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.
My experience is that on Reddit it replaces the comment with
[unavailable], similar to[removed]when a mod removes it, or[deleted]when they delete it themselves.And that on Lemmy, it depends on client. On lemmy-ui (the default web client), it sometimes shows up as that “1 more reply” option, but when you click it, it never loads in. On Jerboa, it says something along the lines of “unable to retrieve this comment”.
Both of those are what happens when you come across a comment from a person who blocked you in the wild. It may or may not be different when it’s in your inbox.
I’ve been blocked by at least one person on Lemmy, for reasons that I honestly have no idea, and have come across this in the wild a couple of times, including opening something I originally found on my computer in Jerboa to double-check, as well as opening up incognito where I’m logged out and therefore not blocked.
Also replying to @MagicShel@lemmy.zip, @wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com