I think a little clarification is needed. No. I don’t actually think everyone
there is insane. I don’t care about the bans so stop trying to use that. HB
enthusiasts coming here and trying to call me out achieves nothing besides
proving my point Edit: Feel free to keep trying to brigade me. It’s not going to
scare me to take this down
oh hell yeah. happy to see grad is still spooky to them too. as an aside, are midwest.social posters aware that grad is basically the same has hexbear (other than having less shitposting and what not) but is blocked for some reason?
Midwest blocked lemmygrad probably three years ago, long before hexbear had federation at all. I’m kind of surprised it’s still blocked, but the admins probably see unblocking it as kicking a hornets nest, it would definitely turn into a discussion about hexbear as well.
I understand why they blocked it, there’s some history there.
Lemmygrad was the second lemmy instance, started as communism.lemmy.ml, I think there were a bunch of other instances already by the time they moved to the lemmygrad domain. I’m pretty sure midwest started early enough that they predate the move to lemmygrad, I think they’re old enough that they were set up even before chapo.chat (now hexbear). I was never on the cth subreddit, but I was already on communism lemmy/lemmygrad before the sub was banned, and I found out about this site when it started from being on lemmy. I actually liked communism lemmy a good bit better than chapo.chat for a while. The community was awesome, I visited daily, I learned a lot of shit and it really shaped my current worldview in a lot of ways. Chapo.chat had more shitposting but there was honestly a good bit more infighting than there is today and I found that somewhat tiring.
When genzedong got banned from reddit, a ton of their users fled to lemmygrad (already on their own domain at this point). It became a different community and the toxicity just went through the roof overnight. I hated it. The federated lemmy instances (chapo.chat was not) stopped coexisting without drama (edit: not totally accurate, wolfballs did not coexist peacefully with any of the others, rest in piss) and a lot of instances started having discussion after discussion about defederating from lemmygrad. Any defederation from lemmygrad but not from hexbear was almost certainly a reaction to that.
I started using lemmygrad less and less and started using my hexbear (I think? Maybe chapo.chat still back then) account much more. I think by that point the culture here had settled in more with less infighting than there had been at the start.
There was one extremely prolific poster that arrived at lemmygrad after the genzedong ban that was just arguing with fucking everyone on so many posts on every federated instance and it really grated on me that the lemmygrad community was rallying around her all the time. I saw her name join hexbear a couple years back and blocked immediately. I looked a couple months ago (blocklists came up in a thread and I looked and that was the only account on mine) and apparently she was banned from hexbear after only nine months of using hexbear with like 5000 comments or something just completely absurd.
Maybe midwest sucks now I don’t really know, but they were cool with lemmygrad up until it went through its hostility phase. The lemmygrad culture has changed since then, but pre-genzedong ban lemmygrad was probably my favorite online community I’ve been a part of, so I’m still a little sad about the whole thing.
interesting history thanks for this writeup, I knew about some of the history but never seen any true retrospectives on it, I only ever knew about lemmygrad and lemmy as a whole after the genzedong quarantine but even then I didnt make my first account until last year. Still, there are way more hexbear users than there ever were on grad even post reddit migration and many are just as if not more aggressive than genzedong posters especially when federation first began and hexbear still didnt get defederated so I dont quite understand why still.
I dont wanna start an argument but i know who you’re talking about and I do like her but I get that her posting style probably would be annoying if you were used to a much calmer community. honestly there are a lot of people on hexbear who are just as if not more aggressive and terminally online imo but I guess you probably just block them too
Still, there are way more hexbear users than there ever were on grad even post reddit migration and many are just as if not more aggressive than genzedong posters especially when federation first began and hexbear still didnt get defederated so I dont quite understand why still.
Because it’s not the same as suddenly introducing a radical change to the way your community behaves as a whole. Even though the instances somewhat had their own cultures, the federation was really tight-knit at the time and the overarching feel was more or less not combatative in any way shape or form (with obvious exceptions for new users who are about to be banned for the shit they’re spewing). When one user joins and they start a lot of arguments with genuine anger, it’s really easy to not engage if that’s how your community already is. That person will assimilate or figure out that they don’t belong. But when they join with an assortment of others to back them up each confrontation, it’s harder to keep the same coherence.
but it would be the same for midwest.social, the chaos of the reddit migration happened, things calmed down and then hexbear rejoined the federation causing another huge blowup
from my memory stuff had relatively calmed down on the fediverse before hexbear rejoined especially since midwest.social had already defederated from grad, a ton of the drama and craziness was between grad and like .world and the other new instances at least from my perspective as a grad user. what account were you browsing the fediverse around the time all that went down?
A .ml account. I did have an account on communism.lemmy.ml too, but I basically only used it pre-federation and when the federation was having issues. Once the federation was reliable I was browsing lemmygrad through .ml entirely.
hm i wonder if you being on .ml where the devs test stuff before they put it out in full release made the chaos seem even worse and seem even longer, but really I remember the tech issues really being mostly fixed by the time hexbear federated, v.0.18.0 came out in june and hexbear didn’t begin federation until august. I guess there was the scripting attack saga but that was fixed by the time hexbear federated too
oh hell yeah. happy to see grad is still spooky to them too. as an aside, are midwest.social posters aware that grad is basically the same has hexbear (other than having less shitposting and what not) but is blocked for some reason?
lemmygrad is the DPRK and we are Cuba if you think about it
Lemmy.ml could be considered China since it’s too important to defederate
And also conceded too much ground to libs.
funny comparison, almost feels disrespectful though to their struggles lol
This is true because every lib/fash debate-lord they send in here to rhetorically destroy us ends up fucking me. They deny it later, but it’s true.
