I'm not even sure I want to know

People who think being a jackass is a form of activism. That's all you really need to know.
- Uh hello, it's called jacktivism.
  
  Oh right! I thought that was... uhhh ... something else
  
  I like where this is going
- I have seen so many thread saying how bad that instance is but every time I ask for links proving how bad they are I have never see anything worth the hate.
  Can you provide some examples?
  
  I have never see anything worth the hate.
  You just have a very high tolerance for jackassery. You've seen plenty of evidence of hexbear hostility, i.e. the "dunk tank" that would justify not wanting to interact with hexbear users and have actively chosen to disregard it.
  This is because you're kind of a jackass. Disregarding people engaging in good faith with "just trust me bro" is exactly the kind of thing people really hate hexbear users for. Not because of illegal activity or moral failing, but because they're assholes. While you may think this isn't worth de-federation, unfortunately moderators aren't some kind of legal authority, and if federating with hexbear means instance admins or community moderators need to put in triple the work to prune all the arguments and """shitposting""" hexbear users love, nobody is legally or morally required to put up with it.
  It's legitimately that simple. Hexbear users are jerks and nobody wants to hang out with them, and that's enough to ban them from any given community or instance.
  
  Lol, that's because the mods of said threads already had to delete all the bullshit they posted once they "accidentally found this on all" and then descent on it like locusts (but they're totally not brigading!!!1!)
  Here's one of their mods:
  
  https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795
  How about flooding a meta thread that’s not on their own instance to insult people who disagree with them?
  Part of the drama with that incident included hexbear folks straight up saying “I thought the whole point of federating with other instances was so that we could dunk on liberals”. Majority of folks on hexbear did not see any issues with the behavior of their members on this post.
  
  If you'd like examples I know some of their bad takes are starting to be posted to !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
  
  I haven't really had any issues with them. That said, literally the thread above this one in all top hour has a bunch of people hoping Biden gets COVID and dies...so there is that.
  https://hexbear.net/post/515198
  
  You want to form your own opinion, so go check it out.
  
  I don't know personally, but a commenter above wrote:
  I appreciate that they help stomp out fascist, racist, and anti-trans rhetoric on Lemmy.
  So if there's any truth in that, the backlash could be a bunch of whiney butthurt Nazis.
  
  I’ve been asking for links to examples, in posts about online trends, for about a decade now and nobody has ever even once risen to the challenge.
  At this point any claim of the form “The internet has X happening on it” I just immediately dismiss until I see evidence. Which I never do.

Weirdly intense and antagonistic internet communists.
Like, picture that guy you avoided conversations with when you were 19.
- Because, Id wager, their userbase is primarily edgy leftist teenagers, really kind of like if 4chan was left and not right.
  
  Can confirm, was an edgy leftist teenager on hexbear right when it was started – after r/chapotraphouse was banned.
  
  They're so far to the left I don't even consider them left anymore. They've fully wrapped around to be indistinguishable from the right (but not racist so much as intensely totalitarian).
- Hey! I'm the guy people avoided conversations with and I take offense to this comparison.

A social network that was formed as a fork of lemmy, before lemmy had really entered the fediverse (tho they were planning to). Both Lemmy and Hexbear had communists among their founders, but the Hexbear devs found it more... Central to their objectives. When Lemmy federated, Hexbear didn't. It planned to initially, but ended up being pretty satisfied of being a small, yet centralized social network, basically a communist Reddit. But the idea of joining the Fediverse appeared tempting once again with the boom that happened on Mastodon when the muskrat ate the bird, and to a greater extent when Reddit changed their API policy and lost a lot of the user's trust, causing many redditors to move to Lemmy.
Hexbear devs then worked to essentially make it a Lemmy instance, but there were always disagreements about who to federate with. They first federated with Lemmygrad and Lemmy .ml. Lemmy .world quickly blocked them. They temporarily federated with sh .itjust .works, but this wasn't well received on either side, so this was soon undone.
Ideology wise, pretty much everyone on Hexbear is some kind of communist. However, altho the "tankie", pro-russia type is often seen, it's not that homogeneous (there are even anarchist channels over there), arguably less than lemmygrad.
- I think this is the most fair shakedown I've seen so far
- Everything you said was accurate except the pro Russia = tankie stuff. I just want to be able to say that the kulaks deserved and such without being tied to capitalist trash like Putin...
  
  Yeah, I didn't mean to say that all tankies are pro current Russia, but just that there is a specific type of tankies that is, and these are often the annoying ones.
  
