On this day 2 years ago, Hexbear was launched. Originally known as chapo.chat , hexbear.net has grown into a veritable juggernaut. Some believe that Amazon discontinued the Alexa website rankings in May 2022 to prevent hexbear.net from claiming the top spot.
Despite weirdly intense attention from wreckers over the years, hexbear.net is going strong on her second birthday, with excellent engagement numbers, and a wholesome, caring community. My sincere thanks to everyone that continues to be part of it, whether as a lurker, sporadic poster, or terminally-online power poster. On this second Hexday, I would also like to give a special shoutout to the many users who have been here since July 25th, 2020 and remain active to this day.
I’d also like to recognize emeritus site developers @ScreamoBMO and @DashEightMate for their countless contributions to the site. They retired from active development and moderation last year after many, many hours of volunteering, and we absolutely would not have this site without them.
We are, of course, also grateful to our current moderation and development teams, but I’ll refrain from tagging anyone by name as contributors may have different levels of comfort with public acknowledgement. I will say that, of all the team members, I contribute the least (I 'm just comfortable with “public speaking”), so there are many other people out there who deserve a ton of credit for keeping this site going.
Furthermore, I am pleased to reveal that, amidst all the liberals, we have–at long last–determined that the One True Leftist is also a user of this site, and it’s you.
Finally, on a serious note, I will say that while this site is many things to many people, it has never been a movement; it’s a place for people who are part of a movement. So, to the extent that you are able, go outside and do your praxis, then come inside to hexbear.net for a comforting cup of virtual tea. Be excellent to each other and viva la hexbear.
Does that make sense? I think it does.
With communist greetings,
Quimby
(posting on behalf of myself; views may or may not reflect those of the rest of the moderation team)
Announcements & Information
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
❤️ Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube
💖 Come talk in the New weekly queer thread
🧡 Monthly Neurodiverse Megathread
💛 Read about a current topic in the news
⭐️ June Movie Thread ⭐️
Reminders:
💚 You can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments and discussions over upbears
💜 Sorting by new makes your comrades happy
🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
spoiler
Aid:
💙 Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
💙 Resources for Palestine
Theory:
❤️ Foundations of Leninism
❤️ Anarchism and Other Essays
❤️ Mega upload with theory for many tendencies
As I mentioned below, I’m back on a new account after a long hiatus since vcjgate. I have a few questions I wanna fire off:
- Has the site developed any bookclubs?
- What has membership growth been like since vcjgate?
- If/how has site policy/rules changed since vcjgate? I do NOT want to reopen this strugglesession, I’m just wondering if there were any big decisions made to avoid similar things from happening in the future.
I am very interested because it caused me enough stress to abandon the site. I don’t actually care to discuss the struggle session itself, I’m just wondering what things have been like since I’ve been gone.
Edit: To add to this, I can definitely understand your suspicion. I am aware that bad actors on new accounts try to reopen discussion on struggle sessions. That’s not my intention, and I don’t intend to ask any more questions about it beyond what I posted in this thread.
That’s unfortunately true, so it does seem a little :amogus:
Things have been alright, though. We’ve had a few struggle sessions, but they’ve ended that day and didn’t result in people leaving. I think a lot of us have gotten better at communicating and also realizing that it’s fine to disengage too. The numbers of users has been pretty steady since then. As far as policies? Seems like shit stirring gets shut down quicker and that stops a lot of bad faith stuff before it really pops off. Anyway, glad you made your way back here
Just a past struggle session. I’m not going to discuss it here since it’s unproductive for the community. Just search for “vegancirclejerk” on the site to read about it.
- There’s a monthly bookclub on /c/literature
- We’ve seen a steady uptick mostly thanks to other subs getting quarantined etc, the regular user base is relatively constant though
- Intentional struggle sessions are quarantined to /c/strugglesession and I think the biggest outcome was that we stopped thinking we should act as a lifeboat/backup for reddit communities when they get banned but still welcome their users on a general basis, which is what we did during GZD getting quarantined and worked out better
There’s a monthly bookclub on /c/literature
Excellent, thank you. I thought I remembered such a comm but I was looking for “reading” and “books” and couldn’t find anything lol.
Intentional struggle sessions are quarantined to /c/strugglesession and I think the biggest outcome was that we stopped thinking we should act as a lifeboat/backup for reddit communities when they get banned but still welcome their users on a general basis, which is what we did during GZD getting quarantined and worked out better
I am so very glad to hear this. I have always stuck by the principal that this community will only succeed if we prioritize the needs of current community members over those of prospective members (usually coming from banned reddit communities). Growth is only useful if the community remains stable. It is a very bad thing IMO when there is a loss of long-time members who feel pushed out by floods of new members who don’t have an understanding of the culture of the community they are entering. I’m glad that the attitude around this has changed and it makes me very optimistic about the longevity and slow-but-steady growth of the site.
