Come one come all to the Lemmy-verse! It's nice and cozy here, we do have some "bad parts of town" but you can do an instance block and not deal with them lol
Wait, what's wrong with Hexbear? I'm new to Lemmy and read the code of conduct and TOS of Hexbear and it just seems like they're leftist? I was thinking about registering there 😅
Lemmy can be a bit of a culture shock when you come from Reddit. If someone calls you a libtard on Reddit, it's because they think you're a leftist. If someone calls you one on Lemmy, it's because they think you're too far to the right of them.
Nooo the users on Hexbear are the ones calling others libs for being too far to the right. Though I don't know how prolific libtard is, just because of the ableism.
They are not actually left, they are authoritarian communists and will defend Chinas CCP and Putin as well as spread the propaganda/misinfo out of there. And if you dare post anything critical of them, no matter how many good sources you give or how factual it is they'll write it off as "CIA propaganda", remove it and ban you under their catch-all "Rule 1: Bigotry"
When r/chapotraphouse got banned they moved to what is now hexbear. If you didn't like r/cth you won't like hexbear, and lots of folks don't like r/cth.
Fair and valid, and I envy your brain. They were a shitposter sub on reddit, sorta based on the dirtbag podcast of the same name. They were criticized for brigading and dog piling folks they disagreed with, and largely have a mentality of treating what they see as bad faith with mockery.
All that being said, if you think memes about China taking over the US is funny, they are a fun, active community. Though using it as your primary instance can be a big of a difficulty because lots of other instances block them.
Really I've found lemm.ee to be a good home, and you can still see all the posts there and see if it clicks for you.
For right now lemm.ee is my home! I was just looking at the other instances to see if their ideologies better fit mine.
To be clear, I self-identify as liberal, and i am trans. I noticed the c/traaaaa... community on Hexbear seems to be the biggest of the bunch, and that was my favorite sub on reddit, so I started looking in to Hexbear
Hexbear has the largest amount of trans people on one instance as far as I can tell. Lemmy.blahaj.zone is more specifically for trans and queer people, and the admin is trans herself. Lemmy.blahaj.zone is federated with most other instances while many have defederated hexbear because they don't like when trans people get too uppity. On lemmy.blahaj.zone we are considered the "good ones" or the more acceptable trans people by the other instances because this instance is less partisan/politically opinionated. Not a great situation, but the result is this instance is more widely federated.
Blahaj.zone is an instance created by and for trans and queer people, but I think Hexbear beats them in sheer numbers due to instance size. At least go check out /onehundredninetysix, which is the recreation of /196 after the /196 blahaj.zone mods tried to move to Lemmy.world. It had a lot of people pissed, mods had a bad “the users don’t own this community, we do” attitude about it, and eventually /onehundredninetysix was created.
Hexbear’s mods have historically been very strict regarding transphobia so lots of trans people have seen it as a friendly place. I think there was also a migration from blahaj to Hexbear when someone was banned from blahaj for refusing to use the pronouns “drag/drag” for a person who self-identified as a dragon. It was like watching the “I identify as an Apache attack helicopter” meme play out in realtime, and a lot of blahaj users weren’t comfortable with it.
Lots of trans folks head there because the mods of hexbear are very strict about transphobia, and there was a tiff between the two instances specifically around fetishizing trans folks. So worth checking out both to see if either feels more inviting.
Hexbear users are generally more vocal with their opinions and call people out for problematic opinions. Because not everyone shares Hexbear users' opinions it can come across as very aggressive. My instance has been defederated with them for a while so it's hard to say exactly what it is like now, but that's the gist.
I had plenty of positive interactions with them too and enjoyed their communities. It's easier to notice the one really unenjoyable interaction with someone than the dozens of somewhat positive ones though.
It's a shame that many instancss defederated with Hexbear and vice-versa... definitely makes having alt accounts necessary so users can get the most out of Lemmy
I blocked hexbear after getting in too many stupid arguments with their users. The final straw was an argument where they said "owning a personal washer, dryer and vacuum isn't communist enough" and I just gave up and blocked the bunch. Lot less grief in my feed after that.