Maybe it is more than an instance. Maybe it is an idea, a world-historical vanguard, light itself. planet-hillary

actual attempt to answer (cringe)We’ve been around for three years on a lemmy fork before federation. The lack of federation for years as well as the place we splintered off from (/r/chapotraphouse) already having a unique microculture within Reddit has given this instance, in my opinion, a distinct culture compared to general-purpose and even other hobbyist instances.

Regarding specifics, Hexbear is a vehemently queer-friendly/intersectional anti-sectarian socialist instance. Check us out meow-bounce lea-bounce

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/howdy@hexbear.net
 

I'm the gal in charge of the emotes lea-finger-guns

Technically, this is a self-appointed role, but given I'm in charge of the emoji comm, and have basically de-facto curated the batches because I was the person who specialized in the maintenance of it on the dev team for a relatively-long stretch of time, it's semi-official at this point.

What it entails, really, is that I go into a special panel on the site and I upload images that I curate, some through submissions on our very own /c/emoji, some through pre-edited/ready-to-upload images I find online, and sometimes I just get an urge to boot up Pixelmator (my image editor of choice) and synthesize an emote, through cutouts, meticulous frame-by-frame background removal, effects, and/or frankensteining images haphazardly.

Previously, what that entailed was running scripts on my local mirror of the emotes folder and manually fine-tuning a JSON file filled with emote filenames so they would show up in order on the emote picker. I miss the fine-tooth comb that gave me, but I'm grateful for the lemmy/hexbear devs for making my role infinitely easier and accessible for me to do.

Outside of my time spent being extremely based (as I am, of course, the one true leftist madeline-smug) and maintaining emotes, I'm a hobbyist musician and aspiring software developer. I'm a college undergrad studying Computer Science as my major, and my primary life goal thus far is to make a game and/or write a story that I'm personally proud of.

I've been on this site since launch, and I've been particularly blessed to be stuck here out of all of the endless maws of ideology the internet has to offer meow-bounce

Other tidbits I'd like to share:

  • I have 4 pets; they are all emotes: sleepi scared doggy-beg dog-screm
  • My favorite games/games series are CrossCode, Xenoblade, and Disco Elysium
  • I have the original dprk-soldier JPEG in my Documents folder
  • My handle is a pronounced abstraction of my old username, YourSilverFriend, because I am dogwater at competitively-ranked multiplayer online games
  • I have account #150, chronologically lea-smug
  • I start my junior year of college literally tomorrow hypersus
 

Can be about yourself, can be about someone else, can be about anything, just try to keep exposed PII to a minimum. Can even be multiple, really.

My favorite one is about the time I hijacked a Geometry Dash forum when I was 12ish years old. Geometry Dash was my middle school hyperfixation, and I was really passionate about it, even though I sucked ass at both the creative and gameplay-based portions of it.

So I found this forum (it was, like, semi-official, IIRC) and began integrating myself into the site culture. I immediately attempted to organize a creative collaboration, and around the point where I got like three or so users to bite, I somehow roped in a forum moderator, who I convinced to rope in the one active forum admin, for some reason. I want to let you all know that at that point in time, my goal wasn’t to take over the forum, but to attach my name to a creative project, even though I sucked ass at making levels, for being the idea gal. Unfortunately, this meant I had to actually make a portion of the level, which I somehow had to bullshit my way out of.

So, over around a 6 month period, I would sporadically post ‘updates’ in the direct message group of cherry-picked, cropped screenshots, while everyone else also did the same but with more consistent progress. I would also use that group DM as a general social output, because lonely socially awkward 12-year old who was iPad-addicted and blasé about internet safety. The project eventually came to a standstill, as most of the people had other things to do and this was not the highest priority.

One day, a pinned announcement thread by the inactive forum admin announced that the active admin had stepped down and went no contact, and they would resume activity for a brief period while they found replacement staff for the forum. Me, being an insane 12-year old desperate for some kind of influence over people, DMed the admin with an inspect-elemented screenshot collection of the group message on the forum where I had the forum admin talking to me about admin duties, and ‘off-handedly’ remark that I’d make a good admin, and then ‘off-handedly’ remark 4 months later that they were probably stepping down soon and were considering who to replace themself with, to which I ‘jokingly’ remarked “me lol” and they ‘sincerely’ replied “honestly, maybe, it’s not off the table.”

This exchange was entirely fabricated. However, the fact that I was publicly listed as creating a collaborative project with them was enough proof for the relatively-detached temporary head admin to believe me, so they stepped away and granted me admin because what was he gonna do, contact the person who went no-contact? So, I was appointed as the head admin for the forum, and in my boundless reign of two whole days, I used my god power to appoint all my friends as moderators, ban people who questioned me, and create pointless boards and stickied threads that had absolutely nothing to do with Geometry Dash.

It wasn’t even forum user outrage that got me removed, I got bored after two days and Skype-DMed the inactive admin that I was actually trolling and didn’t expect to get this far, and somehow he didn’t give enough of a shit to ban me? Did lose admin roles, though I don’t believe I lost some of the more facetious user-flair roles I had created for myself that, while they didn’t give me any privileges, were higher up on the hierarchy than mods, so they couldn’t ban me, and by the time they found a new admin, the whole thing had blown over and I got away scot-free michael-laugh

I did not learn my lesson immediately set my sights on creating a fake persona as a ‘social experiment’ with a group of good-but-gullible players ‘assisting’ me in the idea of creating a fake person who was a ‘prominent and skilled player’. I got bored a month later and abandoned the project. I have no fucking idea how I got away with any of this and still maintained any semblance of credibility, but it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done online because I was a literal child when I did it and they were mostly adults. If I didn’t have my moment of reckoning that sent me straight-leftward I know my ass could have very well been doing crypto rug pulls and possibly getting away with it.

What's the 'one story' for you?

 

One time, when I was working at a summer camp as a specialty staff, my coworker/roommate who I barely talked to and barely knew randomly pulled out his switch and asked me if I could do a part of Celeste he was stuck on. I said sure, and did it for him, but then asked why he asked me in particular. He just said I 'seemed like the type of guy to have beaten Celeste'. I haven't started socially transitioning, so I don't know where that vibe came from, and I still think about it thinking-about-it

 

I'm in the mood for some banger fanonical reimaginings/explorations.

Off the top of my head, here's what I can contribute:

  • An Eagle Among Lions is a neat little (and by little I mean long) Fire Emblem: Three Houses Edelgard-centric time travel fic (kinda) that has all-but-explicitly leftist undertones poking out from under it every now and then. It's to the point where I consider it leftist dogwhistling, which had me going soypoint-2 every time something hit.

  • The Summoned Hero Is A Historical Materialist is an explicitly communist Shield Hero AU that flips Naofumi's character to be an hardline anti-slavery socialist rather than an isekai-typical pedophile slaver protag. It is the fanfic equivalent of the concept of a John Brown Isekai. It's great, well-executed, and I think it deserves more recognition

Anyone else have recommendations? I'd love to expand my palate.

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