Having been here since basically the beginning, I feel like it’s only gotten better. Some good changes I’ve noticed:

1. Far more explicitly pro trans than it was initially
2. Generally seems like more of an effort is made to be welcoming
3. More activity and fun community events like movie nights
4. Struggle sessions are more or less a joke and angry struggle sessions seem much more rare

Some things I miss:

1. Posters like tervell, brookebaybee, UlyssesT, and others who aren’t as active or no longer around at all. If you’re out there reading this, come back and say hi!
2. President Parrot has also disappeared from the public eye following the last scandal that was in the news. I think it was the one where President Parrot was naked or something.
3. Also, this was kind of always an issue, but there are lots of smaller commas that could use more love.

I can't be always online stealing memes ok?

it's 'been dying' since 2020, there's a post like this every 6 months

90/9/1 rule

90% of users are lurkers and they need to be bullied into posting

Your experience on the site is largely determined by what sorting algo you use by default, IMO. (or what mega you browse if you primarily hang out in the megas)

If you use Hot sort you will see mostly new posts, but comments sections will be pretty empty. If you use Active, you'll see the posts with the most active comments section, but they'll all be like 12h to 2 days old. Etc.

So using Hot (or especially New), the comments can feel really empty: but you have the opportunity to be the one who starts the interesting discussions in the comments, or gets first dibs at the cheap jokes. Using Active you'll see the fullest comments sections and most struggle sessions

You can try both of them out using the selector on the front page, but if you want to change your default that's on your user settings page (in case it wasn't obvious)

I switched to Hot after we migrated and federated, but it took me a while to realize how drastically different the site experience was on Hot vs Active. I still default to Hot but sometimes I switch to Active to see slapfights or good posts that I missed

EDIT: Also to provide some data, our monthly active user count is actually up ~200 since 6 months ago. That's something like 10% growth? These things are hard to really judge precisely but I don't think there's any sign we're dying

This is making me think of that "the fandom is dying!!" disc-horse I was constantly exposed to in my brony days... By all means that still hasn't happened, even though I and all the people I know are far less preoccupied with cartoon horses than we used to be; and by all means Hexbear is not dying either.

It would appear that online communities are only truly dead when people stop asking or debating if they're dead/dying. As long as people are still asking or arguing about that, then that signals that there are people who want the community to live, and as long as there's even two people who want that, then the community is not dead. And when people stop arguing, then, well, so what? Nobody wanted the community to keep on living, anyways. All those people who were previously worrying about the death of the community have stopped worrying by that point, and it's exactly that which allowed them to leave.

It's like getting a Twilight Zone oracle's vision of your own deathbed, and seeing that you will die feeling fulfilled, like you have achieved more or less everything you ever wanted to do, made peace with everything you couldn't do, and have no unfinished business remaining. You see that you will die painlessly on a day when you're ready to die, and you see that people are going to miss you but that life will go on nonetheless. The oracle tells you that all of this is going to happen no matter what you do, and that it might be a year from now or half a century, that's for you to figure out...

...And then you spend the rest of your life worrying about the day you stop worrying.

It may be natural, but it's also a bit silly, isn't it? Like, you aren't really fearing death at that point.

I remember seeing the first Hexbear is dying post in like August 2020

personally, things feel bleak in the world. when things feel bleak, i don't feel like posting, i just feel like passively consuming

As others have said, you're not the first to feel this way. I logged on yesterday for the first time in several months after thinking the same and I was pleasantly surprised at the level of activity. I've had mixed feelings about federation but feel like it paid off, though I mostly keep my feed to 'local'. Hell, 2024 might even be the year I finally make a post.

Hexbear is dead. Hexbear remains dead. And we have killed it

I'm sorry I've been touching grass and posting less

yea sorry about that, the bureau is in sort of "transitional phase" or so the higher ups tell me and that means we can only get 2 agents on this place at anytime which means its me, or some boomer asshole in DC or some dumbass intern fresh out of harvard, which means we cant post as much