Just lurk there for a while. IMO, biggest misconception is that they're omnicidal lunatics. They have a lot of in-jokes and bits that seem incomprehensible and border on unhinged to an outsider, and sometimes they kinda lean in to the perception. But if you spend enough time there you realise they're very intelligent and deeply empathetic people. The "unlimited genocide on the first world" rhetoric is an expression of frustration rather than actual intent.

Yeah I like some of the hexbear comms and sometimes participate. Vegan Theory Club is an offshoot of Hexbear after the great vegan struggle sessions of 2021 when my account there got banned. We're mainly a two discord servers called Vegan Theory Club and Vegan Home Cooks and we launched the lemmy more recently.

I think they’re fine except for their more ridiculous vegan coms

This account's instance federates with hexbear. Outside of politics and topics du jour, there's little difference between them and you or me.

that hexbear supports the entirety of russia. a lot of times i hear stuff like "they don't actually care about queer people since they support russia", which is a gross oversimplification of their views. they hate russia's reactionary politics.

this misconception i think comes from the war in ukraine, in which if ukraine wins, they get to join nato. hexbear considers nato to be an imperialistic organisation that holds power towards a large portion of the world, and therefore, anything that opposes it should receive support, albeit critical.

Yeah, they're chill, idk. If you enjoy arguments and can handle some friction without breaking down, you'll fit right in, I think. The only main difference I've noticed is that they're a bit gayer than folks here, or at least talk about it more, and they don't use obvious American propaganda/party lines as the framework to understand the world.

hexbear is just fine. the "problem" with them is that they are leftists. same with lemmygrad or to a lesser extent lemmy.ml

i predict some people will hate a lot on them here, but you should simply just go talk to them and decide for yourself what you think of it.

They're just fine. Our views don't always align but I've found suspending disbelief is very different from believing.

https://atkinsbookshelf.wordpress.com/2019/05/01/famous-misquotations-it-is-the-mark-of-an-educated-mind/

My other account is on an instance that federated with them, this one does not.

I've never had any major problems from them, just bad takes and occasional belligerence from specific users. But I also don't seek out their communities.

they're pretty fun and very queer (both strange and rainbow)

I love hexbear, have an account there too. They are nice and I've never had a problem.

I have a lemmygrad acct, possibly. but I just browse via this one mostly anyway.

i used to. they're terrible. i couldn't stand the infighting and dumbassery.