• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          26·
          3 days ago

          Calling things “cringe” is a tool social enforcement of anyone that doesn’t fit inside a certain behavioural box. If we don’t think marginalised groups should be marginalised then we shouldn’t use a tool of marginalisation.

          Become the cringe. It’s ok. Be a cringe accelerationist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH-uB_eaLvM

          • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            2 days ago

            I don’t think this is a line consistently held by the site, see nerd It would be cool if it was, but I think there are some really fundamental issues with the site culture that the user you are responding to is presenting a mild symptom of.

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              15·
              2 days ago

              There’s definitely a contingent of people that feel viscerally repulsed by “cringe”. They can’t handle it.

              They need exposure therapy, we should be cringier.

              • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                10·
                2 days ago

                I don’t think it can be corrected with exposure therapy as the main instrument. There’s a deeper element of reactionary sentiment that extends far past the ability to address indirectly for most people. It needs to be fought directly.

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  6·
                  2 days ago

                  Yeah you’re probably right. In that case there’s either yelling at them or calmly explaining to them why it’s reactionary. I lean towards yelling more often than being calm but both can be useful depending on circumstances. Yelling is probably less useful if we want to like not make people leave because it’s always a bad experience here or whatever.

                  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    4·
                    2 days ago

                    I agree that not yelling is generally better, but my stance is that it can’t just be dealt with reactively, it should be brought up as its own subject and discussed with the user base so we can make a policy and deliberate effort toward altering the culture of the site.

                    And remove some emojis.

          • yunqihao [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            If we don’t think marginalised groups should be marginalised then we shouldn’t use a tool of marginalisation.

            Is it a crazy take to say their are groups and actions that deserve to be marginalised as cringe. I’m thinking of groups like the liberal who arrogantly spouts off on a topic they only know of through vibes, reactionaries of all stripes, and being an “apolitical” centrist etc. People who fall into categories such as these deserves to be marginalised as cringe imo for the good of society (and to a point honestly themselves).

            • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              2 days ago

              We can reject behaviors on a basis other than vague aestheticized social pressure, because that rejection should be for a reason that isn’t just “vibes” or something happening to be or not be convention.

              I think it’s quite easy to tell someone not to spout off about shit they are ignorant about with authoritative confidence, but I can just tell them as much (or “No investigation, no right to speak”) without needing to resort to a concept like “cringe”.

              • Salah [ey/em]@hexbear.netEnglish
                4·
                2 days ago

                I want to say I really appreciate how you explain things and call out issues in the site culture. When I see your name above a comment I know it will be a good one 👍

                • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  4·
                  2 days ago

                  Thanks, I really appreciate it. Almost all I do on this site is compulsively argue with people, so my interactions are overwhelmingly negative or at least a bit unpleasant, and it’s nice to hear that it’s in some way positive for someone.

              • yunqihao [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                41·
                2 days ago

                That’s fair. As I said elsewhere I suppose I was thinking of cringe more like a tool similar to the state. One that at current through much of the world is wielded by reactionary forces to further their aims however that once seized would remain a useful tool simply working for different ends. That in a socialist society it isn’t and shouldn’t be acceptable to act as liberals do now and the enforcement of social standards generally manifests through cringe and marginalisation.

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              6·
              2 days ago

              You could take the position those actions are cringe from the perspective of a socialist sure, but I don’t know if it’s useful to address the phenomena I’m criticising which is that “cringe” is almost exclusively targeted at queer and socially odd or neurodiverse people.

              I would use a different word entirely to describe those reactionary behaviours purely because I want to reduce the targeting of these groups the “cringe” is almost always used to attack.

              I 100% get where you’re coming from though and you’re not wrong, my point is mainly about strategy.

              • yunqihao [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                4·
                2 days ago

                That’s completely fair. I suppose my thoughts when approaching it was to look at it the same way I do the state for example, in that at current through most of the world it’s an oppressive and reactionary force. However it remains a useful tool when seized from the hands of the current liberal hegemonic order that rules over not only the bodies but the minds of much of the people of the world.

                • SerialExperimentsGay [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  61·
                  2 days ago

                  I am very obviously not “always at 110% aggression with comrades”, i have good and friendly interactions with most users on this site and whenever i have the spoons for it, i put criticism forward in a way that’s less confrontational and more of an effortpost. And guess what, it does not make a fucking difference in regards to how people reply to it. There’s people who can handle criticism and are capable of reflecting on their internalized biases and there’s people who can’t, and no amount of walking on eggshells turns the latter into the former. I’ve seen that over and over again, either you are arguing with somebody who can handle being called out or you don’t. So how hard i go into a discussion like this is dependent on if i have the capacity to write out a little essay about what i find problematic. And if i don’t have that, tough luck.

                • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  7·
                  2 days ago

                  She does make good points sometimes, including against some of our own users who are being shitty (I wouldn’t say she’s accomplishing that now, though Euclid makes a good point), and I think that buys her a lot of credibility to get away with things.

                  Also the site still has a huge amount of the user base claiming “bullying works,” so being absurdly aggressive is just kind of par for the course if you can find a way of saying your interlocutor is “actually not a comrade but a social chauvinist” (not her words, just a summary of the idea).

              • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                21·
                3 days ago

                its pretty easy to be against it, infantilized femininity is a patriarchal tool. some people that are against it could be assimilationist in their reasoning but we are all on a niche communist website yk, probably best to trust but verify. mission-accomplished

                • SerialExperimentsGay [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  6·
                  2 days ago

                  Patriarchy usually works with double binds. Femininity, whether in its infantilized form or not, isn’t just forced on women, it is at the same time ridiculed and seen as lesser.

                  That means that feminism has to take a two-pronged approach, both liberating women and other not-men from the pressure to perform femininity and removing the stigma from that performance.

                  Trans women in particular find themselves in a drastically worsened double bind, being forced to constantly prove our femininity while being under perpetual over-scrutinizing of whether we express it in the correct, respectable way.

                • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  41·
                  2 days ago

                  Unless I’m missing something, the thread being discussed has one comment written in nya speak. If I’m wrong about which thread is being discussed, please do let me know, but like, if I’m not, isn’t a single comment (out of 75), well, it’s nothing, right? And maybe even a little sus that someone is so willing to say “fuck the explicitly queer instance” over a single comment? (1 out of 75, seriously, I can’t believe gramxi and I read the same thread, there must be some mistake!)

                  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    8·
                    2 days ago

                    i mean i doubt its over a single comment, theres a long history as to why we’re not friends with blahaj. we tried to make it work. we voted on it as a site and everyone that talked to blahaj about this and majority of the mod team here are queer/trans. but blahaj is a very top down website, their very libbed up admins want things their way or no way at all, most of the trans people there at least want access to our trans stuff but ada has stonewalled it. i even got quite a lot of trans people on our side together to talk to her about working together to create a joint community to pull trans people off of reddit and she just showed up solo and shat on us for not wanting to do things 100% her way, basically. then she rage quit the chat. (marcie and some other people also helped with arranging this, so it wasnt even a 100% hexbear endeavor)

                    also that comment was a pretty old comment maybe they were looking at it when it was first posted.