  Yeah by pro Russia they meant pro current governement of Russia, aka Putin
- They've beefed with a few other instances they tried federating with too such as Lemmy.ee and lemmy.blahaj.zone. Their user base tends to be a bit more abrasive than most Lemmy instances, making federation controversial even among similarly minded instances such as lemmy.blahaj.zone

Ever wanted to be talked down to by a 14 year old alt-right sociopath who pretends to support lgbt so they can stealthily insult liberals and blame western whites for how China is?
Edit; downvote more, at the end of the day you're still a hexbear 🤢
- Gods yes, it's all I've ever wanted. Do they do birthdays?
  
  No, celebrations of any kind are western propaganda. Your question has been audited and was found to have negative implications towards the state. Shock troops have been dispatched to your most recent location, have a great day, comrade.
- holy fuck I laughed out loud at this outside by myself at ten to 1am .. I didnt know what hexbear was, soooo, I reported a post for saying that anyone who ever supports a democratic candidate in america needs to be hit by a truck, and that violence needs to befall them, so the mod I reported it to posted my username and announced I had reported it in a comment to that post. people then piled on saying how I was a hypocrite and deserved violence brought against me, because violence has been done by cops agains homeless and trans people. also, that all I care about is getting brunch
  
  What kind of brunch were you eating at the time?
- Like mainland 9gag with a veil of solidarity.
  For the majority who don't know, 9gag is a Hong Kong based meme recycling organization run by people who are equally intolerant of lactose and melanin.
- ☠️☠️☠️
- These accusations specifically are always so wild from you libs. Blue anon through and through.
  
  Any arguments or only name calling?
  
  Donald Trump is a communist.
- 20 percent of hexbears user base is trans. I dont know why liberals feel so comfortable misgendering all of them when they say shit like this.
  Also, because you called them alt right, equating them with the alt right: https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
  
  Where was the misgendering in that comment?
  
  Any solid proof of that or just self reports?
  
  I don't believe you.
  Donald Trump is a communist and he said you're wrong. Sorry.

A lemmy instance full of trolls and people celebrating chinese and russian fascism in the name of socialism
- i once read a thread where they were saying to defederate from everyone. then why federate in the first place
  
  Their instance, I gather, is set to NOT federate with anyone by default, and their admins need to manually add other instances to their federation. Most instances are set to federate by default, so they need to un-federate with another instance here and there.
  
  Some whine that they did not want federation in the first place and the mods did it without their consent. Slightly ironic considering they do not like democracy (although they claim you can have democracy without voting...somehow).
- Equating communists you disagree with with fascism is holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream Jewish scholars of the holocaust.
  https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
  
  thanks for sharing. Quite an interesting read.
  I don‘t think the linked text supports your argument at all. Calling the chinese fascists in light of the way they treat their citizens in general and the genocide against the Uyghurs especially is not at all comparable to eastern European nations revering people that murdered yews.
  
  Jewish people arent the only people who ever were victim to fascism.... To say china commits a holocaust is holocause trivialization. To say it is a fascist country is not.

Its a 6 sided bear, the peak of the polygonal phylogeny.
Monomouse
Duodugong
Traye-aye
Quadferret
Pentacoyote
Hexbear
Heptaherpeton - this is the furthest we've discovered in the polygonal phylogeny but research indicates the likely existence of an octorca as well
- Octoria are scientifically impossible, the grazing territory requirements alone for a sustainable breeding colony would be immense. Any reports of them in the wild are either misidentified pairs of quadferrets copulating, or hoaxes perpetuating the psuedoscience.
  
  quadferrets copulating
  That's where you're messing up. Those are pentacoyotes, not quadferrets. The contact side between two polygonimals mating is actually obscured, so the actual number of sides in a copulation configuration is the sum of the sides of all involved polygonimals - 2. Therefore the octorca could not be two mating quadferrets, but could be two pentacoyotes, or a chain of duodugongs.

I've read all the comments here and still don't have a clue what a hexbear is
- So you know the Lemmy instance Lemmy.world? Well, there is another instance called hexbear... Which is full of hardcore, Stalinist communist. And every user of every other instance hates them
  
  Why do people always put labels on them as if that's the reason they are idiots. It's not. There just a bunch of obnoxious trolls that have made it their mission to annoy other instances.
  
  Ah. So like the famous lines „everything that touches the light“ „what about the dark spot over there?“ „don’t ever go there“
  
  Why would I put is so much energy as to hate them?
  
