Glad I missed whatever this is about
vagueposting is cowardice and leads to a more toxic atmosphere on the site than just confronting ppl directly
i do agree with your overall point tho
oh good i wasn’t the only one incredibly concerned
maybe it’s bc i’ve been on the receiving end of an unrequited crush from someone i barely knew but man that shit just reads as scary to me
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im pretty sure the guy that was stalking me probably did exactly that before they decided to stalk me
i shudder to think about it 😔
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DONT SHIT WHERE YOU EAT.
To elaborate for those who are going to “but ackshwally,” yes there’s some nuance.
If you’re in a very large org with different departments, that’s different as long as there’s not power dynamics. So if you’re sales and they’re part of quality assurance, ok, fine. Be normal ask them out and move on. Don’t carry a torch, that’s the one way to really make what could otherwise be a very normal interaction weird.
Don’t date your boss, don’t date your subordinate, don’t date your peers in your part of the office. If you absolutely have to, then BE NORMAL and just ask them out to get over it quickly and remember that the longer and weirder you make it the more likely you could lose your job in a worst case.
You’re not Jim and Pam in some slow burn romance. Crushes are for people under the age of 18 (in which case, all the not having sex with coworkers goes out the window if it’s not a real job. The amount of kids who hooked up at the pizza place I worked at… It was high).
To spell it out: you’re going to have to maintain a professional relationship with this person if they’re not interested OR if you break up. Is it worth it? There are probably many people out there you’re compatible with. Work crushes are inappropriate, especially since they can’t just leave (like, say, some person you hit on in a bar or something). They aren’t there for romance either, they’re there to work.
P.S. I speak from the fact that I’m at least somewhat socially awkward and the very thought of having to see someone who rejected me or dumped me daily was so crushing I fully embraced don’t shit where you eat mindset. There have been a few coworkers I found attractive, but I never carried a torch or crushed on them since I would never be able to act on it.
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just ask them out to get over it quickly
this also isn’t universal. i know plenty of femme peeps who dislike being asked out cold by people they barely know, it makes it feel like they can’t just Exist and that interest in them is purely based on physical attraction (because again, they hardly know the person), it feels closer to a boundary cross/sex pesty behavior than starting as friends in a low-to-no pressure way for them. different people are - shocker - different!! i’d also argue it’s actually less appropriate in the workplace or in organizing because it gives the impression that the ask-outer is just there for that, and particularly in the latter space femmes really do struggle to feel like they can just exist as serious participants.
also completely out of the question for, say, demisexual people as well, simply not how they’re wired.
It takes time and genuine chemistry to build up to the asking out part. Doing it purely based on looks is shallow and a sign you’ll burn out fast.
I actually agree on this point. Just flat asking someone out out of the blue can be just as creepy
It’s not ableism. Autism doesn’t give license to act in a way that makes coworkers uncomfortable. I guess I could use more careful language comrade but I’m sorry, I’m not gonna sanction acting like a creep because you’re autistic. Either ask someone out or find a dating pool where pining and stuff like that is acceptable. It’s not work and it’s not your org. Be professional.
I’ll say tho, sorry for the “Be normal” - I recognize that normalcy is contingent, but in the workplace being normal is about respect to your fellow worker. If you build up this relationship for months in your mind, the denouement is likely going to be toxic. While there’s places that can be fine, in a workplace you’re putting your coworker in a position where she/he has to decide if they want to keep seeing the person who has been carrying a torch for them every day or not. Yes there’s HR to smooth things over sometimes, but I think it’s still just unfair to you and the other person if you involve them in a long and twisty psychic obsession at a place they need to work at to pay rent, etc. we don’t live in communism where they can just get easily reassigned.
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Crushes are for people under the age of 18
Workplaces aside, sometimes you feel a bit of a something for someone and it’s not the right call to make a move. If it’s destroying you, you obviously have to get some space, but if not sometimes it just makes sense to ride it out. If you accept it, it can be kind of a sweet thing, and sometimes it can settle into a nice sort of platonic attraction.
