well. to my everlasting shame it was the very website this post features. I got hooked in when it was still part of reddit. I was an angry young adult coming out of a terrible home situation and their collective “righteous fury” was appealing. after the move to a separate website, it just got worse and worse. hexbear, formally known as chapochat, had destructive drama outburtsts every single week right from the start.

I think it started with thousands of active users and rapidly dwindled down to only a few hundred because of how hostile and rigid it was. I was one of the few who stuck around because my warped sense of the world didn’t reveal how bad it was yet. I thought about quitting during many of these ridiculous “struggle sessions” as they called them. but something kept me hooked.

when the current ukraine-russia war started, the cracks were widening. a subsection of hexbear started to dominate. they were more openly bloodthirsty. they stopped pretending to care about the common people, which is what I cared about, and were cheering on the killing of civilians and conscripted soldiers. they posted videos of ukrainians getting shot and blown up accompanied with the site’s absurd emojis and weird in joke phrases. they were also just extremely hostile to anyone who wasn’t lockstep with their view. they would use vicious insults and accusations against naysayers and the mods would almost always rule on their side.

I rarely ever participated in the arguments up to that point because I didn’t see a reason to, but I got in fights with people about this. they were treating war like a football game and it really rubbed me the wrong way. but then that subsection of the site started to contain themselves mostly to the “news megathread” which I could easily ignore.

I became less and less interested in hexbear as time went on. I think other people were noticing these disturbing trends too because the number of active users dwindled down to around 150-200. the remaining users were the worst of the worst. so fucking mean and nasty, in that abusive family type of way. they proclaim themselves to be friendly, proclaim hexbear to be a welcoming and caring community, tightly knit, when behind the curtain they are horrible to each other. of course I had only ever known that type of life so I didn’t see it for what it was and continued to use the site.

I finally had a breakthrough internally and got the courage to go to therapy and try to reckon with the damage my upbringing did to me. and once that started to work, hexbear’s rose tint rapidly faded.

now I look back on my several years as a hexbear user with so much embarrassment. I can’t believe how much hatred was in my heart. I try to forgive myself and remember that I was young and broken and taken advantage of by malicious people online but I was old enough to know better. once in a while I’ll check hexbear out just to remind myself of how much I’ve grown and improved. I see people in there who claim to be in their 30s and 40s and i feel disgust at how they are manipulating young adults and even kids as we see here. I feel sad for them too. I don’t think anyone that old would be part of such a group if they didn’t have a seriously damaged worldview.

wow. sorry to dump on you. just seeing someone so young get roped into hexbear brought up a lot of feelings.

this kid is eventually going to look back on this era of their life and shiver from embarrassment. I’ve been there

I was listening to a live stream with a couple meteorologists explaining everything. they were fairly jovial and laid back seeming guys but at one point, one of them got a deadly serious tone to his voice and started talking about how this one can’t be rode out, can’t be survived.

can’t you set a password so it can’t join willy nilly?

deleted by creator

let my people go

this is why I’m a computer denialist

this is so scary for everyone in the path. I hope the president calls a special session so they can get more relief funding.

Cool thank you!

Buys watermelon, looks inside. It’s watery.

the secret sauce

TIL there’s a public mod log

incredibly ironic. how can you dismiss assault and say I’m the one dismissing it? jesus please get a grip and get off the fucking internet. why did I even try?

hey as a guy who was assaulted, please stop saying all men are complicit. do you understand what you’re saying when you say that?

not speaking for op but usually it’s just a fashion accessory. It’s basically a form fitting necklace

don’t gotta be condescending friend

even cheapo plywood and cardboard houses cost a fortune so construction companies don’t build with stronger materials because no one would buy the house. that’s my armchair opinion at least.

it’s funny seeing everyone in the thread outing themselves as not reading the article. guys the location is the very first part of the article body.

I once saw five different bald eagles on the same day. before that day I’d only ever seen one in my whole life, and I’ve never seen any since despite being in the area all the time.

I had no idea, saving this for next year. thanks!