DarbyDear

Honestly, having been around for the Voat exodus, that's pretty on-brand for the crowd that migrated there. It wasn't exactly the top minds that left because subs like /r/FatPeopleHate were banned.

Damn, I just looked it up and they shut down in 2020. Long story short, they went anti-woke, then went broke.

Yeah, I've noticed the same. I also don't really have the same feeling that replying in a post with a bunch of comments already on it is a waste of time - on Reddit, if a post had 100 comments on it then it was kind of pointless for me to add my voice because nobody would see it anyway. Here, I've actually gone through and responded to various comments and posts regardless. I think that's more of a "social norms/community culture" thing than a technological difference though. I mentioned my thoughts on what went wrong with Reddit elsewhere, but basically the way Reddit set things up led to the encouragement of low-effort popularity contest type replies so people would rush to get the highest-karma responses as quickly and easily as possible. There isn't an easy way to see someone's total score here though, so upvotes aren't really the focus and actual conversation can happen instead.

As someone who registered under Beehaw (and thus, a potentially biased party), Beehaw isn't exactly looking to be a 1-to-1 replacement for Reddit from my understanding. It's more looking to create an actual community, similar to how online communities were once upon a time. I don't foresee pro-Russia sentiment taking hold there (especially since they apparently defederated with Lemmygrad, which is where a lot of tankies live), but I understand the concern.

For what it's worth, the Socialism community is essentially a transplant of the subreddit /r/LeftWithoutEdge, which I would lurk from time to time while I was still on Reddit, and it was one of the few leftist subreddit where I didn't feel shunned for being a veteran. A lot of other leftist subreddits would do stuff like pre-emptively ban anyone who posted in a military subreddit, so I think Beehaw's Socialism community has a great foundation to work off of at the very least.

This is exactly it. They don't want freedom of speech, they want freedom from the consequences of their speech. They don't like that the people affected by their speech have a voice too, and that the hateful rhetoric they spew into the world is finally being pushed back on. To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.

It's unfortunate, but I think it's because in this specific instance, there is a clear and immediate impact on people's lives. Meanwhile, climate change is a gradual change over a longer period of time and a much larger area. Climate change also requires action beyond stopping visiting a website and actual cooperation among the entire human race. It's short-sighted, but it's also an example of how hard it is to get people to care about things that don't clearly and immediately affect them (see also: people who are militant homophobes until someone close to them comes out).

I really appreciate it. There's only so many times I could see people join to try to improve their lot in life only to get ground up and spit out, then betrayed by the people who made endless promises to them, before it made a permanent change in my worldview. Thankfully I realized that embracing the system that created these conditions is a fool's errand, but I do actually understand the hesitation to accept veterans when there are so many others that view the establishment as something other than a human rights violations factory that dangles the promise of a better life to take advantage of the downtrodden. There's plenty more I can say about this topic, but I'll cut it short here since this should be a place for celebrating the further development of our community, not to air political grievances.

I think that's one of the few leftist spaces on Reddit where I actually didn't feel like I was seen as scum just because I'm an Army veteran. A very (unfortunately) common sentiment in leftist spaces is that anybody that played any part in the military-industrial complex is beyond consideration and worthy of nothing but scorn, regardless of the fact that being in the military did more to push me left than anything else I can think of.

I just wanted to take a chance, since it was specifically mentioned here, to thank you and the rest of the Beehaw moderation/administration team for being so aware and thoughtful regarding issues like domination of the male gaze, bigotry, and mysoginy in online communities. Just earlier today I responded to a post somewhere mentioning that I wasn't sure what about Beehaw prompts me to be more vocal rather than sticking to my lurking ways, but I think the attention and care regarding these topics plays an enormous part. I know that the goal here is to build a community of caring, so I guess I just wanted to let the team know that I notice and appreciate it, and it is making this community a significantly more welcoming experience for me. I know it's difficult to strike a balance between maintaining an inclusive space and being overly strict regarding topics (such as the anime example already mentioned earlier in this thread), but I think you're all doing a marvelous job so far. Thank you for all that you do!

Definitely! Humans are a bunch of individuals with one of a nigh-infinite combination of thoughts and experiences, so even if people can come to an agreement on what an abstract term means, there's still a high chance that there is some minor aspect where they have a slightly different understanding on the matter. Admittedly, I don't know for sure what it's like for vampires and Barovian nobility, but I have a feeling it's a similar case ;)

Absolutely! I'm a sucker for leitmotif, so hearing it towards the end (avoiding spoilers still because of the number of people here that don't seem to have played yet, but I think you know where) gave me tons of feelings after all of the other places it makes an appearance

Although titles and classifications can feel restricting and gatekeep-y, I think it's also important to acknowledge their value when it comes to relating and communicating with other people that might be in the same situation. Even in this post, there are people who have mentioned going through the bi-cycle. It can be a lot less scary and confusing for someone dealing with it if they go online, say "is it normal to flip between what genders you're attracted to?" and then getting a veritable chorus of people saying that it's not only normal, but also has a name.

Of course, then you might also wind up stuck wondering if you really are bisexual because you've never had that experience (which I've also seen and tried to help someone through), so it's definitely a double-edged sword... In the end, gender and sexuality are messy and hardly ever as easy as some crowds want to claim, but that's a realization that I think each individual needs to get to themselves. Trying to force it on others just threatens defensiveness and shutting down communication.