That's true (and I've reposted some stuff from there myself) but I think the tone of the communities is wildly different. Hexbear is much more millennial - gen X, a lot more long posts, lots of nerdy discussions. /r/196 is clearly much younger, all discussion is superficial, and obviously it's full of chasers.

[–] Euergetes@hexbear.net 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

196 discussions/comments are always insufferable it's true

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not even about the liberalism. Every discussion there tends to be people giving their opinions in the form of hot takes, speaking confidently (and often in memespeak) when making statements that deserve to be backed up by sources. They have this way of talking that really lends itself to confirmation bias because each side of a conversation makes inflammatory claims that may sound conclusive, so whichever side the majority agrees with (on the basis of sounding nuanced and correct) gets anointed. Case in point: https://hexbear.net/post/4476685

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's frequently how it goes on Hexbear, too, except usually leaning toward what rhetorically sounds righteous rather than nuanced.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 7 points 3 days ago

I think most of our struggle sessions have been on topics where both sides agreed on the facts but disagreed on the prescriptions to be derived from those facts, or on something more aesthetic/symbolic. In those cases it's really not like one can make arguments that are backed up by much evidence, except maybe trying to gather a lot of people's opinions so one can say "most people are okay with this" or the opposite.

On that subreddit, people often get away with making factually incorrect claims because of the nuance fetish. See the thread I linked where the entire motivation of Operation Prosperity Guardian is glossed over and dismissed in the name of finding a reason why Things Are Complicated:tm:

[–] Wheaties@hexbear.net 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sometimes I source memes from tumblr, just to add a little more variety but its a bit of a pain.

I heard once that facebook ate up MySpace users by having new FB users give them their MySpace log in credentials, then Facebook would scrape their myspace follows and display new MySpace posts on the user's facebook feed.

I think hexbear (and really, more the fediverse overall) could learn from that. Like, if there was a "submit reblog" button where I could drop a URL from tumblr (or I guess even ecks the everything app) and it converts the links and images and text into a lemmy post, that would be really useful in dragging the overall lemmy culture away from its reddit origins