Is Hexbear dying?
Is Hexbear dying?
It feels like it's dying. Just anecdotally it seems like there have been less threads lately, less quality threads, and less discussion overall. More anecdotally I feel like the last couple of federation / defederation slap fights ended with many users leaving as well. I can think of a few who left because we were federating, some who left because we then subsequently defederated from lots of the fediverse, and then even a few who said they would leave if we didn't defederate and then left anyway when we did.
I feel like mostly overall I have seen very few new posters, and have seen less and less of some certain power posters.
Is this just a illusion or is this really what's happening. What is to be done?
Having been here since basically the beginning, I feel like it’s only gotten better. Some good changes I’ve noticed:
- Far more explicitly pro trans than it was initially
- Generally seems like more of an effort is made to be welcoming
- More activity and fun community events like movie nights
- Struggle sessions are more or less a joke and angry struggle sessions seem much more rare
Some things I miss:
- Posters like tervell, brookebaybee, UlyssesT, and others who aren’t as active or no longer around at all. If you’re out there reading this, come back and say hi!
- President Parrot has also disappeared from the public eye following the last scandal that was in the news. I think it was the one where President Parrot was naked or something.
- Also, this was kind of always an issue, but there are lots of smaller commas that could use more love.
Your experience on the site is largely determined by what sorting algo you use by default, IMO. (or what mega you browse if you primarily hang out in the megas)
If you use Hot sort you will see mostly new posts, but comments sections will be pretty empty. If you use Active, you'll see the posts with the most active comments section, but they'll all be like 12h to 2 days old. Etc.
So using Hot (or especially New), the comments can feel really empty: but you have the opportunity to be the one who starts the interesting discussions in the comments, or gets first dibs at the cheap jokes. Using Active you'll see the fullest comments sections and most struggle sessions
You can try both of them out using the selector on the front page, but if you want to change your default that's on your user settings page (in case it wasn't obvious)
I switched to Hot after we migrated and federated, but it took me a while to realize how drastically different the site experience was on Hot vs Active. I still default to Hot but sometimes I switch to Active to see slapfights or good posts that I missed
EDIT: Also to provide some data, our monthly active user count is actually up ~200 since 6 months ago. That's something like 10% growth? These things are hard to really judge precisely but I don't think there's any sign we're dying
This is making me think of that "the fandom is dying!!" disc-horse I was constantly exposed to in my brony days... By all means that still hasn't happened, even though I and all the people I know are far less preoccupied with cartoon horses than we used to be; and by all means Hexbear is not dying either.
It would appear that online communities are only truly dead when people stop asking or debating if they're dead/dying. As long as people are still asking or arguing about that, then that signals that there are people who want the community to live, and as long as there's even two people who want that, then the community is not dead. And when people stop arguing, then, well, so what? Nobody wanted the community to keep on living, anyways. All those people who were previously worrying about the death of the community have stopped worrying by that point, and it's exactly that which allowed them to leave.
It's like getting a Twilight Zone oracle's vision of your own deathbed, and seeing that you will die feeling fulfilled, like you have achieved more or less everything you ever wanted to do, made peace with everything you couldn't do, and have no unfinished business remaining. You see that you will die painlessly on a day when you're ready to die, and you see that people are going to miss you but that life will go on nonetheless. The oracle tells you that all of this is going to happen no matter what you do, and that it might be a year from now or half a century, that's for you to figure out...
...And then you spend the rest of your life worrying about the day you stop worrying.
It may be natural, but it's also a bit silly, isn't it? Like, you aren't really fearing death at that point.
As others have said, you're not the first to feel this way. I logged on yesterday for the first time in several months after thinking the same and I was pleasantly surprised at the level of activity. I've had mixed feelings about federation but feel like it paid off, though I mostly keep my feed to 'local'. Hell, 2024 might even be the year I finally make a post.
yea sorry about that, the bureau is in sort of "transitional phase" or so the higher ups tell me and that means we can only get 2 agents on this place at anytime which means its me, or some boomer asshole in DC or some dumbass intern fresh out of harvard, which means we cant post as much
Sorry I didn't mean to shit up the site, mb.
Unfortunately, UlyssesT left to go touch grass and isn't likely to return for some time, if at all.
But I think the site's fine. We got that one new power user, demoncracy (whose apparently gone now lmao), hanging around now. Probably some others I don't recognize as easily because their avatar doesn't stand out so much.
It's because our "Xibucks" got reallocated to prioritize developing "new quality productive forces". So people don't have as much time to post.
I feel you. I hate scrolling through page after page of threads that are just a news article link with no commentary, no posts.
A lot of our content is essentially "hexbear reacts to [current event]" and then "[current event] meta posts", and current events are in a lull or we've exhausted all there is to say about Trump, Biden, Palestine, climate change, etc.
At some point, hexbear probably will die. Think of how many forums you've posted on before here, how many are still around? I don't want it to, I have nowhere else I want to post, but it'll happen. And then we'll
and do something elseI've always preferred commenting to posting but I'm trying to change. I think i noticed a drop from other instances defedding and users blocking, (i suspect astrotrurfers have done this purposefully) and as a separate issue i recall a few effort posters left around the same time.
I have accts elsewhere besides here so i can connect with the libs who are so terrified of us anyway, and come back here to recharge my batteries with my homies.
I like this spot and where it's at
You'll cowards need to post more
This thing coasts. I haven’t seen much change
We also all tend to turn over accounts for opsec so it could be a lot of those regulars are still around (except BMF come back we miss you bby)
No it seems fine
come back bmf, they don't appreciate you on the trueanon sub
Yes and no. Hexbear as a political project is more or less dead. It's been that way since the first year or so. It's more or less just a club for commie shitposting now. I used to do organizing/theory on Hexbear, now I just use it for non-political posting.
Hexbear, barring some huge shift, will stay around this size for the next few years and experience a slow decline until shutdown. It is a site just past its peak experiencing a slow fall to obscurity that all things must go through eventually.
It used to be around 500 daily users , now it's at 900. So, it's not decreasing, but maybe not increasing by as much I guess.
Yes
I'm not on hexbear because of the federation issues, I still enjoy the instance from my
.mlaccount. Not a poster thoughThis whole place has turned into /c/BadPosting lately.
It's an election year with a profoundly unpopular president, there should be plenty of fodder
I would like to say
I'm having more fun and being more engaged with the site than ever
I will never log off.
No
It’s caught the Dutch Elm Disease
that depends, does netcraft confirm?
There are supposedly 960 daily active users, and yet I am not receiving 960 upbears on my posts. Interesting.
Yes, but like this:
Oh shit of fuck.. is hexbear dot net getting "degrowthed"?
when things feel bleak, i don't feel like posting, i just feel like passively consuming
