this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Just putting that out there. While we might have struggle sessions over bullshit, the larger internet zeitgeist is putrid and rancid.

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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 70 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The thing that makes all 3 of those places good is that the userbase is talking to each other authentically instead of writing comments to secure votes.

On the wider internet most people are writing their comments not for the person they're actually replying to, but for the audience that will be voting on the comment. Social media has now trained people into this mindset and it has produced a rancid style of inauthentic interaction.

Even with people I fucking hate and disagree with I prefer an authentic interaction where they're actually responding to me and having a real conversation compared to where they're responding for a perceived audience of voters. This is now almost impossible to find online.

I will say however, the times where that hasn't been the case here on Hexbear have been some of the most toxic experiences I've ever had online. When a hexbear turns bad-faith it gets really nasty.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It has been really nice to not have a platform filled with one-uppers and combative ppl trying to drive engagement and "go viral" with every comment. It also really helps to have mods that have our backs, and aren't going to allow stormfront/reddit-tier bigotry.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 25 points 1 month ago (8 children)

I think people are pretty combative here, viciously so sometimes. But it's still authentic, they have an exchange that is still very direct and not targeted at who is voting.

This is very different to anywhere else. I've actually attempted to recreate it in other spaces I moderate and I've failed so far, I don't exactly understand the criteria involved with getting people to act this way. It's very difficult to marshall people into it, particularly on reddit where the platform is designed specifically to cause people to soapbox for voters. I have no idea how it happened on CTH or TrueAnon. I suspect the culture of the space was primarily caused by the podcasts and not by the modteams or reddit.

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[–] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 59 points 1 month ago (3 children)

just popping in to say fuck discord.

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 31 points 1 month ago (5 children)

IRC but worse should not have been a winning idea

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[–] Beaver@hexbear.net 17 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I hate how it has subsumed all hobby forums.

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[–] vegeta1@hexbear.net 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I kept saying it. Internet is an ocean of bigotry and ignorance. The worst possible place for an LLM to learn from.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

I feel like eventually we'll see an "evolution" of LLMs where the big innovation will be cutting 90% of the Internet out of the training data without breaking the whole thing. Imagine if LLM output was as dry, neutral, and reliable as the average encyclopedia (yes I know those aren't perfect either but it's an improvement over reddit threads at least).

[–] EnsignRedshirt@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don’t know if it’ll be framed as an innovation, per se, but that’s going to be the main utility for this technology. Small, focused models that can help you turn a large amount of pre-qualified data into something usable. That would be pretty cool. Wasn’t ever going to be anything more than that, but we’ll have to watch a trillion dollar market bubble pop before people start to narrow their ambitions and actually make something useful out of these things.

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[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

reddit was actually good for a bunch of how-to kinda shit that would never be in an encyclopedia. the trick is sifting the "hey you might have a carbon monoxide leak" from the "it's cool to throw car batteries into the sea"

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[–] princeofsin@hexbear.net 52 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pirating shit is becoming harder and harder and google is basically unusable now

[–] insurgentrat@hexbear.net 50 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Hexbear reminds me of the old internet. People being their authentic selves. Doesn't mean there's no nastiness but the ratio of performative or inflammatory bullshit to people talking is much lower than the average internet.

I also maintain that an extremely low tolerance for bad faith or cruel behaviour is necessary online. Since the regulatory mechanisms that govern social interaction elsewhere are not available.

Whenever I look at lemmy outside, or worse reddit, it's just performative grandstanding, normalised bigotry, garbled repetition, and in "jokes".

[–] Real_User@hexbear.net 36 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm sure glad we don't have incomprehensible repetitive in jokes. I'm gonna post a picture of a bean now.

beanis

Jokes aside, this is one of the few places on the Internet where you don't have to be a power user to feel like part of a community

[–] hotcouchguy@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think a lot of that is because of size as well. Your post won't get buried under 20 copies of the same cliche joke (one with 850 upvotes, one with 23, and the rest at +1 or +2) everything is actually read by at least a few humans somewhere, and everything is presumably also written by humans.

