Between 2 and n “hexbears” (understood to mean “humans afflicted with hexbear mind virus using other servers”) are behaving in some coordinated way. You were pretty clearly implying that it’s some conspiracy rather than simply other users disagreeing with you.

Lol what are you on about? People who use hexbear (i.e. hexbears) share similar traits, interests, and behaviors. They use hexbear because they fit in on hexbear, and in order to fit in on hexbear you need to pass an extensive series of ideological purity tests, which result in the homogeneity and cult-like behavior that occurs.

Hexbear is quite explicit about this, they don’t want anyone with any sort of divergent political views on their server. They clearly revel in “dunking on libs” by chain downvoting and harassing people when they say things that the hexbear hive mind disagrees with. And yet always claim innocence when their obvious brigading is called out, as you are currently doing.

It is a real problem for everyone who’s not a hexbear, because it means that we can’t have sane, civil conversations about certain political issues on Lemmy, because CCP apologists and edgelord larping teenage “leftists” constantly butt in and derail the discussion with their potent combination of ignorance and self righteousness.

I never asserted that “anyone downvoting must be a hexbear alt”. There you go again, misrepresenting my point just to feel like you’re winning.

I’m quite sure that non-hexbears are downvoting OP also. But that wasn’t what you said, was it? You could have said that originally, but instead you decided to mock OP and act like he’s crazy and there’s no way he is getting downvoted by hexbear users, which is disingenous and lame.

You know what you’re doing, I don’t need to explain your own bad faith tactics to you.

Lemmy, famous for not allowing alt accounts 😅

This is why people don’t like hexbear, because they consistently try to gaslight and use disingenous arguments such as this. How are you disputing the fact that OP is getting downvoted by hexbears right now? That’s insane.

That sub is trash also. I think the whole conspiracy theorist subculture has been taken over by the alt right and is highly politicized at this point.

Really? Damn that’s crazy.

Lemmy is highly sensitive about transgender topics. We have a very high percentage of trans people, and thus mods tend to be quite zealous when protecting this space from transphobia. They may sometimes be overzealous, but that’s not the worst thing in the world.

I don’t think a permaban was necessary based on your comments. But I also don’t think you would be happy about making other Lemmings uncomfortable or driving them away from the platform because they feel unwelcome. Is it more important that we all perfectly agree on various semantic definitions, or that people feel welcome and able to connect and communicate with others on Lemmy?

I’m not criticizing you or anything like that because I don’t think you were trying to hurt anyone and I think the ban was excessive. But I’m just trying to help you see the situation from the other side and maybe approach the topic with a little more delicacy in the future.

I dunno man. How can you be sure the comments you’re seeing on reddit are from bots? There are some bots, but there are also a lot of ignorant mfers on that site.

I would also say that Lemmy is much better moderated, partially because it’s still small enough that the mods and admins can stay on top of everything. Reddit is so chaotic that absolutely horrific comments and threads tend to slip through the cracks quite regularly nowadays.

Well… some people still are. Just not nearly as many on Lemmy compared to Reddit

Now that’s some real dedication. Thank you for your cervix.

I don’t think anybody is expecting women to do administrative work on behalf of men’s rights. It’s more that women tend to react with outright hostility when men advocate for other men.

It’s actually the feminists who frequently argue that men need to be fighting for women’s issues. I haven’t seen the reverse from male advocates, partially because it’s quite obvious that such a request would be summarily denied. Men generally just want:

• funding for men’s shelters

• sympathy & aid for male victims of domestic violence and sexual assault

• solutions for the growing educational achievement gap

• a discussion about various legal discrepancies when it comes to conscription, marriage, and parental rights and responsibilities.

None of this requires women to assist or flex their institutional power. But when men are systematically denied access and funding for various forms of governmental aid, it seems like certain women are flexing some of their institutional power to prevent men from having access to the same kind of social safety net that women enjoy.

It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you.

This is a faulty analogy, because men’s issues are women’s issues and vice versa. It’s impossible for women to actually solve their own problems without also solving men’s problems. How are women ever going to keep their oxygen masks on if they are surrounded by men who are suffocating and trying to rip the mask from their face? In order to help anyone, you need to help everyone.

To be fair, the men’s rights movement is absolutely characterized as alt-right by the mainstream media. People tend to assume all sorts of things about you when you bring up any kind of men’s issue. Most people (including other men) have difficulty empathizing with grown men, and thus they subconsciously expect that men’s advocates are motivated by something else, such as misogyny. It’s hard to move past our biological and cultural tendencies and view men as vulnerable and in need of support.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I’m not insulting anybody. I’m simply stating the fact that it’s smart to wear a helmet, because if you hit your head on the ground, you could die. That’s all.

Walking down the stairs is less dangerous than biking and you know it.

You make some good points.

I still wear one, but I don’t judge people who choose not to.

I don’t wear one and I judge myself for not doing so 🤷

Complicated issue.

Could be even lower if they wore helmets though. I don’t even wear a helmet myself, but it’s objectively smart to do so.

My friend got something caught in his front wheel and went over the handlebars at 20mph. Could have been turned into a vegetable if he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Not really. Lemmy is filled with skeptics, rebels, and independent thinkers, and there are only like 50,000 monthly active users.

You know what’s a much better target for propaganda? Reddit or any corporate social media site. The users are simpleminded and easily manipulated and you don’t even have to worry about moderators, you can just pay to run ads.

Lemm.ee is actually bigger in terms of userbase now. And SJW is about the same size. But .ml still hosts a lot more communities so I guess that also counts for something

Why not provide it to everyone else?

Anytime I see a trash post that’s where it comes from 9/10.

It’s 40% of the whole Lemmy userbase and activity. They’ve got their fair share of trolls but come on, the worst? Have you forgotten about redditors?

It’s hard to be the biggest, and I think their admins are doing a pretty good job.

I saw a fellow mod outright nazi-ing about ( not “saying things I disagree with” but actual nazi fanboy-ing)

A claim like this typically requires evidence.

NYC is a bad example because it’s an extreme outlier in terms of size and density. But the metropolitan area is actually much larger than the urban area; here’s a map of all the counties within the NYC metropolitan area.

It covers 8,200 square miles, just slightly less than the area of New Jersey.

Metropolitan areas are quite large and typically include the core city along with the entire surrounding area that is economically and culturally heavily linked with the core city.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

Here is a map of all the metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Micropolitan areas are essentially defined the same way, except the core urban area of a micropolitan area is <50,000 population, while a metropolitan area has a core city of >50,000 population.

You can see that metropolitan areas include vast areas that are not even remotely urban. Beyond that, there is also a category called the Combined Statistical Area, which often combine multiple metropolitan areas.

Here is a map of LA where the red areas are urban areas, the beige counties are part of the Metropolitan Area, and the yellow counties are part of the CSA.

Greater LA

The CSA for LA is a whopping 34,000 square miles, or slightly larger than the island of Ireland or the state of South Carolina. However, it only contains about 2,300 square miles of urban area. Estimating the urban area is even more of an imperfect science than the metropolitan area, so I’m not sure how they calculated that number.

When people say Greater Boston or Greater Toronto, they are usually referring to the MSA, but might also be referring to the CSA. So the short answer to OP’s question is that “Greater” and “Metropolitan” are roughly synonymous. FWIW, I think that metropolitan areas used to be significantly smaller and more urbanized, but they had to modify the definition over time due to trends of suburbanization and decentralization in American city development.