No Hexbear isn’t brigading you I’m clicking on the main page of the website and replying to whatever I see. I don’t even know what website I’m on, I have ADHD, I aint got the kind of focus. Anyway I’m going to go brigade a thread about video games with my pro-FFXIV propaganda.
Yeah, I mean, other than the slurs, the vocabulary, the comms, the views on minorities, the views on women, the views on LGBTQIA+, the views on people with different skin colors, the views on people with different religions, the sheer differences in site demographics, the views on economic and political systems, and in general our entire worldview on politics; aside from those very minor differences, we are basically 4chan.
Thinking that we are merely QAnoners or Trumpers betrays your embarrassing lack of knowledge of anything going on outside your borders. To think the world is encapsulated by a fight between liberals and deranged conservatives, where the arena of political thought is just between Biden and Trump (with Bernie representing the Most Socialist You Can Possibly Be), rather than a class war where you both are on the side of the imperialist bourgeoisie, is a frighteningly sheltered worldview.
Insulting people for being dipshit reactionaries isn’t a “toxic behavioral pattern”. The average liberal holding their hands over their ears and screaming “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU PUTINBOT!!” whenever they hear any rhetoric or politics left of Reagan is infinitely more damaging and toxic to societies online and irl.
To quote Martin Luther King:
First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Caring about things and snapping at people who act like apathetic smuglords whenever important things come up is toxic, and the more you care the more toxic it is. The correct way to engage online is to envelop oneself in irony and never engage with the content of other people’s messages, only their tone. Good to know!
