Genuine question, why do I keep seeing people reference “hexbears”?
Like, I know it’s a Lemmy instance, but is it more than that? Why do I keep seeing it referenced as if it’s more than just an instance?
Because we weren’t federated for like three years due to differences in the fork of lemmy that hexbear runs on we developed a very different culture to the rest of fedi in isolation and now that we’re federated we exist as a distinctly different bloc to the rest of lemmy (which has pretty much been overrun with default Reddit culture but a bit less right wing).
Also we’re all communists and make fun of right wingers a lot so we’ve got a reputation for dunking on people now
I shit you not, some people are scared of being “accidentally” racist and called out around us. Now they think we’re a ruthless troll army, possibly even funded by some enemy state of America/“the West”. Youll know em when you read em
pro-tip for users who don’t want to be dunked on for “accidental” racism: you can just apologize and say you didn’t know or ask for more information. it’s seriously that easy. you do not have to die on the hill of your accidents given they are accidents. doubling-down is the point where it becomes of at-least subconscious intent and it’s fair game.
Unless it’s against Italians you’re being racist. Then you’re supposed to double down. We don’t want to create debate climate where Italians feel welcome. We would be drowning in mafiosos talking about their Super Mario Pizzas. Whereas if we just remain firm the national cowardice shared by all Italians will keep them from posting.
If you make an honest mistake and seem racist about something and someone calls you out on it, you can just apologize and be nice about it. It really does tend to work, because we are in control of our emotions and capable of holding a conversation with an adult human being - by which I mean, to be absolutely clear - we are not Italian.
pro-tip for users who don’t want to be dunked on for “accidental” racism: you can just apologize and say you didn’t know or ask for more information
Yeah this. There’s just waaaaayyy too many slurs to keep track of, i once mentioned a French cigarette brand and the name turned out to be a slur for Romani people that i wasn’t aware of. It happens. Same with accidentally misgendering somebody, we all make mistakes. When you make it a hill to die on that your slur or misgendering is actually perfectly ok and it’s better to write three angry replies and get banned from the instance than to just spend a few seconds editing something hurtful out, you’re obviously
Hexbears stand for the users of Hexbear. I’ve heard Hexbearian being used too.
