I preferred just calling it “the trough” because, in that situation, we were the hogs and this was our place to indulgently feast on all the garbage that was probably not good for us and we should go back to rooting for acorns.

Most people don't post into the slop comm thinking it's a containment. They think "I dislike this thing and I want to humiliate it by labeling it slop".

It does not feel like "slop" is a containment comm when it's the 3rd largest comm and growing. It feels like slop is trying to steal the character of chapotraphouse.

The characteristics of Chapo Trap House is a combination of comedy, pop culture, US politics, and US foreign policy. Chapo also had a weekly segment where they would read liberal newspaper opeds and criticize the liberalism.

Marx and Lenin have a considerable amount of writing where they criticize their liberal opponents. When Lenin criticized Kautsky or Bernstein, was it considered slop? No, of course not. In a certain sense, the purpose of left theory is to criticize contradictions and ultimately resolve the contradictions.

I do not mean that more content on hexbear is becoming "slop". I mean that posts which could better fit into other comms are being placed into slop.

We live in a world of contradictions, there are many opposing forces in conflict. The contradictions make people feel uncomfortable and people label those contradictions as slop, but not every contradiction needs to discussed in a containment space.

I agree with your principle of having this comm being a "containment". Then we have to ask, what is being contained? Is the purpose of the slop comm to contain every contradiction? Certainly not, because most of the real world is made up of contradictions.

I would propose that what is contained in a containment comm is the most fringe and socially unacceptable subjects. Things that one would be ashamed to say in public. For example, unhinged social media comments.

The purpose of a containment is to shrink, not grow, and yet slop continues to grow.

Norm Finkelstein is one of the most influential academics of our time. I DO think that Norm should be criticized for his problematic takes. However, I don't think Finkelstein is considered to be slop. I would not be ashamed to speak about Norm Finkelstein in a public space.

What I am saying is that the parameters of slop is too broad.

A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.

• redlib.nohost.network
• red.ngn.tf
• redlib.tux.pizza
• libreddit.projectsegfau.lt

Here's the history of this comm.

~14 years ago - There's a subreddit called "r/shitliberalssay". It's a communist subreddit to criticize things that liberals say on social media. It still exists today and it mostly has social media screenshots.

~10 years ago - Chapo Trap House podcast was formed

~6 years ago - r/chapotraphouse was banned and hexbear was formed. A user asked for a comm called "ShitReactionariesSay" and the mod created a comm called the_dunk_tank. I think this means the comm was intended to replicated the functionality of r/shitliberalssays. I believe the word dunk was chosen because many hexbears came from twitter where dunk mean to humiliate, in reference to basketball dunking

~2 years ago - There was an argument about whether screenshots of lemmy users from other instances were allowed to be posted in the_dunk_tank. It was called "Rule 8", you'll notice that slop only has 7 rules. Then "the_dredge_tank" was created to allow users to continue mocking screenshots of other lemmy instances.

<2 years ago - The Dunk Tank and The Dredge Tank were closed because the concept of the a "dunk tank" originates from racist Jim Crow era. Though I think many people interpreted the name as the basketball term "dunk". In place of these comms, two new comms formed: "gossip" and "slop".

9 months ago - The gossip comm is shut down and considered to be merged into the slop comm.

With that history in mind, I think this comm should resemble the content of /r/shitliberalssay, that is criticizing screenshots of people saying anti-communist things on social media. I don't that subreddit even allows posts that aren't images.

surplus populations

?!