I originally summarized my observations replying to Blaze in a different thread
I figured I’d include them here because in case anyone wants to correct my interpretation.
I had asked how he feels about posting in a com alongside people who are calling other users ‘removed roaches’
He brought up that Hexbear users using the word roaches to refer to people too, my response:
From that link pretty much all of the usage is talking about the literal insect, or talking about reactionaries/fascists using it to refer to muslims, immigrants and other ‘undesirables’.
Out of the handful of remaining uses, it’s stuff like in the hexbear thread on this meanwhileongrad thread:
This is the most questionable usage I found, and it’s referring to fash/reactionaries.
That’s not the main point though, the bigger issue was getting called a ‘removed’ that’s pretty much a red flag that someone’s a cryptofash.
citing db0 on this one:
compare the use of the term on shit vs on hexbear:
While looking I found this one on hexbear from 5 years ago, almost 90 upvotes shitting on stalin for criminalizing homosexuality, and quoting him calling someone removed. I read this as extremely critical of Stalin:
All the usage on hexbear I see is either self-deprecating or discussing (negatively) about people using the term.
meanwhile on meanwhile on grad:
hmmm, calling people removed and complaining about commies, progressives and furries. 
Goat seems fine with replies calling people he doesn’t like removed:
more examples:
site admin calls it out, entirely downvoted lol
Like you might think I’m being melodramatic, but I really don’t see how meanwhileongrad isn’t a nazi bar.
As I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, it seems indeed bad to have such comments on both sides.
I really hope you re-assess both sides, because they are not equivalent.
I understand, there’s plenty of problematic posters to go around, the issue I have is that it’s normalized calling an instance which is overwhelmingly trans and queer ‘removed’, that’s a major red flag, and it’s behavior like that which was why hexbear defederated shit in the first place.
sh.it doesn’t seem to have improved in that time
As a bonus here’s some fun clips from this latest two minutes hate thread:
Goat has been really worked up lately, I arrived after the defederation happened, but I read the hexbear threads related to this not long after I started lemmy and his interpretation of events is comically conspiratorial.
The chronology was that hexbear had been off doing its own thing for like 3 years, and only re-merged with lemmy due to the technical issues maintaining a separate fork. That happened to coincide with the major reddit wave, correct me if I’m wrong but nobody here is taking orders from dessalines, right?
It looks like Hexbear tried to broadly fedarate, some users were looking forward to it, but others apprehensive and preferring to keep everyone else out. Once it became more clear how toxic and unmoderated most of the fediverse was, they made the decision to defederate.
Also is there a discord? The only matrix groups I’m aware of are for mods and the trans space. People should probably be aware that there’s potentially nazi trolls hanging out there.
One last one for the road, goat upvote policing and accusing db0 of being pro-uygher genocide.
so what’s the official hexbear line on calling people removed or cockroaches?
db0 getting called a tankie is hilarious
I love when this happens. If you call everyone and everything a tankie, you’re gonna find yourself in the company of actual reactionaries who aren’t gonna see you as one of the good leftists.
Huh, why are there all these white supremacists and KKK members at the anti-communist rally today??
Yea lmao, didn’t have that on my bingo card
I did call that this would eventually happen, though, which is pretty funny.
“Tankie is just ‘wokism’ for liberals” takes another W.
The ratchet wheel of respectable centrism turns ever hitlerward
Salami tactics in action
yup, and like that there’s a new thread about how another db0 admin is tankie
I feel so vindicated right now. I always knew that, eventually, the social fascists would find even anarchists to be too left-wing for their tastes and turn on them too. I’ve said it for over a year at this point. Incredible levels of political illiteracy from the regulars at the Nazi bar.
Oh and look, the phrase “tankie roach” appears within 10 comments. Didn’t even have to scroll down
They really love that one.
The longer they
what we have to say, the funnier their lore about us gets, like a game of telephone where everyone involved is General RipperJust like on Reddit people eventually peek over the wall and see “well they said hexbear was BAD and it definitely wasn’t that, maybe even kinda good?”
Literally my experience
But far more people will just take this stuff at their word and never look. And in turn, with ostracise those who do. They wouldn’t do this sort of shit if it wasn’t effective at controlling people’s behaviour.
