Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to inform you that we are going to be locking the_dunk_tank and dredge_tank communities. We have created two new communities /c/gossip and /c/counterpropaganda to serve a similar but clearly distinct purpose than the dunk/dredge tanks.
Not only is the dunk tank a term that has racist origins, but also many posts there were almost no effort and often times requiring later edits to show how they weren’t reactionary, not useful with regard to developing rhetoric and furthering dialectical analysis of that which we dunk upon.
To that end, we wish posts of reactionaries to be placed in !counterpropaganda@hexbear.net along with an accompanying explanation (as simple or complex as desired) with the intent of countering the reactionary propaganda in the post body, as of now comments are not subject to the same rhetorical rigor rule.
For the posts that are not "low-hanging fruit’ of notable people we ask that you use !gossip@hexbear.net .
These changes are mainly part of a continued effort to remove the racist and misogynistic elements from our community and grow.
Any moderators of the dunk tank or dredge tank that want to be a mod in the new communities let me know.
Any users with questions or comments please use this post, this change was made at the behest of the entire Hexbear mod and admin team. We will be looking for more moderators in an organized volunteer drive shortly, if you wish to submit an application you may send it to me via hexbear or matrix direct messages.
Use this post as a place for discussion to these changes. We will keep things as they are for 2 weeks and then reflect on the feedback, including this post: https://hexbear.net/post/3858346
As a personal addendum I am sorry if the closing of the tanks these changes removes a beloved space on the site and if you want to suggest a community to replace them you may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.
Sitewide or community changes come from proposals put forth from the mod team, discussed, and voted on by the mod team.
Any users wanting to suggest a community to replace the tanks, may do so at !commrequest@hexbear.net current discussion is here https://hexbear.net/post/3858346 or submit a mod application to take a more active role in shaping the site.
You may also consider using !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml as a substitute for dunk/dredge tank posts as well
The mod statement can be found here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5613033
Application
What is your Hexbear username? Do you have any preferred pronouns? What are your thoughts on capitalism? What are your thoughts on imperialism? What are your thoughts on trans rights? What are your thoughts on racial justice? What do think about current and previous protests around the world? What are your thoughts on Veganism and Animal Liberation? Do you have any experience with other leftist online communities? What did those experiences teach you? What is your approach to moderation, and how do you work with teams? How do you deal with online drama and people who try to start things for the sake of it? What current comms would you be interested in moderating? Do you have any ideas for community engagement? What is your general time availability? (Time zone, amounts, common browsing times, etc)
i present an offering to thee to temporarily satiate thine cravings for blood whilst we internally consider the feedback we’ve gotten
Hello everyone, I want to personally apologize for how I handled this change.
During my time as an admin I made the decision to shift decision-making from a group of admins admin to all the moderators. My reasoning is that the barrier to entry for a hexbear account to become a moderator was pretty low, and we have a 90% acceptance rate for applicants. Therefore, a mod collective is going to be the users most interested in shaping the site.
The reason that I made this post and I edited down the discussion to the comment below is to protect any mods from harassment. Not everyone is open to defending their thoughts against the userbase and I didn’t think they should have to as long as one of us was willing to engage with this post. I personally agreed with the mod sentiment that this change could be a chance to improve the site but did not mind the dunk/dredge tanks however it was a majority of mod team members that voted in favor of this change during the week+ that this change was discussed & voted on.
I recognize I could have done multiple aspects of this better and I think it is clear from the discussion of this change that it was not the right approach.
Another admin will be putting up a second discussion post for what we will do after some time with the current change. Closing the tanks will be permanent but the decision on if we will be opening a spiritual successor to exist alongside gossip and counterprop has not been made.
The screenshot circulating in this thread of my statement in the lemmy instance admin chat was an attempt by me to get the drama communities on other instances closed, ultimately a failure on multiple counts.
With all that being said, I would like to thank everyone for their input and state that I will be stepping down as admin as a result of my mistakes in facilitating the discussion, executing the change, and communicating with the userbase.
Locking this thread for now to avoid further spiraling. Update coming from me in the morning. ❤️
No everything has to be serious at all times and we cannot find any humor in the absurdity of hell world.
The last time I smiled was on August 19th, 1991.
I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence.
Every day at exactly noon I have the same meal of an expired Maoist MRE I store in a pit covered in old issues of a revolutionary newspaper.
I sleep in a bed made of flags from every failed revolution so that they are never forgotten.
In the evenings I stare at a picture of vodka by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to drink because there is nothing to celebrate.
Every local org has banned me after I attempted to split it by assassinating the leadership.
There is no plumbing in my house I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it.
My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin.
I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism).
My [main] source of income is various MLM schemes in the former soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money.
I have not paid taxes since McGovern lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of tylenol.
I own 29 fully automatic rusted kalashnikovs and three crates of ammunition entirely incompatible with them or any other firearms I own.
My double PHD in marxist economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that was recalled for locking children inside of it.
I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist.
During the latest BLM protests I firebombed a Nikes outlet in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil.
William F Buckley and I wrote hatemail to one another for 47 years until my final letter gave him an aneurysm. The only water I drink is from puddles.
George Lucas and I dropped acid together during an MKULTRA southern baptist summer camp and he went on to write the movie Willow about our time together.
The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor.
Every time a liberal files a restraining order against me, I carve a mark into the wall.
I am running out of walls.
When Amerika finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution.
I am very smart and people like being around me.
I don’t find fault in changing the names because of the history, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little bummed out by the direction of this. It feels like having your sweets taken away and replaced with vegetables.
I mean this politely, but sometimes I think people here want this website to be more than it is.
Oftentimes. There was talk of getting rid of the news mega to “support community organising and growth” at one point.
Some people want this website to be something other than a website, and I don’t really understand it. I also don’t understand how they think a website can be something other than a website.
Hot take: this sentiment Is liberalism and reddit brain. Posting on a webbed site is not organizing
There was talk of getting rid of the news mega to “support community organising and growth” at one point.
What the hell was even the argument for that?
I remember sometime after chapochat went up there was a discussion about how “serious” the site should be and I think the consensus at the time was not very - and I agree with that.
Yeah I agree with this. The old community was like the one place where I could go and just see that I’m not the only one who thinks all this shit we get bombarded with is absolutely insane. It was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one. It didn’t have to be high effort, and honestly I don’t really have the energy to bang out a huge essay every time some ghoul says something insane.
I’m fine with a name change but I feel like the new rules miss the point. Unless the unstated point is “we don’t want low effort anymore, go elsewhere”
Agreed. The dunk tank was/is as much a sanity check as a place to dunk. It’s not just making fun of weird lib shit, it’s a space where you’re with people who “get” it, so you can kind of re-affirm that you haven’t gone completely mad when you’re shipwrecked amid a sea of liberalism.
Can someone help me understand the problematic history of these terms? As always it’s a safe bet that any classic American trope is probably racist asf
The dunk tank at a carnival used to just be a black guy sticking his head through the hole
This really bums me out. Where does the dunk part come in? Do i even want to know
Damn, really? I thought it was that seat thing that dropped you in to a tank of water if someone threw a ball at a target.
You can still do the same thing in !gossip@hexbear.net, its just restricted to public figures
What’s lost is the links to 500 comment threads where people collectively mine out the craziest thing you’ve ever heard anyone say. Sure those messages all trickle down from those public figures, but they’ll never be as weird or funny as the synthesis of a random assortment of those messages in the mind of a nato radlib from Connecticut.
