There are lots of servers that each tend to attract different styles
Fox Weiqi - Chinese server, the biggest, players tend to be strong at fighting but weaker at looking at the global position. Ranks are inflated, which is part of why I like playing there so I can be a higher rank lol. Rank up/down quickly. A little bit inconvenient to install.
PandaNet/IGS - Japanese server, like to build big frameworks. Uses Canadian time settings which are weird but generous. Rank up/down very slowly.
KGS - Old school Western server with a simple interface that hasn't been updated in like 30 years, because it works perfectly. Just people playing go and living in the moment without an ad in sight.
OGS (Online Go Server) - Western server, attracts a lot of beginners because it's the first thing to pop up when you google "online go server," but it has trouble retaining strong players. Has correspondence games. Somehow still has a Ukrainian flag in the logo.
GoQuest - Primarily used on mobile with short games on a smaller 9x9 board.
WBaduk - Korean server that, uh, also exists. Ranks are even more inflated than Fox I think.
Tygem - Chinese server that used to be fine but everyone hates it now because they turned the game pay-to-win game by allowing you to purchase AI-assistance during a game.
I hadn't actually heard of DGS before despite knowing all of those lol, but I don't usually play correspondence, although I preferred correspondence when I was just starting out.
Hey, news nerds, take a break from all the crazy stuff happening and hear about a little scandal from the world of Go.
A big international tournament, the LG Cup, just finished. The finals consisted of three games between Korean player Byun Sang-il and the famous Chinese player Ke Jie, who is #3 in the world, and has held the #1 spot before.
A rule was introduced about two weeks before the tournament to penalize players for placing a captured stone on the table instead of a bowl, where they can be more easily seen by the opponent, and which matters for keeping track of the score. In the Chinese ruleset, you don't keep track of captures, so Chinese players aren't used to being attentive to them. Korean players have complained about Chinese players "hiding" their stones, causing them to miscount the game, which is why the rule was made.
In game 2 of the finals, Ke Jie set a stone on the table, and his opponent called a ref, and he was penalized two points, which is substantial in pro game. However, Ke Jie made up the difference and was winning, until... he left another stone on the table. His opponent called a ref while he was up getting a drink of water, and this time the penalty was forfeiting the game.
Look at this nerd:
Ke Jie had won the first match, and he was ahead in the second, but his opponent won the third (actually, Ke Jie lost game 3 by the same rule, but he was far behind and may have done it intentionally). This little technicality decided the entire tournament. Rules are rules, but it's a very bullshit way to win, and it's very unsportsmanlike to put the trophy and prize money above the integrity of the game. People are pissed.
The good news is, you probably don't care about go, so you don't have to worry about this! You may now return to your regularly scheduled hellworld.
From what I've seen, some people seem to take it at face value. I think the main thing is just the average person not paying that much attention to US politics. Some people just like him because he's (objectively) funny. There are definitely people who see through it, but those who do also tend to see through the Democrats' shit and come out ambivalent. Many people oppose immigration in China (their situation is somewhat different) and aren't very supportive of LGBT+ rights, so they don't really fit into the camps of American politics.
Elon's Nazi salute could not have been timed better for Xiaohongshu. Days ago, the general view of him on there was still where it was back before he bought Twitter, when people just knew him as the cool science guy who makes rockets like Iron Man. The American users started giving some dirt on him, and then wham, the clip was all over the platform, it got taken down because of the Nazi salute, but you could not have asked for more something more concrete to show them.
My biggest criticism of this game is that you can't throw support Thälmann at the end unless you've put substantial effort into building relations with the KPD. It says something like, "They won't allow us to support them," like what?? Meanwhile, even if the bourgeois parties hate you, you can still support them into government to "maintain stability" while getting nothing in exchange!
I guess if you could simply support Thälmann, it would make stopping Hitler too easy and wouldn't be much of a game.
My favorite interactions are Chinese users coming up with really obvious solutions, and having to explain how much deeper the problem goes.
"Since your rent is high, why not just build high-rise apartments?" Because if we gave poor people a place to live it would bring down property values and investors and landlords would lose money so it's easier to harass them until they go to the next city and become someone else's problem.
"If you have all these taxes but poor social services, where does all the money go?" Not only does it not go to helping us, it goes towards the military and police who are actively harmful.
"If your groceries are expensive and you have lawns, why don't you just grow your own food?" Well, we should, but if you have a landlord they might not let you.
"Why do you put up with this instead of standing up against the rich?" Hey, you know that Marxist theory that you had to learn in school and thought was super boring? Well, while you were learning that, we're taught that communism is the devil, so instead everybody comes up with their own bizarre explanations of why things suck that usually involve siding with the ruling class against other countries, if not blaming minorities in our own country. And also people are so chauvinistic that they think any problem we have must be even worse everywhere else because "WE'RE #1!"
There so much stuff that I'm not used to explaining because everyone's just internalized the horrors and rationalized them away, and there's also so much stuff I wouldn't be able to say because people run away screaming if you try to apply Marxist framework to things.
There's gotta be a "Oh yeah, the time knife, we've all seen it" meme I can make out of this.
"We know this won't make some of you happy to hear however we believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics," a statement posted to both Willis' and the group's official pages reads. "Our song Y.M.C.A. is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost. Therefore, we believe it's now time to bring the country together with music which is why VILLAGE PEOPLE will be performing at various events as part of the 2025 Inauguration of Donald J. Trump."
There are certain toxic behaviors that aren't unique to them but are very common on the internet, so much so that it's easy to take them for granted. The behaviors I'm talking about, which often go hand in hand, are 1. Crybullying, and 2. Making shit up. What makes Hexbear good is that we do not tolerate either of those. What makes .world awful is that those behaviors are extremely common and widespread.
It's very common for a user on .world to get banned from some community for doing something shitty and then lie about why they got banned and go make a post whining about it, and the culture there lets them get away with it, nobody asks them for the receipts or goes looking for them and they instead give them sympathy and the benefit of the doubt, which bad actors take advantage of to spread drama. I have an .ml alt where my profile reads, "If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they are lying," and I have lost count of the number of times I have posted those words and been 100% correct.
That shit does not fly here. That's not to say we don't have drama sometimes, but if you try to pull that shit, we won't just dismiss it until you can show us the evidence of what really happened, we will dig up the evidence ourselves and if it turns out you're full of shit and just trying to stir the pot, we will mock and bully you for our own amusement before bringing down the banhammer, and we don't give a fuck if that makes us look like the bad guys or if you run off to another community to whine about us.
That might sound harsh, and admittedly there are times when that gets misdirected, but there's plenty of people who come here after hearing all kinds of terrible things about us and don't encounter any of it and wonder what all the fuss is about - because they simply don't do the whole crybully routine. This is a tradition going all the way back to the r/chapotraphouse days, when so many of us found our way to the community by way of hearing all the worst people on Reddit talking about how terrible it was.
That sort of thing is the biggest culture shock I experience when I'm on my alt, the way people will just casually lie, just constantly, to the point that you start to second-guess if they're even conscious of it or if they're just so used to running everything they say through a filter that makes them look better or more like a victim that they aren't even conscious of what they're doing - and the way people just let them do it, never fact-checking, giving them the benefit of the doubt, coming to their defense when they're called out. It's a very different environment that's way more succeptable to bad actors playing the social media game.
![Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/95738997-d971-4856-a4cb-c5c61598d694.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her] @ Zuzak @hexbear.net Posts 43Comments 1,287Joined 5 yr. ago
I'll take that as a resounding "no" lmao.