I just observed this when looking into what they had been saying about CSAM; because I was wondering why the piefed dev was routinely lumping in hexbear next to CSAM
I go to look back at an old post related to this, and it’s someone making up a baseless accusation then getting mad people are responding to it
whats the over/under wager that it was retaliation for the recent “h e x b e a r” shit?
in this deleted post someone reading Rimu’s comment placing hexbear side by side with CSAM and spam lead them to read into it ‘hexbear has a csam problem?!’ they did get called out for it, but it shows the effect rhetoric can have on someone reading sloppily.
Why is it always that cm user???
Ahh yes the uighur genocide that has literally zero deaths and literally any uighur you actually speak to from the region will tell you is complete nonsense.
Meanwhile, this same person will tell you that Gaza is not a genocide and that it’s very complicated.
This whole history post is just complete nonsense lmao. There’s almost nothing to say about it, this person has made all of this post up.
These people will absolutely just knowingly lie outright, and invent a whole new reality then get other people to repeat it as fact.
The real history is more like:
- Hexbear was a different fork to lemmy and couldn’t be federated because of it. Took forever to re-merge.
- When Hexbear remerged, Lemmyworld had a crash out, specifically one admin there, and defederated Hexbear claiming it was for “hatespeech” (total bs)
- Others slowly defederated hexbear too after countless people believed random nonsense being levelled at the instance without evidence. If you just post “Tankies believe xyz” people will believe and upvote that shit regardless of veracity.
- SJW is an extremely thinly veiled fash instance and Hexbear defedding it was totally warranted.
That’s it. It’s pretty boring honestly. Just about the only thing that is true that anyone says about this instance is that we used to sort by active and because we’re so much more active at posting than literally anywhere else we would look like a huge coordinated swarm. It was natural activity, just people sorting by activity and popularity on lemmy, but our posting power was so high that it looked like coordinated dogpiling. Also we were kinda always rude to people spouting libshit. That’s about the only true thing they say about us. I will not condemn that behaviour though it was always extremely funny.
All of these posts are basically just:
“Do you condemn hamasHexbear?”.world defederated us before we even federated, “preemptively as a last resort.”
Ahhh yes. Preemptively as a last resort for non-existent hatespeech on an instance with a hardcoded slur filter.
and literally any uighur you actually speak to from the region will tell you is complete nonsense.
Sorry, comrade, I have to correct you there. You can talk to a Uyghur Guantanamo Bay interrogator funded by NED-style NGOs and will say it is all real.
Yeah there aren’t any of those actually living in the region though, and it’s real easy to find people that live there on XHS.
Of course! I’m just making a joke about Rushan Abbas.
These people will absolutely just knowingly lie outright, and invent a whole new reality then get other people to repeat it as fact.
I really struggle to understand this mindset. I think they believe that they are “right” and therefore things likes facts are irrelevant, they can make up a narrative for the “greater good” or somesuch, but I still really struggle to comprehend why they seem so adverse to learning anything or challenging their worldview, to the point that they will coat themselves in lies in order to protect their worldview from reality. I just don’t understand this sort of thing at a fundamental level.
They have just determined that we are enemies and have absolutely no morals or principles. Anything is justified in fighting the enemy.
They’re the same people that think killing civilians is fine if you’re fighting terrorists.
The goal is simply to make people believe Hexbear is bad. That’s it. Thousands of people on other instances are convinced we are something we are not because the lies take hold and then get repeated ad nauseum by other people who took them as truths. This occurs with other things, like any topic of the soviet union, dprk, china’s “genocide”, etc etc. It’s propaganda that’s aimed at a website instead of a state.
I guess I just fundamentally don’t understand that sort of mentality. I can’t fathom how anyone could live with themselves if they viewed the world in that way, surely they would have doubts about it if they need to lie to others and themselves constantly. Though they do tend to be very angry people, always lashing out, so maybe that’s their defence mechanism, to turn their frustration outward onto others.
Depends. Look at it from their perspective, either as sincere believers in fascist racial superiority or as members of the boug/petit-boug who are fighting to maintain the system they know they benefit from.
The fascist racial supremacist simply sees it as undermining his opposition in his pursuit of supremacy, and reigning supreme is might makes right. Might can come from anything, including lying.
The bougs on the other hand are pursuing their interests.
We shouldn’t assume everyone posting online is a worker. There are millions of boug and tens of millions of petit-boug and they all engage in lies for their class’ continued benefit.
These would all be quite logical and rational reasons, from their perspectives and positions.
Might can come from anything, including lying.
