There may be an age or generational explanation for this, but I especially notice this behavior on Reddit while not nearly as much here on Lemmy (though maybe that’s also a mater of implementation).
It seems many are so quick to assert overly-confident positions, but then hit-and-run with some smarmy remark at even the slightest challenge, then quickly block. Like, not even crazy stuff. Just basic, civil disagreements. I can pretty well predict when it will happen, and it always feels like such a petty ego-sparing fingers-in-ears denial thing to do, and to me if anything shows they were not very confident in their views being challenged.
I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade who were actively spamming, stalking, or spewing extremely hateful rhetoric and I just reported them simultaneously. You have to cross a pretty extreme and irrational line for me to do that.
The reason I ask is to see if I’m missing something; to better understand the mindset of those who do.
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I have blocked more in the last year than I have in the last 20 combined. There are far, far too many people arguing to troll, arguing in bad faith, threatening, or insulting that will do everything they can to bait you, derail your argument, DM you with insults, etc.
It’s probably because I’ve become far more critical of anti-science, shitty politics, and shitty people, so I’m sure that’s part of the reason, but nonetheless I don’t have the time or patience anymore to waste on the pigeons knocking pieces over and shitting on the chessboard declaring victory, so I block them.
I also have been blocked outright when presenting any objectively factual rebuttal. Facts are often strictly disallowed in the narrative, particularly political and anti-science ones. People don’t want their flow of internet “likes” interrupted.
Same man.
I never used to block people on principle… but at the same time people never said horrible shit or harassed me so there really was no reason to.
People also were not posting all sorts of crazy nonsense 10 years ago in the same volume or lever of vitriolic hate they do now.
I need to start blocking people for my own sanity. You tell them the sky is blue, and they’ll demand a source. You send them a picture of the sky and they tell you its not a source. You dick about spending 5 minutes of your time finding an actual source because you obviously weren’t prepared to defend something so obvious, and they just tell you “pfft [source]. Actually trusting [source] in [thisyear].” It goes on.
Yeah I gave up ‘sourcing’ anything because nobody will believe sources anymore. They will just tell you the source is wrong.
And if you tell them to look up their own sources, they tell you to f yourself and how it isn’t their job its yours.
It’s stupidity and entitlement wrapped up into one neat package.
I also love people who tell you what you are staying is a ‘fallacy’ when it’s not. And they really do not care about learning what a fallacy actually is… they just want to use it to call other people wrong even if they totally misunderstand how fallacies work.
They simple do not want to admit fault or mistake or god forbid… learn something new.
Blocking is self-care. Just with the added teeth of “get tf out of my phone.”
That’s it.
It’s maintaining your personal peace, and frankly I find it weird that it’s even a conversation let alone as stigmatized as it is. People still have a litany of ways to reconnect outside digital. It’s literally what people had to do before blocking was a thing.
This logic can be applied to using corporate devices… but i guess it is harder
There’s this streamer I sort of follow who did some reaction streams to proximitychat videos. If you don’t know, it’s basically this guy in VRchat who joins public lobbies and trolls the people in there - most of them crazily obsessed with the game and roleplay to the point of basically living in VR.
This guy will be in a public lobby for maybe hours, constantly trolling, and all they do is ask him to stop. Maybe they’ll threaten to remove him as a friend (which is such a common occurrence that it might almost seems like capital punishment to these terminally online dweebs), but they almost never kick or block him outright.
In the reaction streams the question is always, why not just kick and block the guy? Sure, don’t block everyone who makes an annoying remark outright, but as I said, this guy is in there for hours without seemingly any attempt to actually get him to stop. It seems that the easiest thing is to just talk a bit, find out he’s there in bad faith and then block him, but they never do.
What I’m getting at is, people should block more. Not that, again, you should block everyone who slightly annoys you or challenges your viewpoint, but as soon as you find out they are there in bad faith, just block and move on. I feel ancient for saying this but as they say: don’t feed the trolls.
Blocking is a VERY GOOD THING.
The internet is a cesspool. You need to curate it.
Only issue I take with this is that the last year has shown us the internet represents living people, even if we put them out of sight.
That said, I don’t exactly know how we “solve” that cesspool.
You don’t. It’s on other people to fix themselves.
Sadly, they think you’re a cesspool too for not agreeing with them. I’ve noticed my opinions have become super controversial now because I’m not a polarized person. And non-polarized viewpoints are EVIL to anyone who is an extremist, and all the extremists think they are moderates are the only ones who see ‘the truth’.
They never said otherwise. They’re just talking about a relatively recent cultural shift towards blocking people for no real reason
Trolls have no right to any of my time.
Someone disagreeing with you isn’t a troll.
They didn’t say it was.
I’ve blocked like 2 people total, it’s pretty clear when someone isn’t arguing in good faith.
Regardless, my point is the same. No one has a right to demand I read what they write.
