1. Click on the big button in the header next to ‘Local’ that says ‘All’.
  2. Click the drop-down field directly next to ‘All’.
  3. Click ‘Active’ from the drop-down list.
  4. Click on a thread loaded on the page.
  5. Reply to users in that thread.

Congrats! You have successfully done a brigading! Pat yourself on the back! Next seminar, we will be covering how to subtly deceive strategically-important redditors with a simple tactic they don’t know of called ‘whataboutism’ sicko-hexbear

Edit: meant to post this in the secret group chat where we coordinate the fall of the west. Sorry y’all. My bad deeper-sadness

  • DiscoPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    evrart — “It’s not brigading, Harry! It’s simply inciting a conversation! There’s nothing that says we can’t all engage in a simple little conversation, is there?”

    de-rhetoric [Hard: Success] — He’s right. There was a rule against it, back in your old haunt; but here is not there.

    dubois-depressed — “There’s nothing stopping us from banning you for brigading, anyway.”

    evrart — “Oh, don’t be an asshole, Harry. You’re a good man, and you’re certainly not an asshole. Besides, while your mod powers are still missing, I don’t believe you’ll be able to ban anybody. Now, if you’d like to take this conversation a little more seriously, I’d be more than happy to assist you in locating that banhammer of yours again.”

  • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Fun fact, did you know brigading doesn’t exist on reddit anymore? The official reddit definition of brigading is when an r/chapotraphouse user also posts to any subreddit that is not r/chapotraphouse. Back when the old sub existed, almost all of our hundreds of thousands of users would constantly brigade the rest of reddit. Eventually we became the new boogeysub, taking the position from r/shitredditsays.

    Unfortunately, that all became a thing of the past once r/chapotraphouse got banned.

  • ndondo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    God I hate whataboutism. Because no really what about it? Why are you comfortable taking such blatantly hypocrytical stances arrrrg. It just seems like a way to ignore valid critiques

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      I can’t find it, but a few years ago a user here did an effortpost showing how whataboutism was first used by the British to silence claims of wrongdoing in Ireland, and then quickly adopted and propagated by the CIA as a way to obfuscate discussion.
      soypoint-1 Whataboutismsoypoint-2

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      For real, it seems like just a rhetorical move to establish a blatant double standard while pretending one has the moral high hround, and I doubt John Oliver knew what he was unleashing.

    • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      About a week ago on Hexbear someone was saying China was good, and I said it’s not good if you’re queer. They replied that America is even worse. To which I said, “I know, I’m trying to get my trans partner out of there so it isn’t holocausted. China and America aren’t the only two countries. Why do you think America is important to this discussion?”

      I think that’s what whataboutism should refer to. When someone tries to excuse bad behaviour through comparison to an irrelevant third thing. I see it all the time in Australia from climate apathiers who say “We shouldn’t try to reduce our emissions because China won’t”. I always tell them “we’re doing worse per capita than China is. And even if we weren’t, wouldn’t you want our country to be a global leader in something?”

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Take this with a grain of salt, as I am Chinese from a medium sized city (only like 13,000,000 population)

        LGBT issues in China is not perfect, but it is getting better in larger cities and even my own. The case may be different in smaller cities, more religious places and rural areas, but it is getting normalised on Zoomer social media, and LGBT+ spaces exist in larger cities (that to my understanding do have a fair amount of chasers so not perfect). There are gay bars and such in Shanghai, that aren’t exactly operating in secret from the CPC.

        • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.net
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          Yeah, that’s not what I call good. I don’t think there’s a country on Earth I’d call good for queer people. Australia is pretty bad and I think that’s worse than Australia.

          • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            It is however improving instead of backsliding. Like it might be due to social circles I’m in but I don’t see hordes frothing at the mouth at LGBT as paedophiles, groomers, or retweeting JK Rowling. It’s slow but it’s substantially better than what it was a decade ago, which is substantially better than a decade before that.

            • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.net
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              Well if that trend continues, then China will deserve praise in 10-30 years. But America has taught us there’s no guarantee progress will always continue.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      Every thread that involves Ukraine, China, Africa or the Middle East that reaches /all/ inevitably results in a million liberals complaining that Hexbear users are brigading it because we say things in those threads that they don’t agree with and that makes them seethe therefore we must be coordinating it.

      A lot of people don’t seem to understand that because every instance on lemmy is federated to different instances, everyone’s /all/ page is different. This means that when a thread shows up on /all/ for any given instance the users from that instance all show up at the same time. This ends up looking like some coordinated explosion of Hexbears but really it just means it reached top of /all/ for us.

      tl:dr: Libs don’t like what socialists say therefore it’s all a sinister plot by russian bots.