  They're marxists-leninists, not stalinists...
  
  Not true! I love that bunch.
  
  “ And every user of every other instance hates them”
  This doesn’t even rise to the level of pseudo intellectual.
  
  Naw they're funny af
- It's a lemmy instance full of edge lords who are pro-totiltarian communism. The bulk of them think Mao and Stalin were good. Deny any atrocities committed by USSR/China. Also, for some reason tend to be super pro Russia. Due to NATO being on the opposite side they support Russia and call Ukrainian/NATO nations Nazis.
  
  I'd like to meet these people. I wonder if they're real.
- Instance is hexbear.net, check it out for yourself, doesn't work in browser for me without an account but it does work in liftoff without one for some reason.
  It is weird that a lot of commenters here want to tell you what they are but don't say how to find this information by yourself.
  
  Then they might find out the "they're all just tankies!" line is a lie, there's shitty people on all instances, just so happens this one leans very left beyond neo liberalism and therefore it's bad!
  Throw in that they all totally support Putin and Mao and don't really support LGBT! And you've got most normies nodding along with defederating

my problem with this thread; u can't tell who is actually communist and authoritarian, and who is just authoritarian
- Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist/"Left" Authoritarian Communism is just authoritarian nationalist state capitalism that uses classist rhetoric instead of (or as well as) racist rhetoric.
  And before people call me a tankie: Anything authoritarian is trash-tier shit.
  
  Lol a tankie would never admit that. No threat of you getting called a tankie.
  
  No you got it.
  
  Equating communists you disagree with with fascism is holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream Jewish scholars of the holocaust.
  https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
- The difference is whether you get sent to a concentration camp or a gulag.
  Oh, I guess they are pretty similar...
  
  Uh, depending on the concentration camp, not really.
  I don't want to defend gulags but they didn't have poison shower rooms or child corpse disposal staff.
  Working your slaves to death sometimes, sure, but you mostly came out the gulag alive.
  Broken, but alive. Historians estimate that of about 20 million people sent to the gulags about 1.5 million died in them.
  Which is a horrific example of compliance through terror but not quite the same thing as an extermination program.
  Don't minimize the Holocaust on your way to agree with everyone else that tankies are delusional assholes.
- Right wing auth isn't exactly better than left wing auth
  
  Same crap in the end.
  
  Equating communists you disagree with with fascism is holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream Jewish scholars of the holocaust.
  https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
- They don't give a shit about worker enfranchisement - they're all right wing fascists, it's just that some of them are red-coded.

I don't really care about the hexbears either way, the ones I've seen haven't been too bad though I've heard there are some really bad ones
What bothers me more is how quick mods seem to be to shut down any discussion about them whatsoever
Went on the Lemmy matrix to ask about them one time and I just got one guy flooding the chat with "you should observe for yourself and form your own opinions"
- Many of them call for the imprisonment and death of everyone that disagrees with them who they label as fascist.
- It's because a lot of Lemmy admins are actually on the take from dumbass tankies. Actually the two Lemmy devs are tankies too, or so the word on the street says.
  No one wants to even consider that, though.
- Yeah it's such a terrible suggestion, or maybe just like do that?
  
  Who said I wasn't also doing that? It's not mutually exclusive, just a quick way to get a read on people's sentiment towards them and to try to figure out why people shut down discussion about them so consistently

A large part of it is a fanbase of Chapo Trap House which has a particular brand of humor that is rampant with esoteric inside jokes that are vulgar as a point, let alone to the extreme.
That humor, especially without that frame of reference, usually offends your average internet denizen.
- Hexbear is also filled with authoritarians which isn't very funny but still offensive
  
  Sure, but to my point: if you don't know or are unaware of the kind of humor associated with their core userbase, you might not be able to tell the difference at face value.
  I maintain the best way for the uninformed to try and understand Hexbear users is to learn about or listen Chapo Trap House regardless of your politics/agreement. It puts a lot of their antics into context.

Edge lords who couldn't handle someone telling them they were wrong, so they had big sook and defedederated after a day.
- Didn't .world preemptively defenderate from them?
  
  Yes, they did. Are they going to admit .world couldn't handle being told they wrong and had a big sook instead now?
- Oh no, please don't go...

Ay man if your client lets you block entire instances maybe consider blocking this one

They are a cult who worship a bear god. The bear god name is Hex. So their religion is called Hexbear.
- Six perfect corners.
  
