i just don't get how this shit works. last night i clicked on something on hexbear that took me to lemmy.blahaj or something, and one of the first banners i see on a community says "fuck tankies". what is that site, how is it related to this one? then there's lemmygrad. also one i find myself on from this site. but despite looking identical my hexbear account doesn't work on there so it's not part of hexbear?
Lemmy is a broad federation of different islands, or sites. You can visit these sites from other sites and comment on their communities, or stay on your own island.
Hexbear is federated with some sites, like Lemmygrad, and defederated from others, like Blahaj.
Lemmygrad is its own equivalent to Hexbear, and people on Lemmygrad can and do participate in Hexbear discussions, and vice-versa.
When I joined reddit it was really small. Digg had just started to implode and being a 'redditor' was pretty cool. Not a lot of people on it, and those that were there were lefty nerds. Lemmygrad reminds me of that. I like that it's small, niche, and the people are awesome.