  • tree@lemmy.zip
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    When a lemmy thread is put in the dunktank and people go to the thread from the post in the dunktank even if it isn’t linked it still is brigading, it’s brigading when the tankiejerk places do it to lemmygrad too, it’s funneling people into a thread that they only saw because it was posted in the dunktank. If that isn’t brigading then nothing is brigading.

    It’s disengenious to try to spin it as people only finding stuff in the all tab, because people do jump into the threads they see in the dunktank and that definitely hasn’t contributed to making any goodwill for this site among other instances, if the person deserves to be dunked on people will find it they dont need a giant bat signal post in the dunktank to figure it out.

    I do think most of the people put in there deserve it on some level, but you guys are speedrunning every other user to instance ban hexbear whenever that comes out.

    • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Fundamentally disagree. Brigading, as originally conceived by reddit, is an organized raid of one forum by another. Posting a screenshot to the_dunk_tank with a link is not organization. There is no call to action, it’s just naming and shaming. If the user featured in the screenshot said something reprehensible, then they shouldn’t be surprised if it spurs others to relentlessly mock and bully them. But when that happens, it’s absolutely not a unified effort, nor is it targeting the forum as a whole.

      That’s just a consequence of saying reactionary shit in a public setting in full view of people who tend to be hurt by reactionary rhetoric. This isn’t violence, there are no real threats being made. Everyone is totally free to continue to say whatever they want in accordance with the rules of their home instance. But if you voice your opinion in public, it’s rather hypocritical to get pissed about others voicing their own opinions back.

      • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.net
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        The dunk tank has a rule saying you have to link the thread. I think that makes any post that follows the rule brigading. However, that’s not a bad thing, for the reasons you outlined. Organised protest is essential to a functioning society.

      • tree@lemmy.zip
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        Brigading, as originally conceived by reddit, is an organized raid of one forum by another.

        I think most people not on this instance will see no difference between this and thedunktank, if there was a tankiejerk community just as big as the dunktank and operating in the same way with no explicit call to brigade and they mass showed up to hexbear posts featured on it, would you feel the same way, I don’t buy it, you would probably just defed from them

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          The dunk tank is just a socialists-only politics-only version of /r/subredditdrama or /r/againsthatesubreddits. Why is one brigading but the other is not? It’s only brigading when socialists do it but it’s not brigading when liberals do it?

          • tree@lemmy.zip
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            the subreddits are not on lemmy that’s the difference, I thought I made that clear, the subreddits mentioned are for sure brigading too

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              Lame. I disagree.

              They exist to rightfully discuss stuff that is happening on the site. Meta communities are good and useful. They provide useful checks against certain behaviours by providing opposition to them and they provide a useful tool to educate your existing userbase who might not know “this is a shit behaviour don’t do it”.

              Linking to things is fine and good. Sharing things is fine and good, in fact it should be encouraged. Nobody says that random twitter user is brigading by linking to a reddit thread when they’re saying something positive, they want the shares, they only say it when it’s something negative. The purpose of anti-brigading is literally just the suppression of disagreement. The goal is the creation of echo chambers.

              And also the vast majority of dunk tank content is transphobic or racist and I couldn’t give a shit what those people think, they should all be run over with a steamroller. gayroller-2000

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  You either let people share links to your space, or you do not.

                  Selectively banning people from linking to your space if they feel negatively about something and only allowing people to link to that space if they feel positively about it is genuinely the fostering and creation of echo chambers. It’s intended to suppress disagreement and I have no other way to explain it than that.

                  Witchhunting is a different matter, such as the boston bomber fiasco, where hundreds of thousands of people regularly got the “suspect” completely incorrect and harassed real and innocent people multiple times. Hunting and internet-detective shit is not the same as sharing content for the purposes of critique.

                  I understand I’m just saying the same thing in more words here but I think there’s probably a better way to put this that can be found to eventually put the issue of “brigading” to bed altogether.

                  It’s the liberal word for “cancel culture”. Just like the word tankie is used to attack their left while the conservatives use “woke” to attack to their left. Liberals use the same tactics. Cancelling is used by the conservatives to attack left while liberals use brigading to attack people to their left.

        • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          We would defed from them for saying reactionary shit. It’s the content of their posts that would be a deal breaker, not just the existence of their comments in our threads. We wouldn’t weasel our way out of this by citing bullshit internet rules of civility, we would outright admit that the separation is ideologically motivated.

        • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          yes but we’re right.
          Also we tend to ban dipshits once we’ve had our fun. They’re welcome to do the same, but the fact we keep our petty bullshit to ourselves and instead engage in earnest in the OPs, I think goes some way to dispelling the brigadier narrative

          • tree@lemmy.zip
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            I think your point is fair.

            I think goes some way to dispelling the brigadier narrative

            But, I think a bigger step would be adding something to thedunktank rules discouragining “brigading”, not linking specifically lemmy posts directly, and hiding the usernames of the people involved in the screenshots.

              • tree@lemmy.zip
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                It is a non issue, but I think if it could have been done over again it would have been better to take the Titoist approach rather than going so agro on everyone, I guess people will just make alts so they can actually use the fediverse, but it kind of defeats the point of it to just defed or get deffedded from everyone, obviously a few exploding heads, burggit, etc. are unacceptable hate speech, CSAM, etc. but it’s very silly that a blahaj user now can’t interact with a hexbear user and most of the bigger ones besides lemm.ee and lemmy.ml can’t either, just dissapointing that it went down like it did. Even on reddit sure you could block CTH but it wasn’t auto blocked to all new users.

                • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  blahaj was defederated because they refused to accept a bunch of queer commies, going so far as to say those groupings are mutually exclusive. blahaj is also largely a vaushite/196 instance which sucks.

                  That one actually hurt to see tbh. Thankfully, we’ve had a few folks jump over due to the contradictions there. Here’s hoping the rest find their way

        • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Unironically please do show up en masse to a Hexbear post and try to brigade us. We absolutely love it when the libs come directly to us to get dogpiled on. A whole bunch of them all at once would be a feast feast

        • HornyOnMain@hexbear.net
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          if there was a tankiejerk community just as big as the dunktank and operating in the same way with no explicit call to brigade and they mass showed up to hexbear posts featured on it

          sicko-wistful oh god please, that would just be fresh meat for us all

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          Lol no, the mods would just ban them from the local like they did with the Kerry posters during the beginning of the forum’s existence, depending on the level of spam. They’ve done this song and dance before. This isn’t that difficult to do unless you are allergic to any sensible level of moderation. If you don’t like what the hexbear people are saying, or how they are saying it, ban them. It doesn’t matter, you’ll find some excuse or another anyways.

          See, unlike your or other forums, this forum doesn’t pretend to be ‘neutral ground’, which means we actually have a robust and old-school moderator culture. There is very little of that new shit of ‘laissez-faire forum culture’ which was mostly an excuse to keep the pedophile and Nazi forums around, as this forum isn’t focused on growth.

          This is besides the fact that we just have more terminally online people in our instance. Which isn’t a brag, but good luck out-posting us. It’ll be an uphill battle for sure even if the moderation wasn’t robust here.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      If that isn’t brigading then nothing is brigading.

      Now you’re starting to get it. Brigading isn’t a thing. Brigading isn’t a thing in old-school forums where raids are just a fact of life nor is it a thing on places like Twitter where getting dogpiled for being the Twitter main character of the day is just a fact of life.

      Brigading is only a thing on Reddit, and last time I checked, we’re not on Reddit.

      • tree@lemmy.zip
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        I don’t disagree, but posting another lemmy post as a post in thedunktank is literally the definition of “brigading” funneling users from this instance into whatever thread, I don’t think it’s that harmful, but I can see why people see it as brigading because that’s what it is

        • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          Posting reprehensible takes to the dunk tank is good and gives those engaged in the OP a place to vent without actually brigading.

          Posting posts of posters positing the pig poop people are patronizing after performing poorly on personal positions is positive good.

          Sorry for alliteration I just went with it

          • tree@lemmy.zip
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            to vent without actually brigading

            If you don’t cover the names of the posters then it functionally is no different, people show up into the original threads, it wouldn’t make it impossible to find if you did cover the name as you could still manually type in the text of the post, but at least if the names were covered there would be some plausibility that you don’t expect people to go into the original thread from the thread in thedunktank

              • tree@lemmy.zip
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                I think that’s different because the person is calling you out directly that invites a response, I’m not referring to this post, just in general clipping comments of people being ignorant and then people from hexbear showing up from seeing it on hexbear, I just don’t think that’s healthy for the fediverse, other communities are not doing it to my knowledge and I hope they don’t start either, besides the two anti-tankie ones but they get like one post a month so I think they’re irrelevant at the moment

                edit: and also the “drama” communities deserve the same kind of criticism

                • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  IME it’s all either worldnews posts, or meta ‘here’s why we should defed hexbear’. It’s the same people posting in each tbh.