I think it’s the reverse, since Hexbear is both more revisionist and more militant than grad, relative to these being instances
lemmygrad is the socialist nation of federation, already embargo’d by almost every other instance just for being based
History lesson!
Midwest blocked lemmygrad probably three years ago, long before hexbear had federation at all. I’m kind of surprised it’s still blocked, but the admins probably see unblocking it as kicking a hornets nest, it would definitely turn into a discussion about hexbear as well.
I understand why they blocked it, there’s some history there.
Lemmygrad was the second lemmy instance, started as communism.lemmy.ml, I think there were a bunch of other instances already by the time they moved to the lemmygrad domain. I’m pretty sure midwest started early enough that they predate the move to lemmygrad, I think they’re old enough that they were set up even before chapo.chat (now hexbear). I was never on the cth subreddit, but I was already on communism lemmy/lemmygrad before the sub was banned, and I found out about this site when it started from being on lemmy. I actually liked communism lemmy a good bit better than chapo.chat for a while. The community was awesome, I visited daily, I learned a lot of shit and it really shaped my current worldview in a lot of ways. Chapo.chat had more shitposting but there was honestly a good bit more infighting than there is today and I found that somewhat tiring.
When genzedong got banned from reddit, a ton of their users fled to lemmygrad (already on their own domain at this point). It became a different community and the toxicity just went through the roof overnight. I hated it. The federated lemmy instances (chapo.chat was not) stopped coexisting without drama (edit: not totally accurate, wolfballs did not coexist peacefully with any of the others, rest in piss) and a lot of instances started having discussion after discussion about defederating from lemmygrad. Any defederation from lemmygrad but not from hexbear was almost certainly a reaction to that.
I started using lemmygrad less and less and started using my hexbear (I think? Maybe chapo.chat still back then) account much more. I think by that point the culture here had settled in more with less infighting than there had been at the start.
There was one extremely prolific poster that arrived at lemmygrad after the genzedong ban that was just arguing with fucking everyone on so many posts on every federated instance and it really grated on me that the lemmygrad community was rallying around her all the time. I saw her name join hexbear a couple years back and blocked immediately. I looked a couple months ago (blocklists came up in a thread and I looked and that was the only account on mine) and apparently she was banned from hexbear after only nine months of using hexbear with like 5000 comments or something just completely absurd.
Maybe midwest sucks now I don’t really know, but they were cool with lemmygrad up until it went through its hostility phase. The lemmygrad culture has changed since then, but pre-genzedong ban lemmygrad was probably my favorite online community I’ve been a part of, so I’m still a little sad about the whole thing.
interesting history thanks for this writeup, I knew about some of the history but never seen any true retrospectives on it, I only ever knew about lemmygrad and lemmy as a whole after the genzedong quarantine but even then I didnt make my first account until last year. Still, there are way more hexbear users than there ever were on grad even post reddit migration and many are just as if not more aggressive than genzedong posters especially when federation first began and hexbear still didnt get defederated so I dont quite understand why still.
I dont wanna start an argument but i know who you’re talking about and I do like her but I get that her posting style probably would be annoying if you were used to a much calmer community. honestly there are a lot of people on hexbear who are just as if not more aggressive and terminally online imo but I guess you probably just block them too
Because it’s not the same as suddenly introducing a radical change to the way your community behaves as a whole. Even though the instances somewhat had their own cultures, the federation was really tight-knit at the time and the overarching feel was more or less not combatative in any way shape or form (with obvious exceptions for new users who are about to be banned for the shit they’re spewing). When one user joins and they start a lot of arguments with genuine anger, it’s really easy to not engage if that’s how your community already is. That person will assimilate or figure out that they don’t belong. But when they join with an assortment of others to back them up each confrontation, it’s harder to keep the same coherence.
but it would be the same for midwest.social, the chaos of the reddit migration happened, things calmed down and then hexbear rejoined the federation causing another huge blowup
Totally disagree on this point. You’re right that it wouldn’t make sense if that were true.
from my memory stuff had relatively calmed down on the fediverse before hexbear rejoined especially since midwest.social had already defederated from grad, a ton of the drama and craziness was between grad and like .world and the other new instances at least from my perspective as a grad user. what account were you browsing the fediverse around the time all that went down?
A .ml account. I did have an account on communism.lemmy.ml too, but I basically only used it pre-federation and when the federation was having issues. Once the federation was reliable I was browsing lemmygrad through .ml entirely.
hm i wonder if you being on .ml where the devs test stuff before they put it out in full release made the chaos seem even worse and seem even longer, but really I remember the tech issues really being mostly fixed by the time hexbear federated, v.0.18.0 came out in june and hexbear didn’t begin federation until august. I guess there was the scripting attack saga but that was fixed by the time hexbear federated too
deleted by creator