OpenStars

The hexbear community predated Lemmy iirc, so they have existed in an isolated bubble for a very long time. Imagine edgy teenagers with an axe to grind and no particular reason to avoid grinding it on anything that they set their sights onto.

Despite running off so much of their own community members, including some actual developers, they seem happy with the way they are. Sadly, they are also happy to spread out from their instance and fuck up everyone else's day as well - rulez be damned. Notably, they continually keep floating the idea of defederating themselves from the rest of the Fediverse - I mean ofc those instances that have not already cut them off - so if that gives you an idea of what is going on (they are aware of their toxicity, they simply choose to not care).

That particular community might be fine though. Or not. Either way it's probably more tolerable than many hexbear users that you will see in general across the Fediverse. You'll see for yourself.

This is b/c you are on lemmy.world, which defederated from both lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. So you only have the likes of lemmy.ml and midwest.social to contend with, which are nowhere near as extreme as those others.

Also, by the time of the Rexodus a lot of that drama had already been hashed out, hence posts like the OP are rare these days. But it is preserved if you want to seek it out.

A lot of what OP is talking about is the "unexpectedness" of making a comment that might seem reasonable to them (like "the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did happen tho"), and then shockingly they get banned even from communities that they had never even so much as heard of, never mind visited. The admins of that instance are VERY eager to whip out a VERY heavy ban hammer upon their slightest whim. Which is... fine, it's theirs to do with as they please, but some newer people (like OP) are shocked at how anti-democratic that seems, and wish that they had been told. Especially since if you read the sidebar of places such as lemmy.world, you would not expect that behavior - all the more so from an admin instance. Hence they tell others. And then new people join, and the tanky vs. anti-tanky cycle repeats:-D.

Personally I am sitting at 100% of the people who I mention Lemmy to irl doing so. Not only that, but they actually gave me dirty looks and admonished me for even so much as mentioning it. It is easy for us who have blocked such to forget but... the day-1 experience for someone new can be quite shocking. e.g. just search for the word "guillotine", preferably from an instance you are not logged into, to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking... not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as ... "have bank accounts".

Though maybe X is just as bad these days? I dunno, I never had an account even when it was Twitter:-D. In any case, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, and the devil you know... you know? :-P

(1) shoutout to the community at !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca for helping guide people into things like how to make a functioning link to communities and users, and I posted something there myself mentioning a variety of ways to curate someone's experiences, e.g. to block extremist content. I would share a link to that here... except links to posts are not fully functional on the Fediverse, since they take you off of your home instance and require jumping through hoops to avoid that. Also, if that community does not show up for you, like if visiting that link it looks empty, then subscribe to it and wait about a day. The Fediverse is not so easy to use as people keep saying it is...

Though ironically, as you said, what's the point when nobody even knows of that community's existence. Worse yet, a lot of "guides" pointed to in the sidebar of a large number of instances either have next to no information, or at most only a single years-old post with a ton of comments like "thanks" and "^THIS" that you cannot easily get past b/c of how the Lemmy web UI makes you load only a portion before making you go to the bottom and load another, and another, and another, and another... almost none of which have anything useful to add, and yet the instance admins (which people like Blaze and I have specifically told) choose not to point to a "community", and instead leave those years-old links to posts. Speaking of, and funny enough, in the case of lemmy.ml go to the sidebar and click the "What is Lemmy.ml" - the result is hilariously on-brand!:-P

(2) measuring community engagement stats can be tricky - for one thing, the numbers when viewed from an external instance are often wrong, but going to the home instance and looking in the sidebar iirc offers the true values. Also, "subscribed" means next to nothing, and instead active users per month (AMU) is where it's at. With that in mind then:

• linux@lemmy.ml has 2.23k AMUs
• linux@lemmy.world has 1.39k AMUs
• after that it drops precipitously, e.g. linux@sh.itjust.works has just 36 AMUs

Still, linux@lemmy.world is not nothing, with 39% of these users - a lower-bound estimate since many people are likely subscribed to both.

(3) And Linux@lemmy.ml is the #3 community on that instance. The large majority of the other communities - asklemmy, memes, news, privacy, technology, etc. - all have counterparts on other instances.

One counterexample that is pretty bad is firefox, with lemmy.ml vs. lemmy.world having 3.82k vs. 0.72 AMUs, respectively.

So, do whatever you want, but it is what it is. Personally I've user-blocked lemmy.ml b/c... well, you can see it yourself from the replies to your post here, it's just not worth the hassle of having to receive such in my feed (though sadly, user-blocking seems to make extraordinarily little difference compared to not doing such). All I can suggest is that while it may not be "easy", we can each of us be a part of the change that we want to see in the world. Find, subscribe to, and POST on communities that you would like to see grow.

You understand perfectly: Karening is always a choice, if only there were more people (like you I guess) that would self-identity by choosing their names to let us know their personality!? :-)

That's... what? What?! WHAT!?

To anyone else reading, note the @lemmy.ml after their name. There are only so many times people of intelligence can hear the most batshit insane things on Lemmy without either willfully losing IQ points or else blocking the lemmy.ml instance.

Unfortunately, that does next to nothing, bc you'll still see every single batshit insane comment like the above. Every. Single. One. And while it might be a bug, you can sometimes get replies from them too (while other times blissfully not).

Maybe I'll make an account on Lemmy.cafe, which is the only instance I've ever heard of that has actually defederated from lemmy.ml. Though I'm holding out more hope for Sublinks, Piefed, and Mbin too to help address such issues.

Stay safe folks - election season is coming and there are some who want to fuck you up if at all possible (not necessarily the above comment, just in general), don't let it happen!

There are those - like Jules Verne, HG Wells, and yes Orwell - who can see far into the future not because they are fucking magicians or whatever, but bc they allowed themselves to see clearly. Which in turn I think comes from mental discipline to ruthlessly weed out the false thoughts that would choke the life out of the true ones.

Anyway I'm full of trite quotes in this reply I guess but even so, those who don't learn from their history are doomed to repeat it, and lately I (who lives in America) am very worried about that thought... and yet there too it is history that gives me comfort. No nation (afaict) has ever survived devolving into a 2-party state, but even Rome fell too once upon a time... long may it live.

Cowbee is notorious for not actually answering questions, just throwing up the same articles to read and asking people to DM them to continue the conversation. Make what you will of that info - are deeds done in the light of logical discourse inherently "better" than those done in darkness, i.e. are facts that can stand up to scrutiny somehow more "correct" than those that can only be whispered in the dark to those most vulnerable individuals still living in the cave?

Just like the USA's experiment with far-right ideology, and also just like the COVID pandemic - knowledge that it will eventually implode seems not to matter one bit.

Obvious to you (and me), yet somehow they themselves don't see it.

Wow, she is so Karen that her parents even named her that decades ago in the past - that's some dedicated Karening right there! (/s:-D)

There are (unfortunately) many profound similarities, and underlying reasons, e.g. both involve echo chambers that insulate them from the wider world, promoting childish modes of thinking (e.g. those who speak most aggressively "win"), such that whatever is "claimed" to be believed in, is not actually the case.