I am a public safety volunteer at Burning Man, and the "seven days old and still in a very exploratory stage"' just sets off all kinds of alarm bells.

The second part is important too: when someone escapes the cave and sees the outside world for the first time, it's painful because things are so bright. After a while, the escapee's eyes adjust, and they come to see how much better and more real the outside world is. They decide to go back and free their friends in the cave. But when they descend back down, their friends make fun of them because they can't see very well in the dark anymore and so aren't very good at talking about the shadows. Their friends think that they are just making up a big story about some magical "outside world" to cover for how bad they've gotten at talking about the shadows.

We've definitely got some anarchist mods. I'm not sure about the admin team, but it's never been an issue. The "no sectarianism" rule is strongly enforced, and I've seen posts get removed (and users get banned) for breaking it; if a poster is ever making you feel unwelcome, tell the mods and they will 100% have a conversation about community norms (at least) with that person.

I completely get why you're nervous about it (I had the same reaction to Lemmygrad, for what it's worth, which is why I ended up on ), but it really is a very, very nice community of folks who are united in their love of dunking on liberals. You're welcome any time, comrade, whether as a member or just to hang out.

There are comms that are less active (that's one of them) and some good-natured ribbing, but I've never encountered any genuine hostility and there are lots of prominent anarchist posters. The site takes left unity very seriously; it's one of the things that sets us apart from Lemmygrad, which is also great but very explicitly ML.

We're an old instance by lemmy standards, and have been really active for several years. We had a big boom after the CTH banning, and then just kind of got left to our own devices for a few years. The site developed a much more distinctive culture than most other places because of that--it feels more like an old message board from the 90s or 00s than a modern social media site. It's great.

I'm an anarchist, and have been on Hexbear since the beginning. We're explicitly non-sectarian, and that's enforced. The left unity is actually part of what keeps me here. Folks are actually incredibly nice--it's one of the most positive and friendly online spaces I've been a part of in decades.