  That's not very straight
  
  Are we also going to invoke the Time Cube?
- This is the best definition. Hail Hex.

Left-wing social site (might be fedi, never bothered checking) for leftists who are way too edgy for mainstream leftist communities.
- Rather than edgy, they are straight up tankies (aka, russia and URSS apologists)
  
  Wait, let me get this right
  too far right: trump fangirls, fascists and Elon stans
  too far left: Russia-stans and pro-communism-with-corruption groups?

What are the odds of incoming drama in this post about tankies? I'll say -110.
- Whoops.

I saw what I think was a post by an admin asking if lemmy world should defederate with hexbear and I don't recall ever seeing hexbear posts or super trolly or racist or commie posts/comments. I'm with you, op. I have no idea what's going on, and I suspect it's better that way.
- Your instance have hexbear defederated, this is why you don't see their posts. Try another instance if you want to see them.
  
  Try another instance if you want to see them.
  Which you don't.
- World preemptively defederated them, which made a lot of people happy and is generally regarded as a good move
  
  Everybody liked that.

Have a bunch of them made alts on Lemmy .ml? I feel like this comment section ripe with bears that are on .ml. I suppose being able to make alts is one of the advantages of being decentralized.
- lemmy.ml is self described communists https://lemmy.ml/post/55143
  
  Not all communists spam pig testicles. The annoying part of a hexbear users is emoji spam, and dogpileing on any post they don't like.
  
  Lemmy.ml ≠ the Lemmy developers

Pure garbage. Don't waste your time.

If you squat naked over a mirror and look down, that's the eye of the bear.

I think it may be referring to the people who blame all social ills on “corporate greed” and think that belong leftist is exclusively being anti-capitalist. I think this may go along with some pro-Putin/pro-Xi viewpoints, possibly because they believe that “the west” is bad and capitalist, Andy anyone who opposes it is anti-capitalist and good.
I’m glad I know who these people are, so I can be more careful of them. Both here and on Reddit it felt like I was trapped in a bubble with these guys.
- Tankies are politically incomprehensible, because they claim to be queer-friendly communists, but support insanely queer-phobic bourgeois dictators like Xi and Putin.
  They are vulnerable to the same online radicalization as alt-right bubbles. They say things that get increasingly insane, because it gets them more and more internet points and attention, until they start believing their own outrageous hyperbole.
  For example, I have one tankie currently trying to unironically argue with me that the UK is a vassal state to the US Empire. Like we're living in Star wars and he's the rebel alliance that is bringing down with evil empire with lemmy shitposting.
  
  At this point we need to assume they're Russian shills and the queer-friendly stuff is a ruse to have a fallback to always claim the moral high-ground
  
  For example, I have one tankie currently trying to unironically argue with me that the UK is a vassal state to the US Empire.
  Why are you posting your Ls lmao
- I have to ask... Is DMV.social related to the actual DMV?
  
  It stands for DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

Is it like a furry instance or something?
- A furry instance would be quite preferable. Furries tend to be pretty chill
  
  I just assumed from the name yknow..
- Tankie instance
  
  https://imgflip.com/i/7y1n53

Honestly I just fucking hate the stickers. Once in a while is fine but EVERY FUCKING COMMENT

Real

Think they’re way overhated, yes some of the users can troll a bit too much but they’re generally fine and I appreciate that they help stomp out fascist, racist, and anti-trans rhetoric on Lemmy.
- In what way is sucking the Chinese Governments boot any better than Facism?
  
  Fuck the CCP
  
  It's not. The Chinese government is an abusive autocracy that doesn't respect the "rights" of its people and answers to nothing and no one other than Xi and profits and power. Those three things are king.
  Marxists and fascists are two sides of the same coin. They may have somewhat different end goals, but they're alike in having zero regard for the democratic will of the people. May every Hexbear troll be accursed.
  
  Also it's disingenuous to pretend china isn't at all fascist.
  