I suppose a part of it as well is they always accuse their enemies of lying and using underhanded tactics, so they would probably be able to justify this sort of behaviour as “leveling the playing field” or similar. It’s “fine” because they need to do it in order to defeat their enemies, because their enemies are using underhanded tactics already.
And that’s a good point about not assuming other people are workers, and even amongst the working class, there are many who have been convinced to fight against their own interests and defend the interests of the bourgeoisie very passionately.
And that’s a good point about not assuming other people are workers, and even amongst the working class, there are many who have been convinced to fight against their own interests and defend the interests of the bourgeoisie very passionately.
It took reddit to make me realise I was doing this. Specifically it was first the rise of the FIRE communities and the realisation there were a lot of millionaires on reddit, followed by the rise of the stock communities.
Over time I came to realise that the boug engaged in stocks are all naturally taught to do propaganda. Their advocacy for whatever they’re currently invested in extends to lying because they’re monetarily invested in the stock and seek to see its value rise. Lying about it becomes par for the course. Lying in pursuit of profit. They all learn to become absolutely shameless propagandists in this way. Then they apply that outside of stocks too.
When it comes to their investments they lie absolutely relentlessly, and many of them are bigger posters than we are. They post and post and post. Not just on reddit or forums but on blogs, media they’ve made, social media, etc etc. They are fulltime posters beyond our level in many cases and they sit at home doing this every single day. The entire stocks + crypto sphere of terminally online people amount to tens if not hundreds of millions of bougs and petty bougs (combined) engaged in this routine and trained in this behaviour.
The cryptobros and wallstreetbets subreddits are great examples of that, people clearly trying to manipulate others in order to maximise their own gains at the expense of everyone else, while using language that implies that they want everyone to “win” while clearly sabotaging everyone else’s efforts.
We all have this form of liberalism within us. We are all just at different stages of suppressing it, and always imperfectly. Socialists are a bit better at it because we have to constantly self-crit to organize effectively, but of course even that doesn’t always happen or happens to different levels of success.
It’s a bit of a read, but “False Witnesses” followed by Brainwashing followed by Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” will get you a great understanding of how this works. Essentially, people license themselves to believe things that they believe materially benefit them or otherwise makes them a good person for opposing.
I have read all three (but thanks for the recommendation anyway, I could always use a refresher on them) and it’s more of a philosophical “how could someone live like this?” than a more analytical analysis of their actions. It’s hard for me to understand, even when I’ve been around people like this my entire life (which could be why I find it hard to understand, the worst people I’ve known have behaved like this, so I’ve always wanted to avoid being like them)
Ah, gotcha! Makes sense.
to the liberal, there are no good and bad actions only good and bad teams
All I remember about goat is they would end their post with an exclamation mark whenever they’re malding behind the screen. That and them being a cryptofash.
I would say since one of the words is auto-removed by our slur filter that speaks for it and dehumanizing language is inappropriate and subject to moderator removal.
Goat is an rdrama user that intentionally copied the username and avatar of a leftist mastodon admin and is 100% cryptofash/rage-baiter for laughs.
The fact that some of the most popular communities on sh.itjust.works are greentext, and NCD in addition to MOG combined with the fact that the instance’s most vocal admin, imaqtpie, is a transphobe and racist is further proof of the instance’s political bent.
Not compatible with hexbear and it isn’t helped that their admin did nothing when one of their users started sending pornagraphic images in DMs to hexbear users is more than enough reason to stay defederated from sh.itjust.works.
When hexbear started we had to fork from lemmy due to the large amount of users overwhelming the software at that time. Due to the large amount of changes and the loss of the hexbear maintainer it took a long time to remerge with upstream lemmy which allowed for federation.
We had a uservote about if we should federate and how, within that post I included messages from any communities that wanted to add to the federation post. One of those was from the news community which was taken as an official hexbear platform. Many admins also point to my comments of my personal beliefs that it is our duty to confront liberalism. I also made some jokes about “unlimited PPB on the lemmyverse” or some other silly things that were taken by other admins as evidence that hexbear is a focused and concerted brigade community.
Why would we organize on discord which is notorious for it’s privacy leaks, the only instance that I know uses discord is lemmy.world. Our self-hosted matrix rooms are anemic in activity and are public other than the moderator chat which is 20 people and for discussion of moderation on the site.
I haven’t spoken with any of the .ml admins in months and not in any regular capacity. I found the shared admin rooms to be extremally cliquish and were willing to spread blatant lies about hexbear to each other
The fact that some of the most popular communities on sh.itjust.works are greentext, and NCD in addition to MOG combined with the fact that the instance’s most vocal admin, imaqtpie, is a transphobe and racist is further proof of the instance’s political bent.
