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 never block anyone but I do get blocked a lot by both hardcore right wingers and hardcore left wingers. I’ve also gotten blocked by scammers by being such an incredible pain in the ass.
It’s baffling how quick people are to do it. A while ago, I sold an old electronic thing on Marketplace to someone. A day later, they sent me an angry message saying that it didn’t work and how I scammed them, then proceeded to block me. I would’ve liked the opportunity to troubleshoot with them or even refund the item if it turned out to actually be broken, but… blocking me precludes all that. What exactly did they hope to achieve?
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.
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).
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’ve been online since BBS days. Never blocked anyone. Never could understand why people do that. Just ignore them, whatever.
So many people, later on down the road have something to say worthwhile that I wouldn’t have known if I just blocked them. Gotta give some leeway on the internet, no one really knows tone or intent most of the time.
Yeah I have a similar mindset. I honestly have a lot of people tagged on here from some pretty rough debates at times. But weeks, months, years later I still up vote some of their stuff.
I dunno I haven’t blocked anyone and I don’t know if anyone has blocked me.
Yeah how do you even know when someone has blocked you?
If you want, I’ll block you so you can feel included.
Counterpoint- why hasn’t blocking been more common?
I’m a millennial, so I’ve basically grown up with the internet. Blocking has been a feature on basically any website, app, etc. that lets you interact with other people for as long as I can remember.
And I’ve never been afraid to use it. I’ve blocked probably hundreds of people across countless platforms over the last 2 decades or so, and I think my Internet experience has been better for it.
When I was in school, and I assume still to this day, one of the big things that always seemed to have people’s feathers ruffled was “cyberbullying” and other sorts of online harassment.
Now I’ll admit, somehow I ended up a reasonably well-liked, maybe even popular dude, (no idea how my weird, antisocial, probably-autistic ass pulled that off) so I was never really the target of it myself.
But it always baffled me how people let it be a thing. A whole lot of those problems always seemed like they could have been solved by just hitting the block button.
Not all of them of course, but a lot of them. Blocking someone of course doesn’t stop them from talking about you to someone else, but at that point a lot of it can just be out of sight and out of mind.
Back when I still had a Facebook, I had probably half of my town blocked because they were always posting dumb shit in the local groups. I had a bunch of businesses blocked because they spammed advertisements everywhere. I had actual friends who I hung out with IRL blocked or at least unfollowed because they flooded my feed with shitposts. Half of my family was blocked because I just didn’t want to deal with them on social media. I preemptively blocked people I work with or otherwise knew casually because they don’t need to see what I’m doing online.
I have never blocked any one on the internet. And I probably have been in online conversations for longer than you have been alive.
I find it so strange that people do that. We learned in the 80’s that people are probably liars and there are trolls. So just ignore them.
Turns out a lot of people may have something that gets you annoyed while at the same time have something worthwhile to say about a different topic.
And how are we ever going to learn from each other if we just block each other all the time?
I blocked pretty freely on Twitter till I left the site around when I got the Bluesky invite. I still block freely on there, but not Reddit or Lemmy. I didn’t on Reddit cause there was a cap on how many accounts you can have blocked and Lemmy doesn’t handle blocks in a way I like so I just don’t bother. I like being able to curate my experience and the experience others that interact with me have. I got no energy for shit stains so blocking is easier than constantly knowing they exist.
last I checked I had over 220 users blocked. now it’s probably 250.
I block people who are willfully ignorant or trolls.
I think the only thing that has really changed is that way more people just talk about who and what they block instead of just blocking and moving on.
I value my time, patience and sanity. There had been too many instances where I’ve poured way too much investment into things or people that just were not worth a single minute. The moment I feel someone gives me a snarky remark, wants to be a prick, wants to gaslight and whatever petty and bitter levels of engagement they want to bother me with. Fuck them, they’ll be blocked.
It does not make you weak or petty, that’s just them making up bullshit to excuse themselves when they knowingly were the problem.
Now in some cases it can be a little stupid to block people, like knowing you’re the one starting shit or deciding to get into debates you aren’t fitted to handle. Why would you do that to yourself? If you can’t handle it, don’t do anything. Lesson learned.
Damn if there was a function in real life where I can block someone and their existence disappears where other people can see them and I can’t? Fuck, dude, sign me up.
I use user notes for this - notes like “argues in bad faith,” “is knowledgeable about x,” etc. Then if I feel talking to someone is a waste, I still get their input if I want it but know whether or not to engage.
Because if you block someone who is annoying you, you won’t get annoyed by them anymore. It’s pretty great.
If someone isn’t convinced by a reasonable explanation, they aren’t worth engaging with.
You find this out pretty quick when trying to interact in good faith on the internet.
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
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.
I block the moment I realize someone is a troll, or worse. No exception.
Like already mentioned, life is way too short to waste one more second of it with those people desire to be as harmful as they can be or with their constant need for attention and validation.
Edit: typos
Sometimes things are not as they seem due to language barriers or different people from neurotypicals.
Otherwise there’s also a lot of shit going around, so it’s understandable.
Sometimes things are not as they seem due to language barriers or different people from neurotypicals.
Completely agree (even more so, not being a native English speaker myself). If there was any doubt, ‘the moment I realize’ doesn’t mean I instantly block anyone not agreeing with me or publishing something I would consider rude, or useless. Only that, the moment I made up my mind on who the person is, there is no hesitation.
Yes, I noticed that important part. Hence the likelyhood is high but still with a margin of error and not to anybodys fault.
I’ve also had situations where I gave second chances and was stumped, just confirming my prior judgement.
I’m not fully sure what I am trying to add but maybe just being human really is a dilemma and surprisingly hard.
I’m not fully sure what I am trying to add but maybe just being human really is a dilemma and surprisingly hard.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say and I agree. And, yes, it can be hard.
But I’m also probably much older than you (and, hopefully for you, in a much poorer health than you are) and I know my time is limited. Literally, I should have died years ago, it just happened I did not die and have since done my best to preserve what remained of my health. And that includes being fine with making decisions that are helping me waste as little of my time as possible.
A bit like with all the books I will not read, or the movies I will not watch, or the places I will never go (realizing the climatic nightmare we were heading into, some 25 years or so ago, my spouse and I decided to stop traveling by plane and to do our best to reduce our energy consumption and the amount of waste we generate by changing our way of life). So, obviously, we’re missing out on a lot of stuff and nice places. But that’s OK. It’s a choice we made. It also helps focus a lot more on other great things we may not have even considered back then.
As far as potential ‘trolls’ are concerned, it’s a choice I made based on the time I think I have left and the amount of which I’m ok to spend dealing online with ‘maybe’ this or that perfect stranger that have not made the best first (or second) impression is worth indeed one more chance, and me spending a little more of my time listening to them. Frankly, its seldom worth it. Too much hatred (of this or that other person and/or group) and too much anger and desire to manipulate an audience, poorly disguised as ‘reasoning’, ‘facts’ or mere ‘information sharing’. I’d rather read a good book, listen to great music, or even better: spend that time with my spouse ;)