                  100% agree shitxsays/drama comms are sus

          • tree@lemmy.zip
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            It’s not, but it is what the word means, if you disagree with the concept that’s fine, you can think it’s a good thing, but it’s still what most people would describe as “brigading”

              • tree@lemmy.zip
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                That’s a fair take, I don’t know if the rule is entirely unreasonable in all cases, on reddit the reactionary Destiney fans would organize brigading of Hasanabi stuff, in that case it’s reactionary people brigading leftists, even if it’s the other way around leftists to reactionaries I think it’s still over the top and comes across as annoying and overly combative

                edit: It also blurs the lines of where people found the post, maybe if it wasn’t posted in thedunktank people would have found it browsing, but once it’s in there everyone is gonna assume you came from there

    • BountifulEggnog [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      I disagree with your idea of brigading. It’s a public space, why does it matter how people get there? What matters is what they’re actually doing. Why would anyone care how someone got somewhere, if they’re not doing anything else wrong? And how is disagreeing with someone, or telling a bigot to fuck off wrong?

      To me, the issue is trying to destroy the space itself. But honestly, if telling a bigot to fuck off destroys the space, how much am I supposed to care? Why would anyone care about a space where bigots are protected? Do people genuinely see a space full of bigots as a space worth saving?

      • tree@lemmy.zip
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        why does it matter how people get there?

        The only reason it matters is the term brigading explicitly pertains to “how people get there”

        You can think it’s a good thing, that’s not unreasonable, it’s just what the term means, I personally trust the mods on most of the places I post to so far hexbear included, they have not given me a reason to distrust them, I have not seen egregious bigotry staying up after being reported

        • BountifulEggnog [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          The only reason it matters is the term brigading explicitly pertains to “how people get there”

          Yes, and its the least important part of the definition. Unless there’s intentional destruction, its not brigading. Even people who care about brigading very rarely care how people find posts. Its only when they feel people are being destructive that they care.

      • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.net
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        But honestly, if telling a bigot to fuck off destroys the space, how much am I supposed to care?

        When I arrived here I got called a wrecker by about a dozen or so bears because I believe in dronegender rights. They said that speaking in favour of drone rights would have a destructive effect on the space.

        Guess what? I didn’t shut up and now Hexbear supports trans rights. Win. Destroying the toxic and oppressive parts of communities is good. It lets the rest of the space shine.

    • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      I think the hexbear people should argue with this guy instead of dunking. He seems to be coming here and debating in good faith (so far).

    • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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      It’s brigading when someone links to a post and says “hey go get this guy”. It’s stochastic brigading when someone links to a post and says “people should dunk on guys like this.” It’s not brigading when someone links to a post and says “wow can you believe people with takes like this exist? See for yourself.”

      I’ve never seen the first. I’ve seen the second a tiny handful of times. It’s almost always that last one. It’s not brigading. We just want to see the zoo full of abysmally bad takes for ourselves.

      Alternatively if folks want Hexbears to stop dunking on them maybe try having better takes

      • tree@lemmy.zip
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        I don’t see any difference between the 3 people will just assume “hey go get this guy” is an unwritten rule unless it explicitly discouraged in the comm rules and maybe some factor of anonomizing the user is done as well. A random poster is not gonna be able to differentiate whether the person from hexbear found it browsing all or through the thread on their site in “thedunktank”

    • BabaIsPissed [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      When people here seek out stuff on the other instances to post there yes, but a lot of the time it’s people coming here and kicking the hornets nest in which case I don’t think it’s brigading at least in spirit.

      Brigading is a dumb concept anyway, but trying to convince ex-redditors of that is a waste of time

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        I post here, it’s just my opinion, I don’t think you’re allowing me any good faith, but you don’t have, I’ll just block

    • CabbageRelish@midwest.social
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      Those basically always show up after the thread has already seen tons of activity from this instance.

      But, it is a part of the three-year-old culture that could be problematic with federation, and has been a topic of debate because of that. We just always post an actual link to the topic cause that’s more interesting and informative than just seeing a screenshot. (Plus if you don’t you’re a lib.)

      /Edit - What’s even funnier in all this is our devs just happened to be working on un-forking our pre-federation codebase to a point where we could federate when the Reddit exodus happened. They even announced it something like a week beforehand, but IIRC the main point was in being able to integrate all the nice upstream improvements. And, especially of note, before that we were probably 80% of activity on all Lemmy instances.

  • comr [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Are you sure that we should use “whataboutism”? It’s actually a logical fallacy.

    Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about…?”) denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin ‘you too’, term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument.