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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
People don’t like being forced to engage with belligerent reactionaries.
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.
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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 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 ;)
Good answer, thank you!
You’d be surprised though. These are the times I miss direct messages here. One of your estimates about me is wrong (factually, sadly) and the other is debatable, we might be close in age.
I just took another route. I am still in the process of what more and what less to do, while having discovered I am likely an Autist, setting hard limits at some places.
Ans yes, while there is much hate (currently seeming concentrated in the USA) people that open up often also have a lot of reason. Not defending anyones action here though.
You’d be surprised though. These are the times I miss direct messages here. One of your estimates about me is wrong (factually, sadly) and the other is debatable, we might be close in age.
Sorry to hear that (not referring to your age ;)
If you ever want to MP me the simplest way would be to check the blog (in my profile), on its contact page you will find an email
I just took another route. I am still in the process of what more and what less to do, while having discovered I am likely an Autist, setting hard limits at some places.
Limits are essentials. No matter how arbitrary they can be.
Ans yes, while there is much hate (currently seeming concentrated in the USA) people that open up often also have a lot of reason.
No doubt about that but spreading even more hate or anger is very unlikely to work as a remedy. It’s difficult, there is no escaping that alas.
There’s a verbal reference to your blog, but not the link. Or I’m stupid 😁
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 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.
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.
People are trying to ‘win the argument’ for personal satisfaction. They’re not trying to self-correct or seek the truth.
I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade
I’m the opposite; I have hundreds of people blocked, mostly because they are bores.
Another aspect of this that I’ve found is that engaging in benevolent smalltalk with someone here on Lemmy somehow sometimes results in them treating it as an argument.
No, I will not concede to whatever point you’re trying to make; I was making conversation, you were trying to win an argument. I don’t care if you’re convinced your particular approach to a particular problem is better than mine.
And if they then don’t realize that I’m not interested in engaging, and keep the “debate me bro” attitude, they usually end up on my blocklist, or at the very least they end up with a red tag behind their name.
No, u’r wrong 😜
Your mom likes me anyway
She told me likes me more
That’s what she said!
Reddit made that change where if you blocked someone they couldn’t reply to you in a thread.
That was quickly weaponized so that you could ‘win’ an argument. Someone could write something and your reply would not appear, so it looked like you realized you were wrong.
Only way around this is editing your previous comment, though I’ve been told that can sometimes lead to a ban? Never happened to me though.
What really annoys me about that is that it prevents you from replying to anyone ELSE who replies to you in that thread, which is completely absurd.
for some reason ‘editing’ comments is considered horrible and awful.
i never understood that myself.
I don’t know about this “winning” theory.
Generally, people feel like they’ve won when they get the last word in. If you block someone, you don’t see their replies and assuming they do reply to your last comment, they would get the last word.
Personally, I block people when I realize there’s no point in continuing the conversation. I’m not trying to win an argument, I’m just over it and don’t want to interact with their toxicity.
If you block someone, you don’t see their replies
On both Reddit and Lemmy, blocking someone prevents them from replying. It prevents them from even seeing your final word*
* sort of. Depending on exactly where and how they look.
I don’t believe they are blocked from replying on Lemmy. That’s the opposite of what I’ve heard, but I haven’t really experimented.
I might be wrong, but I was under the assumption that Lemmy doesn’t stop them from replying. There was a recent conversation complaining because blocking people didn’t silence them.
If you want to test it, feel free to reply and block me, I’ll see if I can keep the conversation going. Unblock later tonight to see if it worked.
I guess Reddit does it that way, but I try not to think about that place anymore.
My experience is that on Reddit it replaces the comment with
[], similar to[]when a mod removes it, or[]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
I’ve blocked a lot too. Mostly people who have closed minds and aren’t listening just waiting for their turn to reply. I don’t have patience for that shit anymore, find someone else. *Block
People are trying to ‘win the argument’ for personal satisfaction. They’re not trying to self-correct or seek the truth.
How do we promote more people to cooperate instead of compete in the mutual pursuit of truth while maintaining humility and introspection that their own views could be incorrect?
Different format of discussion.
Social media: people trying to win binary points 👍👎
Wikipedia, scientific discussion, or a deliberative assembly: slow process towards writing a statement of a position, with lots of study along the way
There’s such a massive disconnect there, though, isn’t there? I agree the slow deliberative process is key; but there is clearly a missing piece of the puzzle to bridge that gap between experts and laypeople that unfilled leads to well… All this.
Not everyone is seeking truth.
That’s the problem
