They were, by most accounts, more akin to martyrdom. The participants in the ritual warfare all signed up, essentially, to die. The idea was not to kill your enemy, but take them prisoner for the sacrifice. It was sort of an honor, in a way.

Before the Aztecs it was mostly high ranking prisoners of war that were sacrificed in mesoamerica. (Think how warlords and rebelling generals are often executed when they lose.)

I should probably add there’s also been a community on my instance dedicated to portraying Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and .ml in the worst possible way, usually by taking a single comment or DM out of context. The user running it finally fucked off from the Fediverse just a month or two back.

Since that community is now being run by overt Zionists who are into spreading outright doctored screenshots, hopefully it’ll fall into long overdue irrelevance. If you ever see the term ‘tankie triad’ that’s probably one of them.

Hexbear originated from ChapoTrapHouse fandom which is a part of the so-called dirtbag left that explicitly antagonizes (neo)liberals. They also don’t use downvotes and encourage users to voice their opinions instead.

So every wave of redditor freaks the hell out when they get a handful of hexbear users clowning on some take like it’s a coordinated brigade attack.

I remember how in some of the towns I lived in there’d be these old closed down diners in residential areas, usually near schools and fields/playgrounds. Small corner stores, too.

The old infrastructure is still there in places. Just hollowed out and left to decay.