I've noticed a lot of :morshupls: and :debatebro-l: from carnists going unmoderated in this community even after being reported and was wondering why. I decided to have a look at the list of mods to find out, and discovered the following:
- @ella has not made a post or comment on Hexbear since December 2021.
- @DashEightMate has not made a post or comment on Hexbear since May 2021.
- @Dirtbag has never made a post or comment on Hexbear.
- @Kanna posts or comments on a fairly regular basis - once a week or so - but this clearly isn't enough for the only active mod of this community.
If c/vegan is going to be in any sense useable as a place for vegans to discuss our ideas in a friendly environment, rather than yet another platform on which we must battle carnists at every turn, we're going to need some new blood on the mod team.
I don’t post much in c/vegan and I am in fact a vegan. For the life of me I can’t understand why someone would go to a vegan channel on a forum of comrades and solidarity to just be a jerk. That’s not cool. Being a leftie as is about being cool with your friends. Being a leftie vegan is about being cool with your friends of all forms of life. Hexbear is too small to causing a ruckus amongst ourselves. Be cool :tofu-cool:
That's not true though. Carnists will respond in threads that aren't even close to bait
There's drama all over hexbear all the time, what are you talking about? And meat eaters aren't just "responding," they're coming in and engaging in wrecker behavior and trolling. That wouldn't tolerated in any other comm either.
lol. Bait apparently = lamenting the fact that carnists can't stand that we exist. (And the flies, as you call them come in and prove that very point every time).
Also what you said is not even true, considering that a post asking for better moderation has the most comments in quite a long ass time. And the recent runner up is only because a wrecker troll insisted on coming in and proving the point of the post.
For my part I will admit that I keep falling into the trap of thinking that otherwise seemingly intelligent communists would be more self aware, but nope.
Good point! Maybe I am just ignorant to it, but I have not seen much “drama” on this site. Some heated discussion and conversation for sure but honestly I respect this site is pretty solid (in my experience), luckily I have mostly people at least come to healthy-ish conclusions or least just stopped talking to each rather than full flame war.
Baiting should be reserved for the libs and CHUDS. Not comrades.
You feel more kinship to the murderers than their victims. Carnists are inherently reactionary
As always UlyssesT dropping knowledge!
Still, it’s rather odd to me that someone on an absurdly niche website like Hexbear would go out of their way to be salty. Everyone on this site is pretty tight, and the vegan hypetrain is rather welcoming and not scolding (from what I have seen at least).
Just so weird to go vegan hangout and be mean, when you could at least learn something. I dont know my larger point is here, but I guess I just want Hexbears users to be cool
:hexbear-retro: :solidarity: :hexbear-retro:
I see that. In that case I would just not engage them. Basic internet protocol, don’t engage those trolls. Even if they are supposedly sharing our same general principles. If they aren’t coming correct and in good faith don’t even take the bait. Just get some baked peas 🫛 snacks and keep it moving. I’ll be sure to post in c/vegan going forward though. :vegan-v:
I'm sorry I haven't been properly modding the comm. Fwiw I'm active on other accounts currently and mostly use this for moderation.
I've gone through phases of being open to discussing veganism on this site, but tbh each time ends in me ready to quit the site and genuinely hating the majority of carnists here (more than I already do 😎). That doesn't mean I should avoid moderation though, so I'll get back to it. Sorry for any shit that stayed up longer than it should.
Anyway every vegan user on this site is beyond based and I appreciate you :avoheart:
You are literally doing the most unpleasant job possible. You could be spending 1/10th the time on it that you're doing now, and I'd still kiss your shoes in thanks.
Thanks so much for all you do.
Haha I appreciate that. I'm going to make an effort to use it more though. When we were doing recipe weeks, shitposting, and efforting posting regularly here this comm was pretty great. It would be nice to see that again
Hey, glad to hear from you. I hope I didn't come off too negatively toward you. This wasn't meant to be a callout post - you shouldn't have to do all the modding in this community yourself!
Same thing from me, @Kanna . Your work and dedication here, especially with all you have to put up with, it's very much appreciated, I hope that was clear from my comment. Also, I know it's locked, but your "Reminder:" post is :chefs-kiss:
Edit: Also the same to other mods and former mods - I didn't mean to demean anybody by calling you place-holders. I just didn't see any activity, but I can completely understand the need to distance yourselves or even just give up and do something else. The shit you have to put up with I can only imagine is seriously taxing on mental health.
I am one of the users in that list!! Fwiw I don't want to mod it properly because last time the shit people were throwing at me basically made me want to kill myself, I got completely disillusioned with leftism in general for a while
But maybe someone stronger than me can come along and take it 😎 I am admittedly not a very stable person
I'm an ex mod as well. If the admins aren't willing to do something about reactionary vegans site-wide, some more comm mods won't do a thing.
I hope you're doing better now comrade
Insane rambling DO NOT READ
They do ban the bad ones now, check modlog, but fuck this is why I got so disillusioned, they are everywhere, I don't think there's much they or anyone can do, which is why I only use this site with dumb bit accounts like this one and have stopped trying to maintain any coherent identity here, or anywhere leftist online -- to be clear this isn't a Hexbear issue, it's an Online Left issue. I just don't have it in me to care anymore, fuck, knowing people here would probably kill me or at least completely socially ostracise me in person because I'm not white and a principled vegan made me lose all hope :sadness-abysmal:
Talk about treat defenders. I just have no hope in a left movement when criticism of something somebody enjoys leads them to say the shit they say, or throw my whole identity as somebody who is non-white into doubt because "Vegans Are Just Dumb Westeners" or "The Gringos Are Wild For This One 🤣🤣🤣"
Insane rambling over. Need to talk about this in therapy istg.
They banned us instead of the anti vegan wreckers when vcj tried to migrate here. That was the big moment where they could have changed both hb and vcj for the better
Sure, but that was two years ago. I don't think that old team is even involved anymore.
Oh no the new team is great but the years of shitty site culture don't change that fast
Just a month ago the mere mention of veganism made dozens of reactionary assholes jump out the woodwork calling all vegans racist. I gave up on this site too tbh, but we have a nice vegan theory club on discord if you want to join
woodwork calling all vegans racist
I think I know what you're talking about (saw it somewhere other than hb), holy shit, it's such a bad argument, carnies should feel bad for even trying it.
Couldn't disagree more. Let the carnists post their bullshit here and get banned, we'll end up banning a lot of reactionaries who would have gone unnoticed otherwise. Same principal which applies to any other comm on the site.
I completely agree with @Dryad. If you're a vegan, then I figure it's fairly safe to assume you think veganism is a positive thing and that it would likewise be generally a positive thing if more people became vegan (or at least examined their rationalizations for being carnists). If that is the case (and maybe it's not?) then wouldn't you want to advocate for veganism, especially on a leftist site where a lot of people are genuinely receptive to it? I'm not talking about evangelizing or that kind of shit, going into other comms and pressing the issue, but rather saying openly "hey, we're here, we're part of this community, we're committed and principled Marxists, and we have reasoned arguments for the importance of, maybe even necessity for veganism within any radical leftist movement." Sequestering us away from the rest of the community is the opposite of that. We shouldn't have to protect the delicate sensibilities of the meat eaters who are offended by our very presence, who are themselves a minority, albeit a loud and obnoxious one. Calling out that nonsense when they come into the vegan comm is a good thing for the health of the vegan community, the sanity of it members, and the whole site as a larger community.
Hexbear and even the CTH sub before it were never about "being civil," (sorry @civility) but rather pointing out how detrimental the demand for civility actually is to left radicalism and progressive change in general. This community, though it of course has evolved in a lot of ways, never shied away from trolls coming in and doing wrecker shit. Point out their foolishness, point and laugh, give them PPB, and then ban them, done. That's what should happen with c/vegan too, it's just that the whole thing falls apart if there aren't enough active mods. ButtBidet's post would have made for a fun little discussion if a mod had been around to nip the wrecker stuff in the bud. To rephrase the same sentiment again... We shouldn't have to hide what we say in our own comm to appease the fragile sensibilities of a reactionary contingent of carnists that are still on this site.
You mentioned earlier today that we should assume our comrades are well-intentioned, so I'm taking that advice and assuming you really do want what's best for the community; hexbear as a whole as well as the many vegans here. But trying to make veganism a separate, self-contained community in ways other comms aren't, hiding away whatever content comes from it so carnists don't get up in a tizzy, would I think be demonstrably harmful to both.
The reactionaries might outnumber us, but this isn't a democracy. This site is (theoretically, in the rules) aligned with animal liberation. Multiple users have caught site-wide bans already for being anti-vegan. I don't see any reason we should seek to reduce the number of reactionary anti-vegans that happens to. I don't want to "coexist" with them, I want them to show themselves and get banned.
This is all my fault. I posted vegancirclejerk level memes 4 days in a row. Sorry all, I was just annoyed with the discourse on left/liberal Twitter and I needed a safe outlet for my feelings.
I just want to thank you BeamBrain for writing up this post. I was literally thinking about saying the exact same thing when I came on and saw you already had. After a number of things that happened today, it's been frustrating and disappointing to see how much of a problem hexbear still has with reactionary anti-veganism.
I remember c/vegan being a pretty vibrant place a while back* and it would be nice to see that and be part of it again. But for that to happen there has to be a highly active mod team. From what I know of @Kanna, she's great, and she used to be very active and helped keep this place functional and healthy, and was active all over the site in general. But even if she were still as active as she used to be, that's a huge burden for one person (since the other three are essentially place holders at this point).
Apologies for rambling, but I did feel pretty dejected about all that stuff earlier, so it makes me really happy to see this post and I hope that something comes of it.
Imagine telling someone to touch grass when your username is literally spawned from the username of the person you're replying to, lmao
Thank you for bolstering my case that this community needs more active mods!
this is indistinguishable from the vomit spewed by the worst trolls we get here
you can dislike someone without being the biggest asshole in the world.
