saying something this edgy does not absolve you of bigotry
edit: for anyone stumbling into the drama, i probably should have elaborated on this post. I am not saying you can’t make fun of white people not being able to eat spicy food or anything, but at some point it becomes self-flagellating. to quote comrade RedQuestionAsker:
It’s good to challenge white supremacy in all of its incarnations at all time. It’s certainly good to refuse to be proud to be white considering what the concept of whiteness is.
It’s another thing to performatively hate yourself in a cocktail of millennial self-deprecation and liberal white guilt. It’s not revolutionary, and it’s probably not good for you.
that is all. comrades just know i dont hate any of you. i’m not trying to start a slapfight. i just saw this as weird performative behavior and wanted to call it out.
What were the other ones?
I meant like, this week
My fave struggle sessions are outdoor cats and rockstacking. Absolute evergreens
The rock-stacking one still gets my blood boiling.
I don’t remember the rock stacking struggle session. What was the Hexbear consensus on that? Personally I knock those rock stacks down when I hike by them.
Expert on rehabilitation of water streams made an effort post (and then several very patient replies) about how stacking rocks is harmful.
Bunch of users freaked out, as if their life depended on rock-stacking. They tried to rules lawyer how close to a water stream you had to be, for it to be bad. They pulled the old “indigenous people do it!!!” defense. They tried to argue that the user was making an individualist argument and thus a capitalist and wrong. They tried to argue that “they just couldn’t see how it was bad, so the expert on water stream rehabilitation is wrong and/or overreacting”. They tried to play it off as “well it’s not bad that i do it” despite having had explained how in this very specific situation, it was actually an individual problem and something they also should not do as individuals.
People brought up “take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but treadmarks” (basic how-to-not-be-a-dickhead-in-nature-etiquette) which these users also then freaked out about.
A lot of these users were power users on the site and their reaction and subsequent attempts to rules lawyer and then attempts at playing it off as a bit/something silly was very disappointing to see and it therefore still frustrates me, because they behave as if it was totally just everybody overreacting, and not them being beliggerent assholes, for which they should apologise.
Consensus was that stacking rocks disrupts water streams and does a lot of weird shit for microorganisms, soil, erosion, bugs, that sort of stuff, so touching rocks is bad and stacking them is worse. Can’t recall more than that, but basically: Things in streams are used to rocks not moving about a lot, and they are so used to it, that even just a widdle bit of rock-moving-about done by an individual, is very harmful.
I have no idea wether they should be knocked over or not, but I would assume so, since the wind probably does it otherwise. I dunno about that, not the expert.
Ironically, a really bad bit
The two big ones in the early days were over transphobic users and veganism. We’ve had a no tolerance policy for transphobia this whole time and that was kind of whiplash for early users. Lots of people with unexamined reactionary views who weren’t used to strict guidelines on how to talk about trans stuff. A lot of them were against pronouns in user profiles.
But the absolute legends will always be outdoor cats and rock stacking next to rivers
Oh I meant like this week, I’ve been here the whole time
But thanks!
Oh, this week the big thing has been about whether or not it’s ok to disparage against white people, like say that you hate white people. And then a struggle over if white people saying cracker is trying to be like one of the good whites. And then a struggle about whites making everything about themselves. It’s been wild
Death to the concept of whiteness and those who would uphold it