User shares their experience with being a tankie on Hexbear. Hexbear reacts
And this is the Hexbear reply thread. Please be very wary of the extremism and bigotry and know that they are largely defederated
Could we maybe keep hexbear drama to !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works ?
It's becoming hard to follow with threads talking about hexbear posted from one community (!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works ) to another (here)
The self-started purpose of hexbear is to "dunk" on people. That's not a bug - it's a feature. We need not be shocked, Shocked I say, SHOCKED when they do what they said that they will.
It would help immensely if a label could be applied, so that people do not wander over there without first being warned. Not that it's mandatory, but it's like porn: fine if that's what you wanted, though a bit surprising if not.
Hexbear doesn't actually dunk on people, though. I've never seen them actually explore outside their safespace.
Hehe, they dunked on me when I first joined Lemmy, and accidentally responded to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse, while browsing on All. Never having heard of it, I had no idea what it was.
I said something to the effect that at least Biden was keeping gas prices down, and they DID NOT LIKE THAT ONE BIT!!! It was weird to keep opening my notifications and continue to get replies for WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding (I forget if I deleted the comment even - normally I never do such, especially if I am wrong b/c it helps to preserve a record for posterity, so at most I would put text in strikethrough format and add an Edit statement).
And that's on me, for going into their space and not even posting but still commenting in a post. Although... we do not control others only ourselves, and isn't it a bit on us if we federate ChapoTrapHouse, thereby feeding users across the entire Fediverse this content? Like literally, if an instance offers CSAM, then even though hosted elsewhere we would be the ones in trouble for feeding their data to our users.
Anyway, whether their dunks are successful or not is besides the point - they at least like to talk about people in a negative manner, as they themselves claim is their purpose for existing.
It’s extremely clear to me that hexbear is a Russian propaganda tool. The twisted logic they employ and the over willingness of the users to spend lots of time pushing a narrative has made it all too obvious. I sincerely hope no one else falls into that trap through the fediverse. It needs to be defederated.
I’ve witnessed friends who got into the alternative news/Q Anon shit similarly start to fully believe the propaganda. They parrot all the Russian talking points about Ukraine and believe Trump is the only one who can save the country from oblivion. They think they’re hearing insider information, that it’s the actual truth, and the media does nothing but lie. It’s attractive because they think they’re getting secretive truth that most other people aren’t hearing. They’re getting bullshit.
The Russian war on hearts and minds is going swimmingly well for them. They’ve gotten fascists elected all over the world. It is time for their targets to wake up from their drug induced haze and recognize the true reality of the situation.
Russia has surely moved on from hexbear.net though, to e.g. lemmy.ml or even lemmy.world, wherever they can get an audience. i.e., Hexbear has been started so now it can be trusted to carry forward on its own.