Hexbear has been getting a lot more attention and activity as of late, and while it is very fun to dunk on the new people posting on the site in bad faith, a post to appreciate the new good faith users contributing to the site seems like a great idea.
So, what new users do you appreciate, and what should other potential new users do to get the same reception?
Hexbear appreciation comment:
My instance doesn’t defederate as a general rule. It has its upsides and downsides – I still have dbzer0 and lemmygrad, but I also have to put up with occasional bullshit from exploding heads and similar. Gotta say it’s nice having you folks pop up in my feed to balance out the bad takes.
See, I didn’t know that and randomly picked sdf.org when some of the other instances were having tech issues and growing pains. It quickly became my “primary” account and in all this drama I’ve learned that I was very lucky in my pick. I definitely appreciate the viewpoints I see from hexbear users.
love seeing allies from other instances. 
I’ve learned a lot from lurking the unfettered conversation that happens here, subjects that I’ve never heard of discussed in great detail. The shitposting is next level. Just a great mix of leftie content here. Also, the site logo is fire.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
What is the best way to learn Spanish?
at a young age from a native speaker
I think this is the objectively correct answer
However how about for me who is sadly an older adult?
I’m no expert but I am am enthusiastic learner. It’s never too late. And you have advantages that kids don’t have. E.g. if you read Spanish world news, you’ll recognise half the vocab because it’s the same as formal English (which is mostly from Latin rather than German) or it’s ‘international’ language (like brands and international bodies with the name in a different order). So after a little bit of study, you can read Spanish to get the gist reasonably soon.
To get that start, Language Transfer Spanish is a great free course and will give you a big leg up. (Just be sure to start the playlist at the first episode as the SoundCloud link sometimes starts halfway through!)
Do you speak any other languages?
Here are some answers I’ve given others:
- Learning languages, step-by-step
- Listening-Reading (LR) method (this works with any language)
- Summary of the LR method
- Some tips for making your own Anki decks (spaced repetition cards) if you fancy that
- Some tips on playing games and using word lists to learn vocabulary
Happy to answer questions if you have any. Here or in [email protected] or tag me.
Thanks for that! Bear-ing the fruits of federation I am.
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Everyone I know who is trying to learn a language as an adult uses duolingo, but I think that’s more out of convenience and less because it’s actually the best way to learn.
The best way is still probably from a native language speaker who has been teaching a class for a while.
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preferable to start in the womb or soon after
The only folks I’ve known to learn Spanish as adults have all worked back-of-house
A friend of mine is a Spanish first language speaker and when I visit them the next time I would like to have a rudimentary language skill set, just to be nice and show appreciation to them.
worked back-of-house
Does this idiom mean working in areas without customer contact like back office, kitchen, maintenance, IT, technical stuff, labs etc?
It specifically means the kitchen in a bar or restaurant
im gay lol
Woooow how original, a gay hexbear. Sheesh, get some new material
spoiler
jk I love all my comrades, gay, trans, bi, and (may I be forgiven for uttering such profanity) straight
Uhhhh…. I’m gay Obama…… and uhhhh…… let me be queer
based
Welcome to hexbear <333 so am I! <3
noway me too <3
We’re all so gay and trans and communist <3
braver than the troopsbig vibe
Big if true
You guys are the cool commie friends I wish to have, and I’m sad I haven’t met you guys before. Such a happy place to get some
GOOD OL’ MURICANfreedom from all the lib crap we endure daily ❤️✨Gotta say I have much enjoyed my time here so far
No weird socially conservative “communism”
No state department brained liberal “socialism”
Only good takes and unironically based people
No weird socially conservative “communism”
this is a subset of the western leftist they attack. i know this is counterintuitive. they’re basically a subset of breadtubers who play antihero / heel roles
they do a great job of making “NATOids” feel good about themselves
jackson hinkle was recruited by tulsi gabbard a US military psyops person
We don’t talk about Maupin
Welcome the
It’s surprisingly hard to find a place that doesn’t veer into patsoc silly reaction or radlib ignorance. I’ll even put up with a bunch of leftcoms or anarchists or anything by else as long as they are anti-imperialist and don’t make one of the two errors above
when a hexbear spots liberals and nazbols
Is there any generic “intro to Hexbear” post somewhere that I can point other people to when explaining what Hexbear is?