Or when you know they have
racist, sexist, homophobic, or Naziconservative ideals and are either overt OR covert about it.
I see what you did there.
Blocked.
Personally, I block people who espouse things I believe are genuinely spiteful, hateful, or shitty. Generally, I use the block button to “curate” my experience with the intention that I can use Lemmy as brief escapism when I’m in the bathroom or on the train without having my mood affected by somebody posting something shitty.
I don’t block anyone for normal disagreements, because I’m a relatively normal adult and as such that sort of thing doesn’t bother me.
Why would you read someone you don’t want to? Why would you use a feature of the platform?
I’ve got better things to do than read a load of horseshit from bad-faith weirdos, so I block them. No point engaging with them and reading their opinions makes my day measurably worse.
People don’t like being forced to engage with belligerent reactionaries.
I’m 31 now but I’ve always been pretty quick with a block button, i don’t mind people disagreeing with me, but some people are just overly aggressive and I find life’s better to just not care about them and block.
I also block trolls because you know don’t feed the trolls.
I constantly block both users and communities on Lemmy. Mostly because they are spouting doomer nonsense, and I ain’t got no time for their bullshit.
There’s definitely an addicting trend to making people more scared than they should be. News falls to it, individuals seeking attention fall to it too.
Quake is better anyway.
For me personally, I just don’t feel like dealing with yet another source of garbage that I don’t want to read.
In happier times, I felt a different way about blocking. Nowadays, the fucking potus forces the country to match some phony fucking Fox News image, and I don’t really care about reading some dumb assholes dumb rant anymore. Not blocking people and “dialog” and “debate bro” shit isn’t fixing this crap anyway, so I’m going to go ahead and make my own life contain a little less hassle.
That’s also why I’m only really here and on mastodon. I know they’re basically left wing safe spaces. I frankly don’t give a fuck.
Life is too short to deal with weirdos treating lemmy as their blog. Some are overzealous but you have to curate your own space on federated platforms
I love that term curate. I find it funny that people don’t like blocking but are fine with subscribing. Subscribing and only looking at subscribing is akin to blocking everything else. Blocking and perusing all means you will come across new communities you don’t want to block.
Agree with this. I don’t shout my opinion and then block, but I definitely block a lot of users who just have really intense views they want to share, and communities I have no interest in, and over the last couple years my curated space is a reasonable mix of memes, news, and not to extreme of views, and it’s nice.
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I use it to curate my lemmy experiance. 99% of the users/communities I block aren’t for anything personal, they’re just clogging up my ALL feed with things I dont care about (for example, sports ball or foreign language comms).
SPORTS BALL!!!
next you’ll tell me you don’t like incredibly low effort political memes reposted from (social media site you specifically joined lemmy to avoid), smh
Why are you subscribed to them? No need to block just curate.
I subscribe to ones I’m interested in. But sometimes I browse all to stumble across new interesting communities. I block the ones I see repeatedly and aren’t interested in. I block mass posters, I block bots, I block tankies, I block mods/admins of larger communities. It just makes my all browsing time more efficient.
What’s the purpose of blocking mods/admins of larger communities?
I just noticed a pattern of personality types that I didn’t mesh well with. So it’s best I don’t see their opinions, nor give them mine.
Like blocking all hexbear users. I’m sure I’m probably missing something worthwhile here and there, but overall my life is better without it.
they’re just clogging up my ALL feed with things I dont care about
They aren’t subscribed to them.
Yes, I am curious why anyone would want to look at ALL. Easier to just curate what you want and be done with it. Works better for Lemmy too since there is no algo.
How would you discover new communities when only browsing your feed? And there is plenty of topics I’m not interested enough in to subscribe to but I might still want to see when a popular post there blows up.
I find it much easier to browser ALL and just block the communities I’m definitely not interested in.
How will you see anything interesting that “blows up” if you are blocking it?
In any case: Lemmy is not reddit. So a lot of the subs I belong to would never show up in ALL. There is no algorithm to show me things based on my tastes or comments.
Discovery is up to you.
When I joined, I browsed communities, searched for topics I was interested in and once in a while revisit the list. I am truly using it like a forum aggregator. Links to other things and subs I am interested in often show up in the comments and that is the best discovery tool out side of browsing.
By the way, switching to scaled helps pull in more of your subscriptions to the top even when they are smaller communities.
How will you see anything interesting that “blows up” if you are blocking it?
I’m not blocking them. I’m only blocking communities I’m definitely not interested in, for example AI art or video games I don’t play.
So a lot of the subs I belong to would never show up in all.
I’m often browsing ALL ordered by “new” or “new comments” so with proper timing even the smallest communities will show up there. I’ve discovered plenty small ones like that.
New Comments does seem like a good way. Just wanted to say thanks for the conversation, obviously no right or wrong way, just what ever works for each of us. It’s nice to have a civil conversation.