To me, a crush requires a certain element of self-destruction that other kinds of attraction don’t. A crush is also very selfish, it kind of objectifies the other person, and doesn’t make them an active part of the relationship building process. I have friends to whom i’m attracted to/admire greatly, but at the same time wouldn’t want to actually be in a relationship with, and I just try not to make my attraction everything about interacting with this person, there’s the shaky ground imo. I’ve had some pretty bad crushes, and it ends up pretty badly for both of us, often with the relationship being poisoned by me allowing it to go unchecked.
Then, if you’re using crush in a much more lighthearted way like some of my queer friends do, all power to you. Be histrionic and express your love/adoration as loud as you want and to the degree others consent to.
the thing is i think for most people a crush just means they feel a romantic attraction to someone to varying degrees, most people do not think about the word that deeply or have such negative connotations to it. that’s not to say it’s wrong to have a different internal definition of a word but you are maybe universalizing something that the good majority of people conceptualize differently.
It might be something the people I grew up around did, and plus that I’m translating a very local word for crush with a whole set of connotations into English, which isn’t my first language. You’re right, thanks!
I’m probably more in that latter camp, despite a contentious relationship with my queer identity. “Crush” in my circles doesn’t really have quite as much of a negative connotation but more of an innocent one. A crush is usually new because it’s an unstable position to be in - you either make the move or have to move on eventually.
I’m poly and pretty sympathetic to relationship anarchy, and I find the straight, monogamous conceptions that dominate our culture very difficult to interface with. It took me a while to put my finger on the reasons that romance in media (films, books, especially songs) very, very rarely tugs on any of my heartstrings.
Thanks for articulating this. Yeah just thinking someone is attractive is not a crush.
I dated an autistic coworker and while the relationship didn’t work out afterwards things worked out just fine, so I’m giving everyone permission to take a chance on love at the workplace here. Absolutely nothing bad can happen, actually.
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Back in the early days of this site the general megathread contained some of the most off-putting terminally online shit I have ever seen in my life. Fuckin weird ass cuddle threads and all kinds of baby speak. This place has grown for the better but I dont know that we’ll ever be able to fully break away from our creepy ass roots. Sometimes that mega can still hit ya with some full force shit that just makes you close the tab and walk away.
It’s okay you can join the cuddle puddle when you’re ready
When this gets brought up it reads as being irony poisoned to the point of cringing at neurodivergent users
Edit: I also don’t see how that’s related to people posting about crushing on their coworkers or friends/acquaintances
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baby speak lol i desperately need to see examples of this
just imagine a
where people just reply 
and 
over and over and overThe long-rumored snuggle session…
pretty sure during that era some (not) here legit got together IRL.
I can think of one couple who met on here who are de facto exiled, and another who are still active posters. and those are just the ones I know of lol
secret site lore. also, WTF I have been here for 5 years now???!??! you too!!!
🫡 never log off
I prefer that old site culture
It used to be quite common pre-vegan struggle sess
How tf did I miss all that?
“Socialist”
Incapable of healthy socializing
Ok what thread are we vagueposting about
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the what?
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Why does something happen every time I’m not on Hexbear all day?
the infosec concerns are legit and extend to any journalposting about people in our personal lives who aren’t us, if the site has to have that conversation more formally then that’s fine. i think people here (me included) have maybe gotten too comfortable treating hexbear like an actual IRL community/friend group/safe space, when it’s really not: it’s a social media site.
we’re not really each other’s friends or each other’s comrades - i’m sure plenty of us have plenty of both in real life, and those of us who do know how radically different those relationships are vs semi-anonymous shitposting acquaintances. if the site needs to enact a policy that any kind of posting that might involve other people in our lives be relegated to DM only, then OK - the megathread might kind of slowly die out and i’m not sure how clear the line would be in terms of moderator enforcement, but i can see the logic there.
