Hi there,
I'm sure you've seen me around, as I've been here for quite while. I enjoyed and saw how this site grew, etc, but what I enjoyed was the genuine topics and conversation of discussions about this site. Perhaps it is the reintegration of life and routine, away from Covid, but I've noticed a decline in quality that makes me reminiscent and nostalgic for the past and even for members like LiberalSocialist.
You used to have something to say, regularly.
Chapochat/Hexbear wasn't just recycled memes and images from r/thedeprogram or r/trueanon.
There are still interesting things and conversations that are posted but they've been drowned out by pages of mediocre images that substitute picture and image for discussion and introspection; as another poster once typed, paraphrasing, we're all just trying to create site taglines and phrases and substituting quips for insight and catharsis.
Fair enough that catharsis, solidarity, and revelation can only be achieved through living your life and not through quiet meditation and discussion on reddit or psuedo-reddits. But there was at least more frequency of effort posts, venting, and exegesis of history, current and social events, and understanding of the world or at least an effort to do so.
To my observation, such that I lurk here, Such effort is only spared on video games. On media. On the dunk_tank. On getting upset about wrong opinion.
Despite the federation, this site seems to have only become isolated and divorced of what made it unique: effortposting.
Maybe it's not just Hexbear. Maybe that is why UlyssesT left; the catharsis is exhausted and online space is dominated by a a tendency for performative and justified outrage and yearning for solidarity and emotional validation. But rather than copium, as anyone afflicted with a disease would prefer, some small part of me wanted prognoses rather than diagnoses.
I don't know. I reflect on things like /moretankiechapo or /genzedong and see how things have declined in qualityposts. Perhaps it is for the better, as UlyssesT had discovered, to have the impetus to go outside and not only live life but to evangalize socialism and recapture purpose and community.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Although that was a joke, it alludes to something I've experienced and surely many of you have as well.
These writers, these irrationalist philosophers, Mark Fisher, and a few other Verso books authors like The People's Republic of Walmart make up the canon of online western leftist theory.
You will legitimately be browbeaten with them by people who declare that your thoughts and actions or beliefs are guided by "the spectacle" and "capitalist realism" as they vaguely remember them from these books.
This is very irritating when you've been banned from reddit and are just trying to figure out what a dang communist is. You run into a wall of Twitch fans! They're downright awful!
I know people who are younger than me, stuck doing doordash, in debt, they come to me after talking to folks on social media and I have to explain to them that a 19 year old just tried to get them into Heidegger because they said Maduro is okay.
No, I don't think people who have a "genuine interest in philosophy" are bad. But I do think that children who use books they hardly remember that other people told them were important as a substitute for real history reading, nay, as CUDGELS against those who do, are setting themselves up for failure.
EDIT: I think when I finish my RetroSpective™️ you will all like it a lot. When you go back and compare people to Caleb Maupin, who used Occupy Wall St. to try to push his Heideggerian idealist online cult where he reposts pre-1940s communist theory just in case Marxists dot org goes down, it's clear these groups aren't as different from each other as they'd like you to think. Naomi Klein and Leigh Phillips bad takes should surprise nobody.
Like, sorry that we don't want to read about how CAPITALISM HAS BEGUILED THE MASSES. UNLIMITED CRITICISM ON WESTERN POP CULTURE 100 times in a row and wanted to read about how capitaism actually formed and what it is. You know, instead of just navel gazing about the late 20th century? Lol??? @G_Bookner@hexbear.net
Yes I literally resent having to wade through people who recommended Chapo and Adam Curtis. Not extremely it's just like man, "why did that property leave their sprinklers blsting all over the sidewalk." resentment. I think you're caterwauling ne'er-do-wells first and book understanders maybe third or fourth. Second is shitposting so thank heavens you are good at that
Idk why but everyone has been relitigating Occupy and 2016 and also 2020 recently so it's been on my mind.