  China is good and fascism is bad hope that clears things up for you
- They openly brigade submissions and comments on other instances and harass anyone they don't agree with. It's not just some of the users it's almost entirely the point of the community existing. Their comments are almost entirely sarcastic, and add nothing to conversation or even debate.
  Feel free to show us one single instance where they "stamped out fascist, racist, [or] anti-trans rhetoric" because I don't believe you.
  
  https://lemmy.one/post/2831169 Think I linked this right (haven’t tried since I switched to voyager). I can have more later this week if you want but it’s Labor Day weekend here and im drinking with family and you said literally one instance.
  
  harass anyone they don't agree with.
  Can you show an example of why of this? More sounds like you lost an argument.
- I honestly have no idea what they stand for. Their posts are so confusing and non coherent. I'm sure a lot of it is because sarcasm doesn't work with text unless you have context. But without context, all it comes across as is a bunch of trolls who just love to hate
  I couldn't care less about them
  
  They are a tossup of ccp communists, hard left leninists and general anti westerners. They constantly bully people to remind them that they are smarter than you and they are eager to showcase this. They post screenshots of comments they want to target on their main page and links so they can brigade. If you even bother interacting, they will spam you with the intent of getting you to peer into their carefully chosen pieces of information to steer you toward communism. They are a nuisance and i have learned that if you can easily bait them into saying awful things.
  
  Written sarcasm is an art form that few people truly understand.
  
  They’re a left wing group that uses a lot of sarcasm and trolling. It can be a bit off putting to most but a lot of it comes from the fact that most people don’t bother reading or looking beyond US propaganda so it can be frustrating talking to people like that. Personally I try to come at things a bit more openly but I can understand the frustration of dealing with people that don’t put in much effort to understand the nuances of geopolitical topics.
- I'll just leave this here https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/2796891
  
  What is wrong with people
  
  I don’t support messages like that but I’ve seen similar messages from racists and fascists from other instances too, does that mean every instance where a small portion of the users DM fucked up shit should be defederated?
- I was called a bigot by 7 or 8 different people because I dared to suggest that when someone finishes transitioning, they are no longer trans.
  They are a man or woman, or whatever else they identify as.
  That made me a bigot.
  They don't help stomp out anything, they turn people against trans people. They literally give conservatives ammunition.
  
  I believe trans refers to gender assigned at birth, so unless someone detransitions or time travels to change their birth gender I don't think fully transitioning can make you not trans.

Best instance on lemmy!!

You know, Bob Altemeyer wrote a book about rwa, if anyone’s not read it, it’s illuminating. At this juncture, I’ve had way too much Nazi authoritarian propaganda, I’d like to hear the other, and be free to ask questions and form my own opinions. That hope was doomed from the jump, and I should’ve guessed.
- Eh, I thought the same, but then after reading their comments, it's like going from one authoritarian extremist ideology to another authoritarian extremist ideology. Especially when both pro Nazis and pro commies seem to both boil down to being just pro Putin fanatics. I'm wondering if the propaganda doesn't come from the same place trying to capture both spectrums.
  
  If you’ve read the book, hard right authoritarianism and hard left authoritarianism are both right wing authoritarianism.
  Eta: oh wow. That’s insane.

snarky know-it-alls that believe that they possess the most advanced political analysis derived almost exclusively from parroting reddit comments which have slowly turned their brains into velveeta
but anyway, enough about Lemmitors.
Hexbears are actually a nice bunch if you read through the comments on the current megathread. They just have very little tolerance for self-satisfied libs that congratulate themselves for thumping the Washington consensus-approved ideologies that most of hexbear graduated from years ago. Even I find it difficult to read lemmy comments because they're legitimately what I would've written as a teenage redditor in the late 2000s.
- Your first paragraph calls the rest of Lemmy arrogant and stupid. Next paragraph you say in one sentence that you're "actually a nice bunch", then spend the rest of it criticising and patronising the rest of Lemmy for not being as smart as you.
  Then you wonder why people have a problem tolerating you.
  
  let's be real, if my comment ended at the fist paragraph you would've upvoted and moved on. Multiple comments in this thread belittle hexbear users as children as well, but you don't have as much of negative reaction against that.
- They're just fascists LARPing as socialists. They're not taking down the man. They're supporting the man, just that the man they're supporting is oppressing people in another country. They're either working for an oppressive government or they're privileged white kids that think their internet image matters more than the hardships of people in the oppressive countries the support.
  
  And also a bunch of trolls who think "dunking on" anyone who remotely disagrees with the tiniest things is a personality trait. Their entire stated purpose of federating was to brigade and harass people enmasse.
  
  Equating communists you disagree with with fascism is holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream Jewish scholars of the holocaust.
  https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory

It’s a bunch of woke lefties that want to tax billionaires and shove their gay agenda down my throat. They hate honest hard working landlords and CEOS and shill for the lazy poors.
- Gay people existing isn't shoving it down your throat tho.