There are two pieces of context I think ought to be mentioned:
“post hog” and other “post your dick” variants are a canned /r/ChapoTrapHouse response against any user who seems like an unusually odious or bad faith wrecker or reactionary, like a rebuttal to 4chan’s “tits or gtfo”. It started when a neo-nazi went on CTH to spout race science but was mocked into posting his dick, which defused the guy completely; at the time, the subreddit was getting a lot of people like that, and “post hog” became one of the go-to responses because it was low-effort and it shut them down. It bewildered and frustrated people who were there say awful things or make users feel unsafe.
/u/randint has been on a crusade against hexbear for fucking weeks. He goes out of his way to stir shit and has explicitly admitted that his aim is to make the site look bad. Increasingly frustrated hexbears pointed out his bad faith engagement in the thread I linked. He goes about it in a bloodless, polite-sounding way, but he’s not there with good intentions. Only at the very end of the thread, deep in the exchange, did anyone give him the canned response, and it made him leave.
Ok, the deep lore of “post your hog” makes sense, and I honestly don’t think I can argue against sexually harassing a literal Neo-Nazi. Let the kid gloves come off.
But it is straight up sexual harassment. Yeah, it shuts people down quickly and easily, that’s literally what sexual harassment was designed for. And it’s not being reserved for Nazis, it’s being used liberally and the community and moderators foster an atmosphere that encourages sexual harassment of outsiders.
And to be fair, I see there’s outside actors acting in bad faith. But sexual harassment is either okay in a community, or it isn’t. You can’t blame a pro-sexual-harassment environment on a bad faith outside actor. And when sexual harassment has been normalized, how much space do you really have to complain about other people being bad faith actors?
The really terrible thing is that I don’t think Hexbear is even capable of having a good faith discussion about sexual harassment, with itself. If anyone was to point out the issue, the mods and most prolific posters would not be able to take it seriously and nothing would change.
In unixporn someone brought to light that the traditional term “ricing” had racist origins, and there was a little pushback, but by and large the community accepted that the term will be removed and banned. The community learned, and changed.
I have 0% expectation that Hexbear community is capable of listening, or changing.
i think it’s a fucking massive leap to characterize hexbear as a “pro-sexual harassment” environment. You can argue that they are overzealous in who they consider nazis sometimes, but multiple hexbears earlier in the thread did call /u/randint a nazi apologist for defending Adrien Zenz, so it’s clear they considered him a fair target. Hexbear users see hog posting as punching upward at privileged bullies and reactionaries they are powerless against in real life. You can dispute that view, you might even consider them delusional or self-indulgent, but I think it’s an enormous leap to conclude that they are generally in favor of sexual harassment of people.
I got dozens of people telling my to post my dick because I said that neopronouns are stupid.
I wouldn’t consider myself a Nazi, I’m extremely anti-Nazi. I’m very involved in trans activism in real life. I’m in management - I changed schedule posting so that it includes pronouns. I ordered give out free pronoun pins (I wear one too). I correct people and guests when they misgender someone. I’ve been to marches and I’ve donated to events. I have a lil trans flag in my window. Real life trans safety and inclusion is important to me. (And why I’m off put when a Hexbear confuses all people with penises as automatically being “men”) I’m not making these up to try to look a certain kind of way, this is all verifiably real and I can get you the pictures and receipts if you need them.
Maybe I’m not pronoun progressive enough yet and I’ll change my mind later. I still think neopronouns are stupid, and only part of chronic online-ness. I’m willing to consider that I might still be in the wrong here.
But if you sexually harass someone and get 100 upvotes, you’re punching down.
If the mods delete any posts and ban users who call out sexual harassment, you’re punching down.
What I see is people who probably don’t stand up to bullies in real life, they turn into bullies when they’re the big fish in a little pond.
You called them unhinged for having neo pronouns. People have been attacking them for years, they expect a fight, and if you come in and fucking mock their pronouns and talk down to them they’re not gonna care enough to find out about your real world stances or activism, they’re just going to look at the comment right in front of them, and assume you’re some bigoted CNN lib who pays performative lip service to genderqueer rights but sees them as goofy caricatures and has no interest in understanding them. They get enough people like that already. If they took the time to investigate and understand and categorize everyone who threw shit at them it’d be a fucking full time job.
And for the record, I didn’t come out swinging against neopronouns. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with neo-pronouns themselves.
What happened is that I saw a community who
sexually harasses people
fetishizes violence and executions
fears and mistrusts the media (to an extreme)
draws harsh in-group out-group lines
blurs the lines of their opinions with irony
“the West”
And I saw all that and double sets of pronouns including neopronouns, and I was like omg, it’s Nazis pretending to be leftists. They act like Nazis, who ran with the pronoun thing and took it to the highest level. (I know now they aren’t Nazi’s, but the behavior makes a really bad first impression)
The problem was never actually the neopronouns. It was the Nazi-like behavior that came attached.
I just saw it, you sent me this link:
https://hexbear.net/post/613387
which contains a screenshot of this comment:
https://lemm.ee/comment/3622601
where /u/randint complains that hexbear admin /u/TomboyShulk dismissed his complaints about three other comments, which he then links to.