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[–] Nasalstrip@hexbear.net 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, I’m trans and it’s depressing how hurtful every other social media is, can’t follow any trans creators because the comments are just hate speech that is totally okay and allowed by the site, apparently. And those same people being hateful will turn around and pretend the world caters to trans people and “you can’t say anything anymore!!1!1” Reddit is maybe okay when I stick to the subreddits I follow.

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[–] Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I used to visit reddit regularly in the past, and the ridiculous and monstrous stuff they always said had become normalized to me; I hated it, but I got used to it; but then I discovered chapo and LSC and now every time I go back for a visit, I'm reminded of how unacceptably awful and childish the people there are.

[–] Lovely_sombrero@hexbear.net 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Reddit is so very libified. I got banned from r/politics for criticizing the US & Saudi war in Yemen while Joe Biden was visiting his dear friend MBS in 2021. I was being "a troll".

I wasn't even trolling! If Reddit was full of conservatives, it would be at least fun to troll. But it is just depressing.

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[–] moss_icon@hexbear.net 26 points 1 month ago

The final straw for me with Reddit, and looking back I’m embarrassed it took so long, was a thread where people defended using the n-word and were getting upvoted. I decided I needed to delete the app to prevent hypertension after that one.

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I used to have a bunch of cosy little forums to check out daily. They're all dead now and probably moved to Discord, and I hate Discord. Everything else is on Reddit or Twitter or any of the other massive social media platforms which are full of fascists.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 32 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I miss that about the old internet. I'd get home from school and read through a daily rotation of sites' articles, forums, and blogs. Most of them don't exist anymore or have completely gone to shit. Ones that are functional are overrun by terminally online chuds whining about minorities and women. Decades ago, they'd get banned for the things they say today or chased off by normalish people. Now, they're the majority of site users, so they get a pass.

[–] Cat_Daddy@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago

RSS feeds were awesome back then.

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[–] penitentkulak@hexbear.net 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)

/r/trueanon is pretty good but why do they insist on using the r-word all the time?

visible-disgust

[–] grandisonantCalamity@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 1 month ago (4 children)

that place is in the general sphere of the 'dirtbag left' and the roots of that shit sunk deep into the ethos of how some people conduct themselves very early on because you get to eat your cake and have it too. its a reactionary caramel center youll find in pretty much anyone who tries to convince you nick mullen could totally be the next dane cook if he tried lol

[–] miz@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

I would never wish such a horrible fate on DSA president Nick Mullen

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[–] PostyourJaggaHogs@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

cumboy holdovers

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[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

America is cooked bro

I went today to a fall festival and they had literal ass children in police vests helping people park

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[–] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

r/trueanon has the closest energy to the original cth but I really don't like how they started adopting the cumtown "I'm gay and my dick is small" bit it just feels tired

[–] axont@hexbear.net 25 points 1 month ago

they're also not ideologically coherent and I've seen too much whinging over what they call identity politics over there, although I guess the old cth had that as well

[–] barrel_of_a_gun@hexbear.net 31 points 1 month ago

hexbear and grad are the only spots ive ever felt comfortable commenting, i've never really had public social media and even on stuff like reddit i barely commented (i doubt i have 500 comments total across every other social media site, my first ~6 months of using hexbear and grad im pretty sure i had over 1k comments. I dont feel quite as welcome here as I used to but even still this site is the only one I will actually engage on.

[–] ahrienby@hexbear.net 25 points 1 month ago

Certain Fediverse instances didn't last long, including two Kitsu instances. I just wanted a good instance that lasts forever with good support.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 1 month ago
[–] CeliacMcCarthy@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

[–] corgiwithalaptop@hexbear.net 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] zipper@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

i agree but man i wish some of the smaller comms on here were more active. don't get me wrong seeing the same people in most comment sections is nice because it feels more a community that way, but it bums me out whenever i go to a comm about an interest of mine and the last post was made a month ago with 3 upvotes and no comments.

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