20
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
20 points (100.0% liked)
the_dunk_tank
15881 readers
567 users here now
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
It's simple, I see Hexbears that I have spent the last THREE YEARS posting with, and I upvote.
do lemmygrad users get your upvotes? ๐ ๐
Yes
Oh cool so people frome other instances can have their pronouns but just choose not to. Good to know! How did you set yours up? I only know the Hexbear way
it's just in your profile settings, for you on hexbear the displayname is locked (because that's what hexbear uses to enforce the pronoun tag), but for me I can just enter whatever I want
Neat! Its interesting to see the decisions other instances have made (and what choices there were to make in the first place). Thanks for your time
since lemmygrad has an application to get in and specifically includes this question
it's never been a big concern for lemmygrad because the admins just reject any applications that aren't up to snuff
Like, we all know each other and have an ACTUAL COMMUNITY. Of course we do.
These liberals see each other as nothing, remember nobody, and build no unique culture of their own. They have no relationships with each other. They don't get it. We actually like each other. I care about people here you liberal losers.
@randint@lemm.ee I want you to read this.
You need to understand that we've all been here 3 years already, we know each other, care about each other, have a real community with a real unique culture forged through bonds and laughs and drama and dumb shit. We have an actual community, not just a bunch of people that don't know each other who press updoot and downdoot and generally just see one another as faceless individuals. We trust each other and genuinely like each other.
I genuinely hope that you can create something like it and come to care about the other posters around you in time. You should try to. Build something more meaningful than a reddit clone where everyone treats everyone like a bunch of faceless anons, build a real community.
lol they chose instead to post this comment to someone who was arguing with me. I'm honored tbh
I love you all
someone hasnt seen our weekly China struggle sessions
We only look monolithic to libs from outside because we close ranks against bullshit Western lies and propaganda. But there is ample disagreement here about China and many other topics, and we have it out with each other fairly frequently on the many topics we disagree on. We've come to refer to these arguments with one another as "struggle sessions."
For example, it's worth noting that we have anarchists here (among other non-Marxist-Leninist tendencies), who are often fairly critical of China when they have a chance to be, without annoying libs getting in the way of the discussion.
I realize you very much have a dog in the China-Taiwan fight, as it were, and I understand your reluctance to support the other side. But, while your island's history is not littered with as many atrocities as that of my own nation (the US), you really ought to consider, as I and the many Westerners here have, that your country is not on the right side, and is in fact the bad guys. Chiang Kai-Shek was a monster, and any reasonable person should want to piss on his grave. The most effective way to do that would be to work toward reunification, the one thing he opposed more clearly than anything else.
The government of Taiwan is allied with a genocidal evil empire (the US), and is capitalist, so that's a non-starter because capitalism is destroying the planet.
And Western bourgeois "democracy" is nothing of the sort; the government of China is much more responsive to its people than the US or any other supposed "democracy." (Hint: if the system always gives rich people what they want, it's not democracy, it's what we communists call a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.)
These are not points anyone here will concede, because your views on these issues are entirely clouded by Western lies and propaganda, unfortunately.
(Keep in mind that Chinese people do vote on their local government officials; those officials then vote on the officials one level up, and so on, all the way up the hierarchy. This is in fact fairly similar to the original form of government in the United States, in which Senators and presidential Electors were selected by the members of each state's legislature.)
You gave two conditions for reunification that would satisfy you. I explained why both conditions are unworkable from the perspective of people here, myself included.
Also, directly electing the head of state doesn't really mean very much. Sure the US president isn't quite elected by popular vote, but with only a few exceptions (admittedly, historically significant ones), the winner has won both the popular and electoral votes. Biden, for example, won both in 2020. And yet shit still fucking sucks here, and ordinary people have absolutely no say in government. As such, I would argue that simple popular voting for an executive falls far short of a good standard for democracy.
By contrast, in China, yes, President Xi can continue as long as the Party wants him to. Is that so bad? Don't you think the CPC would turn against President Xi if some scandal occurred that turned most of the Chinese people against him? Couldn't his long tenure simply be the result of significant popularity (perhaps owing to his apparently fairly successful efforts to root out corruption)? Was it really so bad that FDR got four terms in the US presidency? (The answer to this last one is a resounding 'no,' by the way, in case you're not well-versed on US history.)