I remember (i dont think i post it on c/slop) that the sjw admin made a big post and comments complaining about anti-american bigotry in the lemmyverse
Big
energyYep, and claimed Russia and China are “pushing the trans issue” in order to stoke anti-US bias… I shit you not.
It’s like the US complaining that the USSR played up USian racism, and not complaining about the actual racism 🙄
Seriously.
I would say since one of the words is auto-removed by our slur filter that speaks for it and dehumanizing language is inappropriate and subject to moderator removal.
Didn’t even realize that was slur filtered here! Incredible how normalized that language is elsewhere.
it isn’t helped that their admin did nothing when one of their users started sending pornagraphic images in DMs to hexbear users is more than enough reason to stay defederated from sh.itjust.works.
gross, can see why they get along
Goat is an rdrama user that intentionally copied the username and avatar of a leftist mastodon admin and is 100% cryptofash/rage-baiter for laughs.
that’s fucked up, good lore though; if you have info on that I’d love to see it.
I found the shared admin rooms to be extremally cliquish and were willing to spread blatant lies about hexbear to each other
that tracks with the rest of the general behavior
The only matrix room that existed by the time of federation was the mod chat so, no Goat wasnt in the matrix
There were also a couple dev chat rooms, but I don’t think goat was ever in either of those.
A cockroach is a pest insect. It can be used to mean different things, as you note, including literally referring to the pest, being insulting to a person or people, or being racist / dogwhistling. Anticommunists should never be surprised when their comrades-in-arms turn out to be fash, and their use of “[would be removed] roaches” on the other platform is the exact phrasing of internet fascist losers. Like 4chan and Asmongold shit. There are no such cases here because, in addition to filtering the adjective they used, our mods ban fash - unlike the other platform where they not just tolerate, but protect, celebrate, and cater to them.
Blaze is being conspicuously uncritical of the bad faith appeal to Hexbears also using a word. The overall angle they are taking is defensive of the Nazi bar that is meanwhileongrad, as even though they express a personal dislike of the posts, they support these obviously nonsensical defenses of it. Always remember: this person didn’t need to post anything at all, let alone a Nazi bar defense.
All I know is that the Hexbear Discord was indeed filled with tons of crypto fash types and wreckers pretending to be sincere people in hopes of dozing folks.
It’s part of why, as an original mod of the discord, I left.
Discord does almost always seem to be bad news, is that one still in use?
it was a lifeboat for until hexbear (then chapo.chat) was up and running. I think most of us here stopped going to it, but it still exists and probably houses a lot of people that we’ve banned over the years
Sounds like evil Hexbear, lmao.
Evil Hexbear is the r/drama website.
lmao, true
Idk I haven’t been on it in years.
They hate us cause they aint us 💅💅💅
so what’s the official hexbear line on calling people removed or cockroaches?
Well, for the first one you can’t even post that word here anymore, as it gets removed by our slur filter. I haven’t seen any use of “cockroach” to describe people, but it would likely get moderated away quickly.
Just use gusano like a real communist
best i can do is “snow roach” sometimes appearing amid lists of other hardcore slurs like “cracker” and “bleach demon”
i really like cumskin personally, super visceral
Unless you write/say it like “cock-a-roach”
nadia vulvokov reference
I dont know who that is.
I feel like calling reactionaries “cockroaches” is an insult to real cockroaches who have a number of impressive traits and can often be pretty adorable. We should get a little more creative with our insults. For example, “crotch louse” to me has a bit more punch anyways. Or maybe something like “smegma” would work if we wanted to move away from insects entirely.
Great job on compiling this!
i literally do not think I have EVER seen someone here calling a person a roach
Closest is maybe calling centre-left talk show host Adam Friedland a “bug” but that’s by orders of former DSA President and current Hamas President Nick Mullen
Actually come to think of it we could probably find a lot of posts calling Bret Stephens a bedbug.
i think the closest i’ve seen is calling asmongold like a roachmancer or something
Okay but he’s clearly trying to breed some kind of human roach hybrid, it has nothing to do with him being a nazi D word
Using animals as an insult is speciesist and should be modded afaic.
Calling cops “pig” is offensive to pigs? Good bit.
a fair number of vegans, including a number of our users, believe that unironically and put that into practice in real life.
and put that into practice in real life.
