The best part is emojis become supersized images on lemmy. Like here's what your comment looks like on their end:

It's like lib, a couple of deleted comments, and then a pile of hexes

Coming out of the hyperbolic time chamber to find your opponent is season 1 Krillin

Yeah if I’m honest I’m thankful that we have This shakeup. was getting tired of most of the content each day being power poster memes

I feel like there was a stale patch for a while but there's since been a readjustment with content being a little less laser-focused on politics and overall a little more positive.

scientifically, bullying works

also thanks, i just had an amazing poop thanks to you

1. we don't owe anyone long, detailed explanations of why they're wrong. that info is available from any of hundreds or thousands of different sources, including in published books. if someone comes in and asks a question in good faith, they'll get a reading list. if someone just comes in and drops their opinion, though, we have no obligation to respect that.
2. all of us, at different times, do give those long explanations. they're just exhausting to type up. no one can demand our time and energy. online debates don't change opinions. real explanations of the topics that get dunked on here require entire books to unpack the arguments and properly dismantle them. there's no shortcut for doing the homework and we're not going to pretend that there is.
3. many of the opinions that get dunked on are thought terminating cliches that people don't reason themselves into -- they're repeating random propaganda they've imbibed passively. the best response is to make fun of these ideas, to break the notion that they're somehow inviolate truths, beyond questioning. that dunking led many people on the old sub -- people who wandered much as these new folks are, with opinions that vastly differ from our own -- to eventually do some reading and change their own minds. we can't change anyone's mind. they have to be open to having their minds changed and embark on that process in their own way, at their own pace.
4. civility masks the abject horror of the world we live in. civility is the false peace -- it's a peace marked by masking of tension rather than any resolution of it. our world is not peaceful -- it merely pretends to be so by demanding those harmed mask their grievances. many of us here are from minority groups -- our grievances will be heard and no amount of tone policing is going to chnage that.

Certainly doesn't help that our emoji don't size properly on other instances and are huuuge. Sorry about that.

And yeah I agree that posters here are often way too eager to be hostile. Sometimes just smelling disagreement will be enough to start a dogpile or get called a "treat defender" lmao.

Right now though it's because federation is new. Hopefully we chill out a bit before everyone defederates us lol.

That’s an extremely mayo concern. You will take your dunking and you will like it crackkker

Bullying works

Love the gigantic PPB.

Just wanted to remark that a lot of us have learned our lesson about trying to put real effort into political discourse with Internet randos. doesn't matter if you put hours into tracking down all your sources and trying to make your arguments absolutely airtight, if the person on the other end just calls you a CCP shill, or an ignorant idealistic Westerner who didn't have to experience "real Communism," or a bot, etc. It just isn't worth the time to try to have an academic debate if the other person is obtuse, ideologically committed, ~~a teenager~~ basically a child, or posting from Langley (lol). Edit: unless you really can spare the time, obviously

Also, I think hexbears do a decent job of providing sources on average, you can't force someone to read/listen to them and engage with them in good faith, though. You know that thing about horses.

Well, happy poops to you too!

Edit: that was unfair to teenagers

That's fair, but the thing is... the strategy sort of worked for us the first time around. It worked so well that we got kicked off of Reddit despite being one of the largest and fastest growing communities, and we owe that growth to good old fashioned cyberbullying.

The important thing to remember is that nobody on hexbear punches down. If you come in with a bunch of dumbass takes then you're going to get dunked on, but nobody is going to misgender you or call you an autist as an insult while they do it. Most people who get called out on here deserve it, and if not, you can bet I'll be making an ass out of myself by defending that person until they inevitably say something that makes me regret it.

I think it accomplishes nothing except pushing people away, it's not changing anyone's minds.

Do you have scientific sources for that?

Dunking is the exciting new thing rn, go see what's new on the smaller comms for a chiller vibe.

https://hexbear.net/c/news

https://hexbear.net/c/technology

https://hexbear.net/c/urbanism

https://hexbear.net/c/labour

https://hexbear.net/c/history

https://hexbear.net/c/politics

https://hexbear.net/c/science

https://hexbear.net/c/indigenous

I think it accomplishes nothing except pushing people away, it's not changing anyone's minds.

Most of these people aren't available to be convinced.

And even if they were, the whole idea that kindness and civility is the most effective way to convince people is one of those mantras that gets repeated so much that everyone seems to just assume it's true, when I have my doubts.

For one it's always a one way street, the people who call for other to be civil to them often aren't civil to other, you see this on the right all the time, it's almost like the know that nastiness is actually effective and want to be free to engage in it all they want while denying their opponents the tactic.

And speaking anecdotally, sometimes a harsh boot up the ass can help knock people out of their BS. I've seen it happen to others and had it happen to me. Their initial response is to get pissed and run away but after the initial sting fades from their butthole the often go "oh shit that guy had a point I was being stupid".

And driving the bad faith people away makes for a better space to engage with people who we actually share some common ground with.

All and all I think meanness and hostility can actually be really effective rhetorical tools, bullying works.

this place seems to revere "dunking" on people

You need to implement the carrot and the stick. Open minded people get the carrot. Closed? They get the stick. Maybe next time they'll get the carrot, but they aren't going to change if that's all they ever get and all they ever display is being closed to what you're trying to explain to them.

I think this will help provide some context.

Some very large portion of people on this website never wanted to federate. We got kicked off reddit over 3 years ago and have been using a fork of the Lemmy software before any of you got big mad at your apps being taken away. WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE. We were quite happy having "uncontacted tribe" status and specifically NOT interacting with the tens of thousands of REDDITORS who got mad and decided to go to lemmy. If we wanted to do that, we could be on reddit. Now, we might as well be on reddit, and for the people who didn't want that, we fucking hate it.

I don't come here to "engage in the marketplace of ideas". Yes, I was perfectly happy having an "echo chamber". Literally the entire rest of the world is far outside that echo chamber, so what's the fucking harm of having ONE PLACE that I don't have to deal with it?

😔