I think most of the problems with Hexbear are pretty much just unavoidable features of the internet, in particular, the fact that every person is reduced to whatever their last take was. If you say anything negative about a person, group, or nation, then you hate them, and if you say anything positive then you love them. So for example, I asked if people were on board with saying that Russia is bad and I got called a lib, and I'm pretty sure most people here are critical of Russia, but there was nothing in my specific post to communicate a more nuanced understanding of the issue.

Generally when I get frustrated with Hexbear I take a break and look at what the rest of the world is doing, and sometimes that perspective makes me appreciate Hexbear's perspective a bit more. Like, I had the feeling that the site was making too many justifications for Putin and downplaying or laughing at the tragedy of what's happening, and then I realized that there is basically zero interest in understanding the Russian perspective at all in the mainstream, and attempting to do so will get you branded as a Russian bot spreading misinformation, and if I start thinking about how I would be inclined to respond to that, I end up sounding a lot like the people on Hexbear I was previously frustrated with.

I think there's a lot of stuff that you could say to people irl that would be pretty innocuous, but if you say it online, then the community's "antibodies" will kick into action. Due to a higher degree of anonymity and the ease of coming-and-going compared to irl, those antibodies are debatably more necessary. So it's annoying if I, say, criticize China on LGBT rights see a bunch of people justify or downplay the issue, but I do also understand that if the conversation was happening irl then they probably wouldn't do that, because they would be talking to a flesh-and-blood human, instead of just trying to have the appropriate reaction to a section of text.

Btw, y'all know Michael Parenti took the position of patriotic socialism, right? Gave a whole speech on how his position was "Real patriotism" compared to "Superpatriotism." I'm not saying that that position is good or correct or that we should welcome it here, but I'm saying that we should understand the difference between an online community's "antibody" reaction, vs what it actually means when a flesh-and-blood human says it irl.