Applying this phrase to “thinks calling cops ‘pigs’ is offensive” is a good expression of what the problem here is. “Put it into practice in real life”? Puts what into practice? Finding a metaphor offensive? There is no “practice” here beyond possibly lecturing someone else for using this metaphor which incidentally was popularized in the US by Bobby Seale, someone more concerned with actual praxis. It just comes off as a bunch of lifestylists with too much time on their hands endlessly preening and calling it building a revolution.
I just mean that they use alternatives to animal metaphors, and make explicit avoidance of things like ‘pig’. It’s strictly speaking dictionary definition practice, even if it has nothing to do whatsoever with changing material conditions or building a revolution.
unironically yes
This forum is cooked
The majority of the times when I notice your username, it’s because you’re being a dick to someone
The “bullying works” crowd when you’re rude to them for making absolutely horseshit claims:
Okay, so now I’m being rude to you for needlessly being a pedantic asshole about someone else’s sincerely held preferences that don’t affect you. Here we are, what do you want to do?
I didn’t accused you of being rude, I accused you of being a hypocrite. What is pedantic about what I said? What is pedantic about saying that discrimination against literal fucking cockroaches isn’t a real issue because they don’t have minds?
about someone else’s sincerely held preferences that don’t affect you
We’re talking about facts of the world, what is and isn’t politically progressive, and also site policy about what terms should be banned, and you’re turning this person into a smol bean who just has “preferences” that “don’t affect me”. It’s deeply disingenuous deflection of criticism. I’m not forcing this person to call other people roaches, I don’t even call people that myself! I find it distasteful for basically the reason expressed in the OP, but I’m actually not interested in policing something that doesn’t fucking matter.
You’re just saying things based on convenience. None of it means anything except that you don’t like me.
Here we are, what do you want to do?
Speak in a framework where assertions are made on the basis of justification rather than based on being convenient to us in attacking people that we apparently hold a grudge against.
I’m not accusing you of accusing me of anything: I’m declaring my intention to be rude to you, because you’re acting like a 14 year old. Someone shared a belief of theirs that in no way affects you, but which you somehow took personally and decided to go on a shapiro-ass diatribe about and declare the forum you joined 2 months ago “cooked”, instead of just jgnoring it like a normal person. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you act like a hostile asshole in situations that don’t warrant it, so I’m calling you a hostile asshole and encouraging you to change. Be less cringe, please.
literal fucking cockroaches isn’t a real issue because they don’t have minds?
This is the same unprovable assertion carnists make about every non-human animal.
Unironically pigs are noble animals and deserve better than to be compared to cops.
Let’s ask a cockroach if it feels discriminated against, or feels literally anything at all. After that, we can go to a pond and find some scum to interview about the speciesist discrimination it faces because its name is shorthand for a bad person. I’m sure that it really struggles to find employment with all the bigoted associations against it, and it would definitely be kept up at night reflecting on the pain of this marginalization except for the fact that it does not have a consciousness.
☝️🤓
Your position is indefensible, so of course you resort to gross personal insults. Of course, since I’m such a dweeb, I should have learned from you to talk in a more well-adjusted way by getting offended on behalf of creatures that don’t have a consciousness.
☝️😤
I changed my response since I didn’t anticipate you responding in three seconds. Reprinted for your convenience:
Your position is indefensible, so of course you resort to gross personal insults. Of course, since I’m such a dweeb, I should have learned from you to talk in a more well-adjusted way by getting offended on behalf of creatures that don’t have a consciousness.
Saying something completely absurd and then basically replying “ratio” to people making the mistake of dignifying this shit with a response is certainly a way of approaching interactions. Of course, you have no problems using caricatures of humans while you complain about bigotry against literal insects.
Oh come off it, you didn’t dignify shit, you were snide and condescending and I responded in kind.
Of course I was snide, but I nonetheless presented actual reasons, while you presented me with nothing but a caricature*. Oh, but you did that instead of calling me a louse, so it’s okay because it doesn’t offend creatures that literally don’t have minds.
*irony of ironies, have you ever considered the actual social implications of your bespectacled “um ackshually” nerd caricature? Did the thought ever cross your mind that there might be something to unpack there?
I would think a purple worm would want people to be more compassionate to bugs
Hahahahaha
And whats your problem?
Removed by mod
It’s clear case of Sartre quote about antisemites. Anticommunists are identical.
Nice work in compiling this!!
