From now on a new rule is in place

Rule 8: The subject of a post must be highly visible, which means that it is either highly upvoted/liked/viewed, posted by a public figure or widely known of in society.

Reworded rule:

Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this.

c/the_dunk_tank should be about dunking on capitalist/reactionary ideas floating in society not about finding one idiot to get mad at, so the rule has been introduced to make sure that is the case

  • ElGosso [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    The purpose of this comm is literally to quarantine all of the “finding an idiot to get mad at” posts. This rule change is gonna make the rest of the site worse.

  • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    :downbear:

    The thing about ideas floating in society is that they are often expressed by random idiots.

    Also, the criteria of highly upvoted or well known are arbitrary and ill defined.

  • disposable_cracker [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Some of the funniest ones are weirdos in comment sections though.

    Edit: on second thought, OP is right. The point and laugh at random libs vibe creates a mean environment. IDK what any chapo says: bullying doesn’t work (inb4 PIGPOOPBALLS). This rule change should drive out bad people much like the removal of downvotes have.

    I have deleted my offending posts.

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    What’s the bar for “well/widely known” here, would dunking on some loser like Stefan Molyneux or Ian Miles Cheong be allowed? They are pretty damn irrelevant compared to the expert-shapiro / up-yours-woke-moralists realm where they have actual reach.

    • replaceable [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      3 months ago

      The purpose of the rule is to stop dunking on one(1) upvote comments, these are public figures even if relatively obscure so they would be allowed

  • PointAndClique [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I like low level dunks because they are the kind I interact with offline too, and the responses and critiques are applicable to how I interact with those people or in those spaces.

    Like if I see a common sinophobic trope being shopped around, then I get a good counter to it in the dunk tank, I can use it when a friend or whoever brings it up irl.

    Higher profile people don’t necessarily truck in the same rhetoric as people thinking they’re posting in semi-anonymous online spaces. If the dunk tank is going to be useful, and serve as a useful venting space/containment zone, then putting some arbitrary cutoff of ‘oh a few hundred followers needed before we can drag this shithead’ is a counterproductive rule imo

    Also I don’t care

    Edit: i mean, I’m okay with your moderation decision. I understand what you’re going for, but I think what I’m trying to say is that personally i don’t see low hanging fruit as a problem. To me it’s cathartic to be like ‘check out this trasheap’ and have a few friends also lay in the boot, while I don’t post in this comm, I have like, one friend irl who I do share ragebait with when I come across it, it’s kinda like oh I haven’t messaged person x in a while, I’ll flick them this thing I saw and ask him what’s up, and if I didn’t, I’d probably share it here as an outlet?

    Edit edit: also yeh the change has been made so not sure even why it’s worthwhile sharing my view on it now anyway. I’m sleepy night y’all

  • christian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I actually love this rule. I had the dunk tank blocked for a year or two because I was finding that the experience of getting angry at random nobodies while scrolling through posts was making hexbear a lot less enjoyable for me. With that said, at some point (a couple months ago?) I saw some great piece of comedy before logging in and decided to unblock.

  • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Could we make exceptions for posts and comments in close proximity to Hexbear? Like on a federated instance just outside of Hexbear mod jurisdiction? Or posts that mention Hexbear, or made in reply to a Hexbear user?

    My last dunk tank post would not be allowed under this rule, but I felt it was super productive. It brought attention to an asshole dbzer0 poster commenting on .ml. Hexbear got to do a classic anti-chud dogpile, the user was brought to the attention of the dbzer0 and .ml admins/mods, and eventually their comment was removed. I’ve always felt this was the sort of thing c/the_dunk_tank was made for; after a dogpile like that, it’s far less likely for lurkers to take the chud’s side. It’s always been an extension of the r/CTH culture of using bullying as a deterrent, it makes chuds think twice about whether or not it’s worth sharing their shitty opinions.

    Here’s a link to it: https://hexbear.net/post/2139624

    The person has no upvotes in the screenshot, but that’s because their comment was in direct reply to me, so I was able to post it here before any other chuds came along to upvote it.

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Okay. I’ll bite. You’ve not seen other voices because we are in agreement on the rule change. Moderation decisions like this are discussed elsewhere and then made public once a consensus has been reached.

          We’re trying to limit “low-hanging fruit” posts like ragebait or random unhinged takes held only by single individuals. Our goal here is basically to prevent the_dunk_tank from being a space for making up guys to get mad at. There simply is no point in tilting at windmills, so to speak.

          • SUPAVILLAIN@lemmygrad.ml
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            3 months ago

            “Making up guys to get mad at”-- has this ever actually happened, or is this just a paternalistic “what if” that you lot have talked yourselves into? I get there’s a decision that’s been made here, regardless of how bad the optics look on first glance-- but I do consider it a stupid-assed decision ultimately.

            Not from the “tilting at windmills” bit, as I actually do agree with that-- but assuming this userbase is so in need of handholding that the idea that they could conjure up people to dunk on(when the vast majority I’ve seen actually catch the drag-a-thon deserved so much worse) doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

            But do y’all ig. Not my call to make-- but y’all have been wrong before.

            • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              3 months ago

              Apologies, “making up a guy to get mad at” is an expression based on an old dril post. I don’t necessarily mean it literally, but there have been a number of posts in the past where users have shared satire accounts and fairly obvious bait. These and posts about truly weird takes that are vanishingly rare to the point of not being a real take that is held by a group of people are what I meant by that.

              The rule change is 50/50 a clarification on why some posts have been locked or removed, and a goal to shoot for, in order to reduce the need for removing posts in the future.