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 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.
Because if you block someone who is annoying you, you won’t get annoyed by them anymore. It’s pretty great.
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.
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
Blocking is tempting when someone actively ignores arguments but keeps coming back with the same thing over and over, or can’t avoid ad hominem attacks.
That said, my block list is empty, but I have tagged people so I know if I’m running into them again.
It’s been common advice for a while now to block people you are about to tantrum at. I do like that it’s finally catching on.
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.
Honestly, turning inwardly to my family has been great. Especially given the political climate and my general disappointment. Finding “your people” is quite pleasant. Tribalism is sort of ingrained into us at a primate level, I suppose.
Still, I guess I try to strike a balance when all possible because I know the traps of building one’s own silo and the consequences that can have.
Im not advocating for you to turn away anyone that disagrees with you, just those that are annoying about it.
As I get older I value my time more and more, every second spent reading or talking to some asshole online is a second I’ll never get back.
Bots, trolls, egomanics, thin skinneds.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Not everyone is seeking truth.
That’s the problem
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.
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.
I think it’s more of a space curation thing. As a tumblr user mentioned, “I pressed a button to get rid of an annoying guy and I would do it again”.
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.
Like another commenter said, polarization and cemented, frequently extreme, views. You’re not going to change their mind on anything, but they’re constantly trying to change your mind on everything. I consider them shills and hit that block button.
I also block people who are here “on a mission” for whatever cause. Social media has enough activists, and even if I agree with them, I’m still thinking “will you shut up, man?”.
I also block people who intentionally take others out of context as an excuse to attack them or inject drama into every interaction. There’s plenty of that to go around, and thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the number of blocks I can issue.
Basically, I’m not here for drama or activism or circle-jerking any political cause or to suffer immature edgelords. I just wanna talk about cool stuff with rational people. Blocking helps separate the wheat from the chaff in that regard. Anyone who has a pattern of making this place unenjoyable gets blocked
Because people online are jerks
Follow-up to this question after seeing many responses (and thank you): What is your default mode for self-doubt when engaging in discussions?
That is, no matter how confident you may be in something, do you maintain an open door, or are your beliefs you block over completely set in stone?
For me, little terrifies me more than becoming the thing I hate; to be clouded by my own cognitive bias; to inadvertently throw myself into an echo-chamber of self-validation. As such I try my best to always maintain at least the slightest bit of doubt in even my strongest beliefs, and to that end to at least let dialogue challenging that come through.
For me, it depends on the context, and how the person responded to the comment.
If the reply had little to no contribution to my comment, that’s whatever I can ignore and move on, but if the reply is a clear “I’m trying to siderail this/ignoring what was actually said” or “I’m attacking you directly instead of the topic at hand” then I’m pretty firm in blocking. I don’t block for disagreement period, it’s when it moves into the unproductive field that I start to ignore or I block.
First, I rarely am fully self-confident about factual matters. I’ve been around the block a few times but I can’t possibly have experienced everything from every perspective or maybe there’s an unspoken assumption that another person has that differs from mine. I see that in a lot of code discussions. You have to do this or that is always bad, but they just work in a different industry and what has been true every single time for them has never been true for me.
Second, I never block anyone just because they disagree. I block them because they are being an asshole about it or maybe because I’m emotionally compromised and need to prevent myself from engaging with them. On Bluesky I’ve created a timeout block list I throw people in when it’s me and not them, and I clear it out every so often.
Anyway, sometimes it’s just not fruitful or pleasant to talk with some people even if they are good people. I wish Lemmy had something I could use as a timeout like named block lists or block reasons. I don’t know who is a spammer, who is an asshole, or who was just on the other side of an issue or post I needed some distance from.
I’ve blocked a couple of people who just wanted to harp on one thing ask day every day and even though I agreed with them or at least didn’t hate them I needed to block them for my blood pressure. I’m not letting any of you fuckers give me a heart attack in the name of civil discourse.
But also, it is doing everyone a favor. I am an AI enthusiast / realist, which means a lot of people who just hate everything AI probably have me blocked. And that’s a good thing for us because we aren’t constantly bickering about it, but also good for the community because no one really likes to watch people constantly argue, no matter how considerately.
Very well said, and I think that’s a reasonable take. A balance between protecting yourself but also not necessarily promoting a self-validating echo-chamber. Temporary blocks are genius.
It’s funny you mention the AI thing. I’m no pro or anything but I am a software engineer and was recently blocked by someone for just noting that AI has its uses in the fight against extremist hate and online discourse and that we shouldn’t necessarily limit our tool box in the fight against fascism — especially when it’s being used against us. That’s actually what spurred my thinking about these knee-jerk blocks.
