is that a for the new bravo vince show?

I keep trying but i am too adhd or something

I’ve never finished it because it makes me sad

Wow so you wont understand why that makes you an ultraliberal?

Me neither. I feel left out from all the references people make

My device is still too low-end to play it

i’m unfamiliar with unc (derogatory), i usually see it as an informal signifier of respect for wisdom or experience.

He realized he doesn’t like the “childhood friend to lovers” trope

This is a really despicable comment from db0.

For context: I’m multiply-neurodivergent and I struggle a whole lot with communication due to being autistic. It’s really hard for me to integrate into online spaces, especially irony-heavy ones that are big on their own specific internal discourse with lingo etc. Emojis are like a pragmatics puzzle to me (if you are familiar with my comments you’ll notice that I rarely use them myself - there’s a reason for that.)

So you’d expect that Hexbear would be a nightmare for someone like me given all of that as context, right?

I’m not gonna lie and say that I’ve never seen any ableism here or that I’ve never experienced any. There are occasions where I’ve almost certainly had my words wilfully misinterpreted before and there are exchanges where I’ve just disengaged (not disengage-rule disengaged but I’ve just abandoned replying.) I’ve had the odd occasions of people mimimizing or denying my experience, although not in an intentionally malicious way.

But what I can say is that my experience of ableism here is very noticeably lower than most other radical space online (not to mention general spaces online) that I’ve participated in and there’s an openness to having discussions and reflecting on addressing ableism through crit/self-crit that I can’t say I’ve experienced elsewhere but of course there’s going to be a background level of ableism when the whole world is ableist and we live in a society. That’s just how it is and anyone who is marginalized knows exactly what I’m talking about here.

I’ve also been on the receiving end of users here looking for any opportunity to dunk on me before (haven’t we all?) and if you have a genuinely bad take then you do tend to get dunked on. But being ridiculed in the replies by some user (justified or not) is one thing, being subjected to moderator or admin abuse of power that is ableist is something entirely different. I can’t think of a time where I’ve had more than some mean replies occasionally here, but I can tell you in other spaces if I dare to seek clarification on a rule or I ask for an explanation on what I did to violate a rule because I genuinely want understand so I can integrate better and avoid making the same mistake again it almost always ends up in accusations of me being obtuse, in really unhelpful responses, and that sort of thing (e.g. “Read rule number 2. It’s not my job to teach you how to read and it’s not my responsibility to read the rules to you. Break the rule again and you’re banned.”) Not that I often break rules in online spaces but you get the picture. I haven’t experienced that sort of structural ableism here and I think a lot of that has to do with the commitment to crit/self-crit and improving the culture here.

Imo the mechanisms that make this space less structurally hostile and less ableist are based on the critical discussions that we have about the cultural problems here. It’s far easier to just ignore that there are problems and pretend like it’s all fine (especially when the dominant group doesn’t notice or experience those problems), and this certainly looks better to outsiders, but I’d rather that these problems be openly discussed and addressed than hidden away to fester in the darkness. To weaponize the critical contributions (critical in terms of critique but also in terms of being of fundamental importance) of neurodivergent users here who have potentially put themselves in the firing line in order to speak out about problems of ableism to improve the culture here is really disingenuous. Speaking from personal experience, it’s rare that I do this myself because I don’t want that smoke and it almost always gets received with hostility. My general experience on social media is that my participation is contingent on how well I integrate, how little I draw attention, and how well I peform obsequiousness especially when someone decides to pick on me; that my welcome in a space is provisional and it will be revoked at any given moment, often without any reason or opportunity for recourse. I know I’m not the only neurodivergent person who feels this way.

If neurodivergent people are saying stuff like “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells here” then that says a lot, but not for the reason that people like db0 think it does. In just about every social media space I feel this way myself. I can’t think of a time that I’ve ever expressed that feeling within a space itself. To express this as a criticism or a complaint requires a level of acceptance from and trust in the space that the ND user feels such that they believe that they aren’t likely to be punished or harassed or ostracised for expressing this in the first place. I really wish that people like this would read the Tyranny of Structureless or Dissensus because, ironically, the way db0 is treating dissent is fundamentally in opposition to anarchist principles on a deep level. (But who needs principles when you can have a gotcha instead?)

The internal culture of crit/self-crit here is not something for an outsider to appropriate into a rhetorical bludgeon for them to use to score a point via concern-trolling to “win” an argument. This is layer upon layer of tokenism and it doesn’t actually do anything to address ableism here, on other instances (including in db0’s), or anywhere else and it doesn’t even engage with these criticisms, it just vaguely references that they exist.

I shouldn’t let it affect me but this is why I don’t do things like criticize figures like Stalin or Mao unless I’m with comrades - I’m not interested in furnishing the people who oppose me with arguments to use against me and in the same vein what db0 is doing in that comment, if left unchallenged, would have a chilling effect for someone like me who doesn’t want to furnish a Hexbear outsider who opposes its existence with ammunition to attack the users and the instance. I’m aware that any criticism I make with the spirit of improving the culture here, including the things I’ve written about in this comment, are liable to be used to attack and erode the culture here by malicious actors and the upshot of this is that as a ND person who has experienced a ton of ableism all my life, I am inclined to be less likely to speak out against ableism in the one online community that is overall been the least ableist in my experience.

With “allyship” like this, who needs enemies?

(I would have put this to db0 if I had any faith that they would actually read it and engage with my criticisms in good faith. It’s only right now as I’m writing out this postscript that I’ve realized that it says a lot that I’m putting this comment here, where it’s going to be read by maybe a handful of people that I trust will consider the things I’ve laid out, who will read this in good faith. There’s a reason why I wouldn’t bother putting this to db0 directly and that exemplifies what I was saying about the distinction between walking on eggshells in an online space and feeling a degree of safety in openly criticizing a space because it makes you feel as though you must walk on eggshells when you engage with it.)