit, I'm reminded of how unacceptably awful and childish the people there are.

I used to have a bunch of cosy little forums to check out daily. They're all dead now and probably moved to Discord, and I hate Discord. Everything else is on Reddit or Twitter or any of the other massive social media platforms which are full of fascists.

/r/trueanon is pretty good but why do they insist on using the r-word all the time?

r/trueanon has the closest energy to the original cth but I really don't like how they started adopting the cumtown "I'm gay and my dick is small" bit it just feels tired

i agree but man i wish some of the smaller comms on here were more active. don't get me wrong seeing the same people in most comment sections is nice because it feels more a community that way, but it bums me out whenever i go to a comm about an interest of mine and the last post was made a month ago with 3 upvotes and no comments.

Certain Fediverse instances didn't last long, including two Kitsu instances. I just wanted a good instance that lasts forever with good support.

don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good