privacy concerns aside though, you don’t actually know the people involved or their relationships to each other - people develop complicated bonds & feelings toward one another in literally every single social context and have done so since we have had to get together as a species to survive, it’s weirder to expect otherwise & imo is a symptom of atomization. i think there are a lot of assumptions based on vague Icks around these posts that everyone is an incel stalker until proven otherwise…but maybe more often than not the people involved actually do have genuine, meaningful-but-complicated friendships? again, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s appropriate to talk about on a semi-anonymous forum in detail, but that doesn’t seem to be your main gripe (it’s way less bad privacy-wise than say a dating call-in show, or the whole host of weird dating advice subreddits)
you just really don’t know, and literally everyone i have ever gotten remotely close to in real life is vastly more normal about people developing these kinds of feelings/the messy complications of dating and romance than chapo chat users. any discussion beyond whether this type of conversation is appropriate for an internet forum reads to me as attempting to police people’s feelings & expressions of vulnerability in a way that’s unrealistic at best & weirdly repressed at worst.
and honestly, if you have to post a meme like this you are definitely not as emotionally normal as you think, and you also need to reevaluate your relationship to your online life. you could probably also afford to practice sharing potential concerns with people about blind spots, privilege, and potentially problematic behavior in a less bullying way. like it’s obvious you on some level want to have a sincere effortpost sesh about this…so why a weeaboo meme putting people down and joking about beating them to death?
i don’t think it’s normal to post about crushes regularly. i would personally be very alarmed that someone i thought was a friend was regularly publishing details of our time together and how they’re developing feelings for me on a public forum that is easily readable by literally anyone, even people with malicious intent. as a woman, it is genuinely scary that an audience could be reading about my life and i would have literally zero clue about it
if the site needs to enact a policy that any kind of posting that might involve other people in our lives be relegated to DM only, then OK
Yeah, no. This is such a convenient ultimatum that benefits you, it just sounds like you’ll just use this as an excuse to slide into direct messages or make “feeling lonely please dm” posts.
This is not a serious issue and yet you’re being extremely defensive about something the majority of the website is against whilst playing the smol bean role for sympathy points. Stop posting about crushes, it’s creepy.
One user responds to inflammatory, kinda witch-hunty, and somewhat ableist post with level-headed, inclusive reasoning.
1-day-old user responds within minutes, making accusations toward that user, being more hostile, and claiming that the whole site is on their side.
God I love the culture of this site sometimes.
Yah, honestly, what is it with these new accounts and acting like they fully understand the site culture and act like they’re already fully ingratiated within the community?
Stop dating your coworkers and log into muggy
sad and creepy hexbear posters rise up
Oh no those socially stunted weirdos get weird about social stuff in our completely asocial society why can’t they just be normal like me
POLICE YOUR OWN FEELINGS
Ok completely unrelated to the actual post, but the colour palette of this screenshot is the enby flag and that’s neat.
What about those of us that have unrequited feelings but don’t post about it, huh
me, thinking about someone i haven’t seen in over 15 years because that was the last time i was in a position to have feelings for someone
True but also Yoshikage Kira OF ALL PEOPLE would not fucking tell someone that
Yoshikage Kira was all about appearing unremarkable and normal to the world, so he probably would have said that.
He also had disdain for the coworkers that hit on him.
I think he’s just disdainful towards anyone attracted to him whose hand remains attached? He clearly felt disdainful towards the wife of that guy whose life he stole as well.
He is disdainful towards everyone, but I thought that him specifically not being interested in work place romance in his introduction was relevant.
The actual reason is probably that he isn’t interested in women as more than fetish objects and going after his coworkers would be far too conspicuous. But still.
He probably also doesn’t want to kill any woman he knows, even if he really likes her hands, because that would make anyone investigating start questioning him a bit more.