I think there are a lot of people on Lemmy who would fundamentally agree with most of the values held by Hexbear users, but they never give it a chance because of some bad first impression (either they are told by others that Hexbear users are all just trolls, or maybe they even get called a fascist or something like that by somebody with @hexbear in their name).
Would be great if there was some better intro. Does such a thing exist already? I tried searching but did not find anything.
seconding you go to c/askchapo. the gist of it though is that if we smell a hint of reaction in anything you say, the knives, guns, and attack owls come out. otherwise hexbear is kinda very cuddly and a great place for lgbt users, it has some of the most heavy-handed anti-queerphobe moderation ive ever seen on an online space, it mimics the more radical elements of an irl pride event very well. well over 50% of the mod and admin team are queer of some kind at this point and a good number are trans (me included, i mod c/traa). the mod team also takes nsfw tags and content tags for handling violence against women more serious than any space ive seen on the internet outside of maybe news sites that have the default shocking content label.
i don’t know of anything like that. could ask on c/askchapo or ask people at the general megathread
Been lurking for a few months but this is first online space I haven’t gotten those fucked vibes from
I’m still getting through my list of theory so I don’t feel confident joining certain conversations yet but I’d like to think being open-minded to deprogramming all the western propaganda bullshit I’ve ingested over a lifetime has helped me discover this community
I wish hexbear had gone with the name lib.rehab, because finding this place has done so many wonders for getting the worms out of my brain
Don’t feel like you can’t join conversations because you don’t have all the theory down comrade. We’ve all got plenty gaps in our knowledge and people are pretty cool about explaining things if required.
Sometimes the best discussions are kept going and reach greater depths because someone asks an ‘obvious’ question or contributes a ‘basic’ point, too. The simple shift in perspective can help everyone to see things from a different angle, which is hard to do even if it’s the crux of diamat. And we all learn when a question or contribution prompts an even more knowledgeable comrade to swing by with more theory, etc.
Yeah absolutely.
Yeah absolutely.
Just make sure to qualify your statements and ask questions in earnest. I appreciate they aren’t making declarations without investigation
pls be the real lebron
holy shit, the GOAT joined our website
also don’t worry, we’re fucking wrong all the time. we then talk it out. it’s how we grow
Say the wrong thing some time. Folk will set you right. Its a bit rough on the ego but nothing stamps out brain worms quite like a stern rebuke and as soon as you say “oh shit you are right” everything is good.
I’d almost consider it like an online anxiety lol. Mustering up the strength to not revert back to being a lurker after not expressing a thought succinctly and powering through the posting to stamp those worms out.
I had that until hexbear. Right now I’m possibly getting torn apart by a comrade who seems to have raead more than me. Otherwise how do I figure out what I don’t know? And this comrade is cool about it
It always helps when it’s an actual discussion instead of a bad faith debate
Otherwise how do I figure out what I don’t know?
A related question: do you ever get that feeling where you say something (if you’re lucky you might stop yourself first) about something that you learned before becoming a commiewithoutorgans and realise it’s ludicrous? I do that so often. It’s like only the new memories and information have been re-framed. Much of the old memories and information is sat in an archive in the back of my mind, complete with a perfectly intact liberal outlook.
Back to your question: when this happens to me it takes a [span of time] to realise that although I have an answer, I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. If yours wasn’t a rhetorical question, I don’t have a great answer other than to say: try to recall where you learned what you think you know and when. If the answer isn’t The Collected Works of Lenarx Dengping and/or ‘recently’, I try to err on the side of caution.
Or go back and revisit something you loved from childhood and realize it’s shitty and reactionary and you didn’t have any idea at the time.
Dark Knight, CGP Grey, a bunch of anime (like 99% of it), Lion King, etc etc. There’s so many things dripping with ideology and it doesn’t even cross your mind until you have a Marxist lens shift
fr!
I dread consuming old books, music, and movies etc that I loved when I was younger in case I realise it was trash and I ruin the memory. It’s a shame because I want to re-live those memories. But you have to balance it: is it a risk you want to take?
Even after reading loads it’s still possible to be wrong. It’s good to be humble and see knowledge not as an individual thing but as something that it takes a community to work out. That helps a little with the hits to my ego, anyway. It’s still hard not to take a stand due to the way liberalism shapes the mind before it’s freed.
The dialectical process of discovering knowledge is awesome until it arrives at something I disagree with. Then its bullshit!!!
Very excited to have you aboard!
No ableism
Don’t forget, if you need to you can disengage from a conversation at any time, just say disengage if you ever need to, if users don’t respect that they get banned on the spot o7
Please post, please ask questions, and remember
John Brown did nothing wrong unlimited bloodshed against Slave Owners
just say disengage if you ever need to
Little corollary: this is not to be used as a “let me post a wall of text and call you names then say ‘disengage’ and call the mods on you if you reply” tool. You have to actually disengage. Learning how to do that is good.
Omg I wish everywhere did that.
I had a conversation earlier that I wanted to disengage with because the person was strawmanning me and it was clear, after pointing out to them already that’s what they were doing, I wasn’t going to have a productive discussion, so I said I was no longer going to interact and got 2 reply meaaages to it, basically trying to egg me on to re-engage, one of which said it was ironic I was telling him I was disengaging… Simply because I told him I was doing so?? (Which I did not respond to, for obvious reasons)
I love that that will be respected here. 💜
🥹
this and no downvotes seem like the best things ever to my anxious ass holy shit
If Michael Fassbender isn’t a leftist, we can pull him left by his hog.
Finally made an account after lurking for the past few months. This community is one of the few corners of the internet that doesn’t give me psychic damage. Hello, comrades, thank you for the warm welcome and for being cool people on a cool bear website.
Hijacking this for a question: What is a struggle session? /gen
struggle sessions on hexbear are when there’s a large disagreement on a specific subject and arguments ensue. It’s not a struggle session if it’s everyone ganging up on one lib or chud, it’s only one if it’s more of a 50-50 split in the community. Usually it resolves by mods locking the thread but sometimes it spreads to other threads. We don’t allow sectarianism so its not usually a struggle session between say anarchist and marxists, but instead on some single issue.
I was just reading David Priestland’s “The Red Flag” and came across a mention of the Chinese “struggle sessions” in Maoist China, and I have to say I chuckled a bit at the dark humor of this usage
Thank you! Do you happen to know an example of a topic which caused a struggle session?
Past examples include silly topics such as whether or not bidets are bourgeois, to more serious topics such as Xinjiang or Ukraine crisis. Everything from outdoor cats vs. indoor cats, veganism, use of controversial terms/phrases
Thanks for the explanation, I feel like I am ready for my own struggle session. Critical support for the vegan patrol! /hj
Welcome comrades and hopefully soon-to-be comrades.
I’ve had some really nice exchanges with new users and those from other instances and look forward to more and more of it.
Even those who have just dipped their toes in to ask questions and then backed out presumably because it wasn’t for them or didn’t like the answers - you won’t read this probably but thanks for being on earnest and cool about it.
Well you for one, for making this topic, it’s a good idea
Assuming you mean new users even from outside the instance, I’ve seen a few users from elsewhere post dune memes, and we need more duneposting
Also more generally the free software / anti-IP / linux content seems to have increased (we had comms for those of course but theirs are bigger) and that’s pretty great too
Hexbear and Lemmygrad are very welcoming and enjoyable spaces. I tend to not like being on social media, and this is the one exception to that now.
New user not really contributing atm, but I found my way here from exploring lemmy and hearing all the controveries.
What I’ve enjoyed the most so far is seeing my preconceptions of internet leftism challenged and corrected. I checked out cth and genzedong back before reddit banned both and always thought it was simply full of antagonistic lefties who just wanted to troll libs. Honestly, it put a bad taste in my mouth and made me sad about the state of the left.
Being around here for a few days has shown me how absolutely wonderful everyone is as well as how deep conversations can go when yall have your own space free from constant lib attack. It’s easy to see how I attributed the antagonism wrong and that it was simply defense against lib brigades. In hindsight, wish I would have just dug a little deeper back then and be partying with y’all since.
I’ve already learned so much lurking and look forward to learning more and interacting with all you beautiful people.
