The capitalists trying to strip out the wiring is how you know they are leftist

I’m going to gently push back a little on Okarun being a Nice Guy- he’s not Kirito or a generic isekai protagonist where he’s a generic not-asshole that inexplicably makes women fall for him, to act as a vehicle for audiences to self-insert into. He’s a socially isolated kid with low self-esteem who retreated into a niche hobby as a coping mechanism, his sole motivation at the start of the show was to make even one friend and he’s only now grappling with the fact that his first genuine friend is someone of the opposite sex and that he might be attracted to her (<---- Episode 5, for those keeping score at home).

Also he has to deal with the absurdist situation that a ghost ate his balls.

Neat little thing about his character: the meta joke that Okarun’s real name is the same as Momo’s celebrity crush, Takakura Ken (think of the real life celebrity as Japanese John Wayne) is that his catch phrase “I’m an awkward fellow, after all” came from a commercial for family insurance, where the father figure played by the actor keeps failing to express his true emotions but it’s obvious to the audience that he cares about his family (because he bought insurance). That’s more his character’s deal (rather straightforwardly being bad at expressing himself), rather than some Chainsaw Man style bait-and-switch Shonen character deconstruction.

Edit: But also also the general levity of the show seems to be at odds with some of the topics it handles (like SA) and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to proselytize to anyone who watched ep 1 and decided it’s not for them because people are definitely going to have strong reactions that are entirely justified, I just feel like doing so can come off as insensitive

Yes, the first episode is problematic. But the show overall has feminist themes that make it a worthwhile watch- the new episode op is talking about a case in point.

I really need to get around to that effortpost about how to approach problematic media

To be fair to helltaker, the wrecker successfully got several user’s to point fingers at her when she wasn’t in a position to defend herself: if that happened to me I’d come out the gates swinging too.

Sulvor posted Carcosa’s proposals from elsewhere in this thread- I think most of us are waiting for Lyudmilla’s upcoming update post to review all proposed changes and plans of action.

Foucaults already replied with Egon’s timeline but if you want my TLDR:

The root of it has been the admins/mods lack of transparency and overreach (both in the past and in this current incident), but honestly that kinda goes with the territory of operating a social space on the internet.

Additionally there’s been a re-litigation of the site’s age-old dichotomy between being a serious revolutionary org and being a shitposting chill-out space, as that is what is assumed to be the motivation for the admins overreach, but this time people are taking it really personally because the wrecker successfully got us to point fingers at each other and a lot of people have been catching strays.

RN it’s probably best to wait and chill, Lyudmila will give us an update within a day or 2 with probably a better account of what happened and a plan of action forward. We can all decide what to do then

Yeah, I saw some of what was posted and it was really not cool, and it did a lot to rile up people and foster a sense of paranoia.

Also makes sense that an ex-mod (see edit) would know enough to talk like they were a current mod and (rightfully) cause the user’s to doubt the sincerity of the staff given how long it took to deal with (they ended up having to de-fed the linked instance to stop the harassment) + TC69’s ban wave was REALLY bad optics.

Our past mistakes come back to haunt us

Edit: Apparently the wrecker is probably an outsider, which actually is even worse because a lot of accusations were flying- we might have done their job for them

Thank you for everything you do, Carcosa

Yeah it’s just getting ridiculous at this point

More thoughts later commuting rn

I mean, fundamentally tags and subfora fulfill the same purpose, the issue is the sorting algorithm weighing different types of content differently

I think the original idea was to create non-corporate controlled alternatives to existing social media and siphon users as enshittification happened, to create a proof-of-concept of a post-capital internet, but if the end-use-case isn’t to laugh at Elon Musk’s deranged takes or to keep updated on the latest Star Citizen grift idk what we’re doing here.

“The purpose of the system is what it does” applies to Hexbear as well- at some point we’ll have to reckon with the mismatch between capitalist social media methodology as a means to “drive engagement” against our egalitarian/utopian aims, but that’s probably not happening today since this particular struggle session seems more about mod/admin/user miscommunication and infighting (being charitable) so

We should have been a phpBB forum instead.

Me walking into this thread after seeing the site filled with catposts for some reason:

Honestly, if you can’t fit any more I wouldn’t sweat it, it’s more important to cram all the basic, easy to understand stuff in first. I don’t think there’s really much you can take out from the resource as is

Looks good!

Only book I’d suggest adding is Capitalist Realism by Fisher, because I found it really helpful in orientating myself to Marxist analysis in a more modern context, but I think a lot of comrades would have good arguments on it’s lack of utility.

Also given the context of the US election, including some of the Black Panther’s literature on organising probably won’t go amiss

The problem is that there’s no shortcut.

People have to be motivated to seek the truth, with the discipline to not fall for convenient scapegoats or going off on wild tangents in conspiracy-minded thinking, and that’s especially hard if the truth does not align with the material interests of the seeker. You can introduce a frame of thinking that’s distrustful of power, but if the person you introduce it to is not armed with the critical thinking necessary they will just fall into their own biases and come to the wrong conclusions.

You need to give actual material reasons for why a person should think for themselves on issues like “the economy” or “politics” and not just outsource all that to “the experts”, be that Jake Tapper or Jordan Peterson, and then after that you might have to do the long hard work of teaching people how to follow the money (as CoolerOpposide put it)- which might require teaching the basics of Marxist theory.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that once you overcome that (admittedly difficult) hurdle, media literacy is a skill that anyone can learn.