I get it. There’s some real jerks around here. Whether they’re constantly argumentative, downright rude, always acting in bad faith, just plain trolls, overly opinionated on every subject, have the social skills of a Nausicaan, or whatever - the Fediverse is growing, and it’s bound to attract toxicity in one way or another.
This post is mostly a PSA for anyone who’s feeling like leaving because they’re tired of dealing with things like that. I’ve been there several times myself, I know exactly how you feel, and I’m tired of seeing good people harassed off the platform.
Just remember that blocking is a very powerful way to stay in control of your experience. Be it a set of users, me specifically, a list of keywords, a whole community, or an entire instance: if it’s causing you nothing but stress, hit that block button and see if that improves your experience here. Unlike the alien site, there is no limit to the number of entities you can block; you’re in control.
Another thing to keep in mind is different instances have different vibes, and the experience can totally differ depending on the instance’s moderation and federation policy.
In conclusion, your experience here can be what you make of it; don’t be afraid to just block the parts that stress you out. You’re not “creating an echo chamber” as everyone likes to say (often in bad faith) – you’re just taking care of yourself.
If you disagree with someone or someone tells you that you’re wrong you can just immediately block them with no effort.
People are so used to being able to instantly ignore anybody that they never develop the skills to deal with people disagreeing with them or having support an argument.
It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.
Yeah, adults should be able to tell the difference between someone disagreeing with them and someone being rude/trolling.
I don’t think I ever needed to block anyone, but I kinda stopped commenting as much nowadays cause I realized a lot of times people just don’t understand something and say things out of ignorance + pretentiousness, immediately attacking whoever correct what they’re saying. I don’t think there’s a way out of that in these kinds of open discussion threads, unfortunately, because it’s not exactly bad faith.
It’s not bad faith, it’s just a learned behavior that’s antisocial.
Outrageous comments are heavily rewarded in public social media where everyone is pseudo-anonymous. At the same time, almost nobody wants to be the person on the receiving end of outrageous takes.
We’re rewarding the wrong behaviours.