Then there's the reasoning behind the somewhat-less-open forms of democratic government employed in socialist countries like China and Vietnam (called "democratic centralism"): if they loosened their grip on power, the US and other Westerners would seek to do to the CPC and its leaders the same thing they did to Mossadegh's government in Iran in 1953, to Allende's government in Chile in 1973, to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s, to Thomas Sankara's government in Burkina Faso in 1987: kill them, destroy their government, and undermine all of the goals they worked for by allowing Western multinationals to move in and exploit people and resources to the maximum degree possible. It happens consistently to every socialist power that tries to play by the rules of Western Democracy. Did you think they were advocating this stuff out of the goodness of their hearts? No, it's an ideology designed to allow maximal profit to capital.
As for your source, this is where Western lies and propaganda come in big-time. We have a meme here on Hexbear, "the same map," which we roll out every time there's an odious, right-wing Western source (and The Economist very much qualifies; it has a proud history that includes arguing in favor of slavery in the US during the Antebellum and Civil War eras) that puts out a map showing all the typical Western countries as "good" (by whatever BS metric the map supposedly indicates via color-coding, in this case "democracy"), and all the usual suspects as "bad." I could go to the trouble of digging into the methodology used here and point out the many ways in which it's flawed, but honestly I don't really feel the need to do so; nothing The Economist says is worth so much as the paper it's printed on.
this is such a deficient view of democracy that it doesn't even qualify as democracy in my book. the word means rule by the masses - in what way does electing a head of state, someone who is in no way obligated to respect the wishes of the electorate (cf US presidents and their inability to push legislation/policy supported by supermajorities of the electorate) constitute rule by the masses. merely electing someone passes the buck on from the masses onto singular, corruptible individuals. democracy means the democratic participation of the people in government and such a thing goes so much farther than mere elections for representative. compare Cuban democracy, where elected representatives are required to hold weekly, local office hours so constituents can come share their thoughts about policy and governance, to western "democracy" where most people have no clue who their elected officials even are or what policy decisions their representatives are taking.
dream bigger. you're setting a very narrow horizon on human possibilities in the sociopolitical realm.
Tbf this is a very unusual time in the websites history due to the federation, and sorting by hot or new or, uh, "all time - month" will look very different.
It's also just false that there are no anti-china people. For example, we have a weird Khrushchevite who says that he and only he is the one good head of state to hold office at any point from 1950 to now.
You can also find plenty of people who have criticisms of China (myself still included) but just hate the bullshit western articles that get shared on lemmy.ml or whatever. Between
Vs 2) a group where (let's just say) 100% of the user base at least supports China over America but they are able to have real discussions about journalistic epistemology and media bias that doesn't equate "unbiased" with "bipartisan".
I think 2 is a lot less of an echo chamber because the presence of people with absolutely moronic and uncritical responses to media are not a substantial indicator of something succeeding in not being an echo chamber. Consensus within a finite population is a real social phenomenon and the vast majority of people can be reasoned with over time.
Edit: "but you just like your own media!"
Look at what we actually talk about. There is some use of Chinese or sometimes Russian press for reference, but the focus is overwhelmingly still on western sources because you can find a lot of useful information even in spite of the author's intentions much of the time, and no one is using some Chinese NGO as a fucking measuring stick for what source is objective and what isn't (and Russian media is automatically criticized, but that is an aside).
It's more of a community centered around catharsis and commiseration, and occasionally changing people's minds who are open to it, but go off
Edit: oh yeah and comradeliness ofc
federation is kind of the new thing and being mean to libs is flavor of the week at the moment. people will get bored of it after a bit and we'll go back to our normal posting.
How "gated" is that community? As in: How hard would it be to grow into that community? If I migrated to hexbear, would I be treated with suspicion as an outsider, with wary indifference, or welcomed immediately?
The arguments and descriptors I see here are appealing, but I've just recently started using Lemmy and I've got this lingering sense of not belonging here (yet), hence ny insecurity.
Ngl the quickest way to properly become part of the hexbear community in order of like, level of commitment required is probably to join, do like an intro post or something in c/chapotraphouse, maybe join the unofficial hexbear mastodon instance (toots.matapacos.dog) and maybe also like trans your gender or something
Also post and comment stuff ofc <3
Do I have to trans my gender? Can't I just, like, not have one at all? I'd hate to lug something around I don't need anyway.
