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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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.
Seriously changed my experience for the better when i changed my mindset in line with this. I don’t block many people, but just knowing that i can makes my experience here so much more pleasant.
I don’t have to read or deal with people’s bs if I don’t want to. This is just for fun, it’s not real life.
the edit feature with piefed is just great to. Makes it easier. Ill just put a little note here and if I think about blocking in the future I will take it into account. similarly someone says something off base and I have some good notes. maybe they had a bad day.
How does this edit feature work? What does it do?
just lets you add a note. you can see it when you look at the user under the dropdown options.
Nice! I guess Blorp doesn’t have it yet.
yeah you know I think pefed social tends to get things first. we have had if for awhile though.
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Blocking is a VERY GOOD THING.
The internet is a cesspool. You need to curate it.
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
I think there’s far fewer genuine trolls than people claim. Someone being an asshole because they had a bad day? Not a troll. Someone deliberately pretending to be something they’re not in order to rile up people for fun? Troll.
Most of the time, you’re blocking your brethren on their worst days. Which is your right, but don’t pretend that just cuz your brother is warty that they’re a troll.
One thing I’d like to see, which IRC already has, is ban durations. Because you’re right, somebody’s bad behavior might warrant me wanting to not see them in my feed, but that’s not always going to warrant a lifetime band, sometimes a day or a week or a month would be enough.
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.
I’m getting older and more tired. I don’t have the energy to deal with what is a high chance of intentional trolling, misinformation, or smearing. People intentionally twisting my words to be politically opposite of what I said has been on the rise over the last year or two, and I simply dint want to interact with people who are malicious or blindly support what someone says without actually reading the context.
The real world is already shit. I don’t need to interact with these people online too.
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.
I used to agree with you. Ever since I started just blocking anyone that was being annoying my experience on the web has been great.
If you are talking about banning people in debate, Then you are not being fair. Any criticism can cause annoyance to some people, even if criticism have pleasant wording
I never said anything about a debate
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.
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.
People don’t like being forced to engage with belligerent reactionaries.
Yeah, you are missing context. I can tell right away when someone is arguing from bad faith or spewing propaganda. I don’t report, I just block.
You don’t want to get blocked, I get it. You think it is some failing in people but it is just you who is failing to understand other people’s decisions.
You are thinking about this from your very naive point of view. You are being very disingenuous painting everyone who blocks as someone who is not interested in conversation especially with people who don’t agree with them.
While I am sure this happens there is another side to this which is just people blocking obvious trolls for their mental health. I am never going to convince an incel to stop hating women. There is no point in talking to them.
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.
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.
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.
Funny you posted this right before I made my post. If the way you behaved in the thread is how you behave elsewhere, you absolutely deserve getting blocked.
this right before
hahahahah what? This was made 10-month-ago, and I never blocked anyone. Maybe stop parroting right-wing misinformation, and you won’t be so upset when called out.
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.
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.
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.
Pretty sure it doesn’t do that on lemmy. I definitely have comments with blocked responses (they show up a specific way in Jerboa) from people I blocked ages ago. If I open the thread in a browser where I’m not signed in I can see their response clearly.
So they can still see and reply to my comments, I just don’t have to see more than an error message that the comment couldn’t be loaded on my end.
