I think it’s fairly important to remember that Hexbear/Lemmygrad are basically why Lemmy exists, and largely emigrated after the Reddit Chapo ban, at least as far as I understand things.

They weren’t entirely niche communities at first, and now they’re the most active communities on Lemmy, which may or may not grow into something bigger, but most importantly they’ve inherited the damage the used to have.

I mean, have you ever listened to ChapoTrapHouse? They were pretty solidly democratic socialist. Something happened to that community to turn it into Hexbear. It could have been natural, but their messaging is just so consistent it seems unlikely.