Just wanted to share a thread for those who don't regularly venture out of the bear site. Can't cross-post since it's defederated. It's small but has some numbers about community counts, active users, etc and links to more info from https://lemmyverse.net/. Thought it was notable that Hexbear shows up no matter how you sort it.
OP image is community count sorted by active users in the last month.
Edit: sorted by comments
I didn't post on r/CTH but my political journey / "radicalisation" was based on joining the workforce in the aftermath of the 2008 crash and then losing my safety net just before covid and the employment hellscape that came after.
I've been through enough to know a decent amount of luck and privilege was the only thing keeping me off the streets, and I get a similar vibe from a LOT of the posters here. The idea this place is full of teenagers is absurd.
I think most r/CTH users originally came from Twitter and they made a reddit account specifically for that subreddit. The culture of the subreddit was so different than the rest of reddit and it was evident this was older Something Awful types or enlightened 4chaners who had seen the error of their ways. There was blatant contempt for the "Reddiquette" and frequent brigades, and in general just contempt for all of the rest of Reddit.
That's why they quickly became the new SJW, the new SRS of the site. The gamers and gooners and nu atheists and software engineers and funkopop collectors and the_donald users and the r/politics users all were able to unite against a common scapegoat, and the feeling was mutual. There was always the feeling a ban was inevitable, and the mods of the subreddit had to keep being recycled being they were being pressured hard by the admins to delete tons of stuff, and they didn't want to and kept getting ousted. Then the next group would come in and pretend to for a bit then stop lmao.