Lemmy is full of people that I would never want to hang out with IRL. Even if I agree with most of what they're saying, they manage to say it in the most neckbeardy way possible.
Yeah it seems the topic is irrelevant. They'll eventually just start yammering about communism, Linux and ublock. It's hard to have a conversation on here that doesn't get sidelined by those things. I can't imagine these people carrying on a normal conversation in the real world, and I don't think they understand that the world exists outside of those narrow interests.
Like OP will say they hate MS Teams. Person will say stop using Microsoft. OP will say, I'd love to but my government employer is an MS shop. Person will say then quit your job. K...
It's either very sheltered people who've not worked or interacted in 'the mainstream' or, really young naive people who think that your FOSS convictions will stand up against the need to earn a living.
I prefer it to Reddit still, but it gets a bit tedious.
Ohhh, I get you now. Yes, that's likely a thing most of them would believe.
(Not saying I agree or disagree with it, just trying to explain what Hexbear typically implies to most people in a factual, unbiased way because you said you're out of the loop.)
Hexbear existed as an instance prior to the Reddit API changes of 2023. They'd been around for a few years. Most instances federate by default with everyone, but Hexbear took a slower opening of it because they already had an established culture. (Think of this similarly to people discussing the pros/cons of federating with Threads. It would be a big change to the way things are now so it's controversial.) It's possible they weren't ever federated with beehaw.org (your instance) so you may have never seen them or interacted with them.
I've not yet heard any claims on or outside Lemmy that it is a Reddit clone. The model of hosting forums/communities was never unique to Reddit as far as I know.
I'm curious what you're willing to generally apply to "Hexbear folks" (I don't think I've talked to many).
And Lemmy is totally an echo chamber most of the time (based on my experience, obviously mileage may vary) but it wasn't intended to be that way unlike almost every commercial social media platform. I would assume this distinction is why people would be less likely to be willing to admit it.