Insomniathought: blocking people in social media can be a positive thing
Most social media sites have options for muting and blocking people. As we know, muting is one-way (they see me, I don't see them) and blocking is two-way (neither see each other).
Recently, while having too much caffeine in my system way too late, I had the thought that "blocking" is a far more negative term than what it should be. Sometimes it's done in spite, absolutely. You wanna slap somebody for being how they are.
But sometimes you just recognize that there's someone who you have nothing against, whom you might even like if you met them in real life, but in this context of limited human connect, you understand that the only possible communication between you and them would be toxic. That your opinions, your way of speaking, perhaps your whole existence offends them. Or vice versa.
So you protect them from yourself by blocking them, in lieu of a better word. I think there should be a better word but I haven't figured out what it should be yet. "Spare"?
(P.S. I think tildes should perhaps have such a functionality)
I'm of the opinion that you should mute and block people liberally. I have personally only found it to improve my experience on the internet. I suppose it depends what you are looking to do. I know that I won't be changing anyone's mind, so I have no interest in arguing with people on the internet. I don't know who they are, where they are or if they are a bot. Maybe in my 20s, but I have better things to do.
I love the ignore feature on Tildes and use it liberally. I find it helps reduce the likelihood that I'll end up scrolling Tildes for an extended period of time. I think this reduces the chances that I will end up interacting with someone on Tildes I would normally just have blocked.
That all said, I don't owe anyone on the internet my time and I have no problem blocking them for any reason.
To me blocking is a “last recourse” kind of thing. I don’t block people just because I disagree with them. Usually I’m pretty good at just ignoring and “scroll by”.
But as with every rule, there are exceptions.
There used to be this asswipe in a discord server that would defend Russia at every turn, and would always defend himself that “propaganda is heavily biased towards the west, I’m just here to give the counterbalance”.
A reasonable position at first glance - I am under no illusions that that one guy is 100% in the right and the other is 100% in the wrong - but there’s a fine line between trying to be neutral, and defending one side while pretending to be neutral; he was the latter.
One thing I never let him live down was how quick he was to dismiss the Bucha massacre. At first he was trying to say that it was fake news; then as reports started to make it clear that it was real, he was starting to say bullshit like the civilians were ordered by the troops to stay quiet and not call anyone but they were disobeying (like WTF!?); and then when it was crystal clear that the massacre did happen, he stayed quiet as a lamb.
Then whenever Russia struck residential buildings, hospitals, schools, etc, they were all “valid targets”, he said. That the ucranian military used them as HQs so they were fair game.
He also had this obsession with transgender people. Whenever the topic was about political correctness, he would link articles that said stupid shit that aren’t worth repeating. From what I remember, in these moments the discussion was never about transgender people, but he linked those articles anyway as some kinda of “gotcha” moments
Eventually I just couldn’t take it anymore and blocked the idiot. I would like to say that he was a troll, but he wasn’t. He was a known user in the server and was there with us since before the war started, he seemed like a pretty chill guy. But then it’s like something switched in his head and he became insufferable.
Anyway, I don’t think he made many friends. Eventually he quit the server by himself, and good riddance
Spare is awful, it's condescending.
It implies you're doing someone a favor whilst you're the one opting out.
I think a "let's agree to disagree" would be a way more fun mechanic, requiring both sides to agree to indefinitely mute each other. If all else fails, block them. :P
Those two conditions seem mutually exclusive to me.
I like your post and think you make a good point. Framing matters, and I have blocked people in the past bc I knew I wouldn’t be able to suffer through more of their
harebrainedtakes without making the world a worse place for both of us. This is, under entry, a Me problem, and blocking makes it easier for me to keep my Me problem to myself.That being said, I’m always on the fence about blocking. I do wonder if the ease of blocking has made us less able to deal with conflict (which is not abuse). Obviously blocking is good for safety and privacy reasons which i need not expound upon, but by being able to flick away any and every annoyance, do we become weaker, less resilient, more echo-chambered?