Also, what the hell is that instance name?
Thanks for the pointers though!
Yeah being agender is cool too <3 the trans thing was only a joke really because so many of us are queer
And the instance is named after a south American dog that used to go around biting cops at protest lol
Oh I figured, I just wanted to make a joke of my own at the expense of gender :D
Huh, I wonder why. Did they smell of pork? ;-)
So long as you follow the Hexbear party line you'll be welcomed with open arms. All you have to do is be on the far left, don't be sectarian, oppose the US and its propaganda, and love your trans comrades.
Oh, and don't mention outdoor cats.
Uh... but you did just mention the thing you're telling me not to mention.
I prefer indoor cats anyway.
With "don't be sectarian" I'm guessing you mean "don't start fights over the specific flavour of lefty"? By some definition, willingness to bash the fash would also be considered sectarian, hence the question.
bashing the fash is table stakes. we ban anything even tangentially pro-fash. don't be sectarian refers to useless inter-leftist infighting, which we don't allow.
the outdoor cats thing is a joke about the very first argument on the website that escalated into a full-blown struggle session (whether vegans stop being vegans if they own outdoor cats - I can't even pretend to understand the argument).
Good.
Good
Uh... I think I can, but I'm scared to check the logic. Might fry a circuit or three.
From what I've seen, there's no real difference between lemmy.ml, lemm.ee, and lemmy.world. They're all the same attempt at trying to be a Reddit clone with the same Reddit defaults as comms. If you merge all three instances together and merge the comms that they share, they would be absolutely zero difference. I guess lemmy.ml is lemm.ee with socialist characteristics while lemmy.world is lemm.ee with fascist characteristics. To me, the biggest difference between those instances is how they see us and whether they are federated with us.
There are definite differences.
Lemmy.ml has moderation that's closer to the moderation here but without kicking people out for being libs. Hate is well moderated.
Lemm.ee is the closest to emulating reddit while remaining a real form of politically neutral. Hate is well moderated.
lemmy.world is emulating reddit, including its censorship of the left. Hate is badly moderated. Reports of actual transphobia go ignored.
Your "characteristics" assessment isn't really that far off though. I am an advocate of lemm.ee and would prefer for it to become the largest. Lemmy.ml will become leftist in the longterm in my opinion, Hexbear influence is now very significant on it.
It's just a lot of thoughts going through my head since federation. I feel like there's going to be one Reddit clone that will absorb members from all the other would-be clones. Most people will choose the largest Reddit clone by default, which will snowball until there's only one clone left. Right now, the favored Reddit clone is lemmy.world, but the admins are apparently paranoid about us creating wrecker alts to ruin their shitty instance, so that could be a source of instability. I agree about lemmy.ml. For lemm.me, I've noticed a lot of banned users come from that instance and it feels like we get the most pushback from them. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually defederate from us, at which point lemmy.world would just completely absorb lemm.me's users. From the perspective of an incredulous lib who doesn't understand fascism even when it's biting them in the ass, the only difference between lemm.me and lemmy.world is one instance federates with Hexbear while the other one doesn't and once the instance that federates with Hexbear no longer does so, lemm.me just becomes a smaller lemmy.world. I dunno, it's just a thought I have.
As an aside, here's an interesting thread in beehaw about whether they should just defederate. I think most people have predicted beehaw would eventually wither away, but I didn't expect the process to happen this fast. It's also very interesting how even the libs at beehaw recognize some of the flaws of Reddit (they've taken out downvotes like us for largely the same reasons). They at least understand that trying to recreate Reddit when Reddit already exists is a terrible idea. However, being libs, they are hampered by having a terrible intellectual framework. They also have a huge civility fetish such as some loser in that same thread shamelessly admitting they would deal with a transphobe than some angry person.
Liberals actually went along with Fukuyama's "you will pay for your identity markers and you will like it" smugposting. It's probably a part of why they tend to have walls of Funko Pops and need to tell you about the specific craft beer they sip while writing editorials.
I hate how this isn't even a contrived stereotype anymore. Have literally met these types and it's all they have to justify their "everyone's experience is unique!" slogans