this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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Why are we going from "weekly relitigation of the already discussed shortcomings of the socdem mayor" to now doing it twice daily?
Are we not exhausted?
Given the continued decline in activity on our instance, it's very rare that I'll suggest "not posting" content (rather, one should post twice as much of what they would like to see, if they don't like the frontpage). At the same time, dredging up old news over and over is boring and uninviting to new users.
I am increasingly concerned that the site isn't going to survive more than one or two more struggle sessions, due to the constant "left -signaling". The most substantial discussion I've seen is coming from like 5 effort posters, when there used to be a good handful of threads with interesting discussion on a daily basis (even without an effort post!)
It just feels like hexbear has been becoming less healthy as time has gone on, and I think we have a lot of history that I'd like to sustain. Or maybe I'm just reading the room entirely wrong?
HB has in some respects definitely decayed, though I like to think there's a renewed interest in addressing some of its existing problems. The "left-signaling" thing has always been an issue though, one that really stems from the "we can't do anything, we can merely speak, so we must validate ourselves by speaking and saying better things than others" sort of mindset that I usually associate with academic liberals. It's alienating, doesn't help anything, and ironically has produced an ideological race to the bottom because the "saying better things," (perhaps due to being unmoored from practice or even study) isn't really about saying things that are actually better but about saying things that have a more progressive vibe to other people who also don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
The website signed its death warrant a long time ago when it decided that it wasn't interested in growing (not "grow by any means necessary!" but merely making an active effort at all) and instead has just been spiraling in circles in isolation, festering and disconnected from everyone else.
Great comment, I agree. It's been very sad watching this place decline after years of what felt like one of the few truly vibrant leftist spaces on the internet. I do have my own thoughts and opinions as far as a diagnosis for the decline, but I think they're right in line with what you're saying. The series of major struggle sessions where the moderators and admins were at odds with seemingly most of the users on the site were in my opinion what dealt the heaviest blows that this place never really recovered from. But what you're saying about how "left-signaling" has always been an issue here is at the root of those struggle sessions.
There was a comment that a lemmygrad user made almost a year ago that got to the heart of it and expressed the issue better than I could hope to. Here is just a small part of it.
It is a much longer comment than what I just quoted, and worth reading in full. It should be noted that the meaning of who is "in charge" isn't necessarily the mods and admins, but can just as easily be a nebulous group of frequent commenters who tend to set the mores of site culture. Incidentally, I think a lot of the problems have actually died down. Hexbear feels a lot less cliquish now then it did roughly a year ago. It is also significantly less active, but that's because of the damage that has already been done, and even if it's not as bad as it was, the problem never went away.