The three comments are all from the same 22 day old thread, and his engagement with the thread starts here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3829077
There are two pieces of context I think ought to be mentioned:
“post hog” and other “post your dick” variants are a canned /r/ChapoTrapHouse response against any user who seems like an unusually odious or bad faith wrecker or reactionary, like a rebuttal to 4chan’s “tits or gtfo”. It started when a neo-nazi went on CTH to spout race science but was mocked into posting his dick, which defused the guy completely; at the time, the subreddit was getting a lot of people like that, and “post hog” became one of the go-to responses because it was low-effort and it shut them down. It bewildered and frustrated people who were there say awful things or make users feel unsafe.
/u/randint has been on a crusade against hexbear for fucking weeks. He goes out of his way to stir shit and has explicitly admitted that his aim is to make the site look bad. Increasingly frustrated hexbears pointed out his bad faith engagement in the thread I linked. He goes about it in a bloodless, polite-sounding way, but he’s not there with good intentions. Only at the very end of the thread, deep in the exchange, did anyone give him the canned response, and it made him leave.
Ok, the deep lore of “post your hog” makes sense, and I honestly don’t think I can argue against sexually harassing a literal Neo-Nazi. Let the kid gloves come off.
But it is straight up sexual harassment. Yeah, it shuts people down quickly and easily, that’s literally what sexual harassment was designed for. And it’s not being reserved for Nazis, it’s being used liberally and the community and moderators foster an atmosphere that encourages sexual harassment of outsiders.
And to be fair, I see there’s outside actors acting in bad faith. But sexual harassment is either okay in a community, or it isn’t. You can’t blame a pro-sexual-harassment environment on a bad faith outside actor. And when sexual harassment has been normalized, how much space do you really have to complain about other people being bad faith actors?
The really terrible thing is that I don’t think Hexbear is even capable of having a good faith discussion about sexual harassment, with itself. If anyone was to point out the issue, the mods and most prolific posters would not be able to take it seriously and nothing would change.
In unixporn someone brought to light that the traditional term “ricing” had racist origins, and there was a little pushback, but by and large the community accepted that the term will be removed and banned. The community learned, and changed.
I have 0% expectation that Hexbear community is capable of listening, or changing.
i think it’s a fucking massive leap to characterize hexbear as a “pro-sexual harassment” environment. You can argue that they are overzealous in who they consider nazis sometimes, but multiple hexbears earlier in the thread did call /u/randint a nazi apologist for defending Adrien Zenz, so it’s clear they considered him a fair target. Hexbear users see hog posting as punching upward at privileged bullies and reactionaries they are powerless against in real life. You can dispute that view, you might even consider them delusional or self-indulgent, but I think it’s an enormous leap to conclude that they are generally in favor of sexual harassment of people.
I got dozens of people telling my to post my dick because I said that neopronouns are stupid.
I wouldn’t consider myself a Nazi, I’m extremely anti-Nazi. I’m very involved in trans activism in real life. I’m in management - I changed schedule posting so that it includes pronouns. I ordered give out free pronoun pins (I wear one too). I correct people and guests when they misgender someone. I’ve been to marches and I’ve donated to events. I have a lil trans flag in my window. Real life trans safety and inclusion is important to me. (And why I’m off put when a Hexbear confuses all people with penises as automatically being “men”) I’m not making these up to try to look a certain kind of way, this is all verifiably real and I can get you the pictures and receipts if you need them.
Maybe I’m not pronoun progressive enough yet and I’ll change my mind later. I still think neopronouns are stupid, and only part of chronic online-ness. I’m willing to consider that I might still be in the wrong here.
But if you sexually harass someone and get 100 upvotes, you’re punching down.
If the mods delete any posts and ban users who call out sexual harassment, you’re punching down.
What I see is people who probably don’t stand up to bullies in real life, they turn into bullies when they’re the big fish in a little pond.
You called them unhinged for having neo pronouns. People have been attacking them for years, they expect a fight, and if you come in and fucking mock their pronouns and talk down to them they’re not gonna care enough to find out about your real world stances or activism, they’re just going to look at the comment right in front of them, and assume you’re some bigoted CNN lib who pays performative lip service to genderqueer rights but sees them as goofy caricatures and has no interest in understanding them. They get enough people like that already. If they took the time to investigate and understand and categorize everyone who threw shit at them it’d be a fucking full time job.
No I didn’t, now that’s a gross misrepresentation.
I said it was unhinged that I was being told that I was literally Hitler because I think neopronouns are silly.
If you think everyone who finds neopronouns impractical for real life is a Nazi, that sounds pretty unhinged, I still feel that way.
Pfff, yeah when in that same post Hexbears couldn’t tell the difference between a man and a person with a penis.
Well I guess that’s the way you justify sexual harassment.
And for the record, I didn’t come out swinging against neopronouns. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with neo-pronouns themselves.
What happened is that I saw a community who
And I saw all that and double sets of pronouns including neopronouns, and I was like omg, it’s Nazis pretending to be leftists. They act like Nazis, who ran with the pronoun thing and took it to the highest level. (I know now they aren’t Nazi’s, but the behavior makes a really bad first impression)
The problem was never actually the neopronouns. It was the Nazi-like behavior that came attached.