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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Im very pro block. I prefer that users can do stuff themselves over moderation honestly. I would like blocking to be reciprical and I have to do a lot of it for communities because the language thing often either seems to not work or my suspicion is the person making the community did not set it. That being said I block few users but tons of communities. The fediverse is not really large enough to subscribe to some stuff and ignore the rest. I block anything I have no interest in or sometimes just because its to niche for me. Things like sports, memes, and communities about like one specific thing like a tv series or video game.
Social media split and modified people so much they’re often immediately feeling threatened and block that out, imo.
I’m quite happy to have had some discussions (!) on lemmy where I or the other person could explain the view or clear the (mis)understanding and both be wiser people afterwards.
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 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.
I use multiple devices to browse the web. Those user notes don’t carry over. So I just block people that argue in bad faith, those blocks do carry over, makes things easier for me to ignore, and prevents me from falling into the trap of debating those shitheads.
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 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.
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?
Sounds like they wanted to angrily vent, but not also take accountability for what may be their own mistake. People are extremely poor at confrontation, and so often resort to these cheapshot hit-and-run tactics. They MUST have the last word, so they get their little dig in, then block very quickly. I just roll my eyes.
Right, I get that people are not great at confrontation. It’s certainly not my strong suit, either. But apparently it’s too much to expect people to be reasonable adults.
they are a dumb person.
there was no goal. just emotional expression at likely was their own mistake/foolishness.
i’ve definitely have co workers who blow up at me, then realize their error and sheepishly pretend they never blew up at me rather than apologize.
If you’ve previously had the experience of reaching out to someone politely in good faith about a problem with your purchase, and they really were a scammer and responded “haha get fucked loser” and blocked you, that’s a mentally damaging interaction. You made yourself vulnerable and got taken advantage of. Not just once for buying from a scammer, but twice for then politely asking the scammer to help you! And that feels awful - as if the scammer “won”, and you are a sucker who didn’t even realise you’d been scammed.
That is why people are quick to go on the offensive when they suspect they’ve been wronged, because they’ve been hurt before and want to try and claw back some small measure of pride by saying effectively “Okay you scammed me, but I’m not so stupid I don’t see it, and I won’t make myself vulnerable to you.” - that’s what the message and block you received really means, if you unpack it.
I would be so much nicer if things weren’t this way, and we could assume the best in people. With honest sellers such as yourself, it would even lead to the problem getting fixed! But there are a lot of scammers out there, so I understand the psychological “why”, even if I don’t like it and try to never behave that way myself.
Yeah, it’s just unfortunate all around. I do feel a bit bad that there isn’t anything I could’ve done to fix things, but I wasn’t given the chance to anyway.
Most people have egg shell personalities and blocking is their defense mechanism.
Sometimes they even post it to re affirm themselves… It looks pathetic.
Blocking is useful in creating an echo chamber but I don’t think that’s the intent, just a “positive” outcome the again reaffirms the eggashell personality
It also bleeds over into real life too. It’s a habit people develop… just shut out anything/anyone who says anything I don’t like or that causes me to have to think.
Views, positions have gotten more extreme and cemented at that. Probably due to algorithms of “traditional” social media, that focus on them to raise clicks. (This trend to extreme positions and freaking out on the slightest trigger is also noticeable in real life behaviour, imho.) I sometimes block folks because I know there will not be a frank exchange of views but pure hate, extremism.
Plus spammers.
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.
Really? The internet is living people? Because if you ask me it’s at least 60% bots.
And regardless, nobody’s entitled to my attention if I don’t want to give it to them. Block button.
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
I dunno I haven’t blocked anyone and I don’t know if anyone has blocked me.
If you want, I’ll block you so you can feel included.
Yeah how do you even know when someone has blocked you?
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.
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.
I think there is a difference between different people - and maybe it has changed generationally too. I can think of some obvious potential reasons though:
- the number of people who are being horrible is increasing. The increasing division in society is reflected online. That means people have more reason to block people.
- the proliferation of social media bubbles makes people less used to encountering opinions that differ significantly from their own.
I usually find myself blocked by people who just disagree with me. I (increasingly) rarely lose my rag online, but people find it annoying to have someone reply to them who disagrees on certain things and who doesn’t just shut up and go away quickly.
I have a pretty high tolerance for that kind of irritation but after a few dozen replies back and forth I’ll also use the block button. It’s less about not seeing their posts in the future, more as a way to force myself to disengage and get annoyed again.
I don’t tend to block unless there was clear malice or it is being done in bad faith. Prime examples of this would be accounts that when I look at their history is almost exclusively argumentative posts(this is generally prompted by another reason), people who do personal attacks instead of standard discussion, and people whom it’s clear that they aren’t trying to add to the conversation, and are trying to derail or push an agenda.
It depends what you’re on (social media) for.
If you’re there to get some positive social interaction and read some articles or funny pictures, it completely makes sense to block agitators or regular shitposters.
If you’re there to have political arguments and engage with rage bait then you leave everyone unblocked.
Its really not that complicated.
