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On Blocking People on the Internet
5 years ago
General
-- DEVIANTART -- WEASYL -- SOFURRY -- TWITTER -- BLUESKY --So I was actually browsing via serach on FA when I tried to fave a piece posted by a user from the artist I was using the search for to find that said user had me blocked and I was unable to actually favorite the piece of art. This kind of surprised me because I have had no direct contact with said person and to my knowledge haven't even been in the same internet space as them in group channels/servers on places like Discord.
I am sure a lot of this has to do with the somewhat recent events involving the protesting going on, which is fine, we might have differences of opinions, but I had found that most of what my stance was on the matter was being misconstrued into a straw man argument by having some preconceived concept of what my actual stance on it was. If you saw my previous journals, you know where I sit, and if you have talked to me personally, you will understand that my view on the matter is far more nuanced than what some people were trying to make the issue, so I am not going to go any farther than that.
As most of you know, or maybe do not know, I tend to enjoy conversation and discussion on complex topics that have no singular right answer, but have a lot of really bad answers to how to handle them. I also try very hard not to block people on any platform regardless of what our disagreements may be. I don't hold any ill will towards people for a long enough period of time for it to matter, because we are only human after all, and to paraphrase the words of Carl Sagan "It is our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another."
I honestly wish more people would live by the words from his Pale Blue Dot reflection/speech. It really speaks to how we live in an age of some imagine self importance and that we define ourselves by what and who we surround ourselves with creating this illusion that we should just tune people out simply because we don't agree with what they are saying, or what we imagine them to be saying. It is so easy for someone to misread on the internet that it really underscores our need to take things at face value and not read between the lines, and that maybe instead of just outright blocking someone, maybe challenge them or get to know what their positions actually are and where they actually stand on various topics.
Understanding and Compassion is the first steps to recognizing how important it is to stop and listen to other people. I tend to be more Buddhist in my dealings with people, finding that the philosophy there shows us just how much we can learn from one another even in our differing opinions and biases.
And in doing so, I have made a promise, to myself, that I will always give someone a fair chance, that I will always try to take what they say at face value, that I will do everything I can to be a better person, and I wish more people would consider this, because I think this is what would make the internet less of place of drawing lines in the sand and place where people can build things together.
I am sure a lot of this has to do with the somewhat recent events involving the protesting going on, which is fine, we might have differences of opinions, but I had found that most of what my stance was on the matter was being misconstrued into a straw man argument by having some preconceived concept of what my actual stance on it was. If you saw my previous journals, you know where I sit, and if you have talked to me personally, you will understand that my view on the matter is far more nuanced than what some people were trying to make the issue, so I am not going to go any farther than that.
As most of you know, or maybe do not know, I tend to enjoy conversation and discussion on complex topics that have no singular right answer, but have a lot of really bad answers to how to handle them. I also try very hard not to block people on any platform regardless of what our disagreements may be. I don't hold any ill will towards people for a long enough period of time for it to matter, because we are only human after all, and to paraphrase the words of Carl Sagan "It is our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another."
I honestly wish more people would live by the words from his Pale Blue Dot reflection/speech. It really speaks to how we live in an age of some imagine self importance and that we define ourselves by what and who we surround ourselves with creating this illusion that we should just tune people out simply because we don't agree with what they are saying, or what we imagine them to be saying. It is so easy for someone to misread on the internet that it really underscores our need to take things at face value and not read between the lines, and that maybe instead of just outright blocking someone, maybe challenge them or get to know what their positions actually are and where they actually stand on various topics.
Understanding and Compassion is the first steps to recognizing how important it is to stop and listen to other people. I tend to be more Buddhist in my dealings with people, finding that the philosophy there shows us just how much we can learn from one another even in our differing opinions and biases.
And in doing so, I have made a promise, to myself, that I will always give someone a fair chance, that I will always try to take what they say at face value, that I will do everything I can to be a better person, and I wish more people would consider this, because I think this is what would make the internet less of place of drawing lines in the sand and place where people can build things together.
Being someone who believes in debate and dialectic; I've long maintained that blocking people simply for a difference of opinion is a fundamentally intellectually cowardly act, usually undertaken by people who can't argue their own point and instead just resort to the school-yard "everything proof sield".
Twitter though might be the worst example of this trend: recall reading a paper once about how Twitter wasn't so much a "community" anymore so much as a series of isolated bubbles in which people tell one another how right they are, and occasionally go to the edge of their bubble to either sling poo at another bubble, or bring some back and shout "look at how horrible everyone else is!"... In short: the reason I call Twitter, and social media generally "where human communication goes to die."
And I find it less of a cowardly thing and more just that they don't want to listen to opposing views and live in their echo chamber.
I have described Twitter as high school on steroids to some of my friends.
I myself identify as center aligned, because thats where the smart people hang out, too much left or right and you become an idiot. Too left and you're all about fake equality and censorship, too right and you're racist and sexist. Funny how that works. Each side blaming the other for things. Can't blame us centralists for anything. But yep, leftwing stuff is popular right now because we got a moron in office and everyone thinks that the only way to counterbalance his stupidity is to become extreme left. Censor the internet, block all evil people who dare to disagree with you about anything, yada yada yada.
The blocking situation became worse ever since the social justice revolution began. It really sucks.
On social media true arguments and good debate die and get buried under hate and vitriol disguised as trying to help and promote inclusion. Gaming the system to argue who is the greater victim thus their voice matters that much more, the great oppression Olympics. Nuance is another word to be avoided there as that might make people have to think about the ideas they are presented rather than becoming sheep and fallowing where their shepherd leads. Critical thinking and evidence is not to be used, as it is hateful and may turn people away.
I suspect in part that people who I've pissed off have been spreading bullshit rumors about me. Like one guy who told me that all third world countries should die, I told him he's a moron, he decided to go around making up lies about me on twitter claiming things about me and 9/11. I got blocked by a lot of people that day, proving that these people are absolute morons.
Unfortunately whilst the internet is perhaps the single best medium for allowing people to come to the discussion table, it is also one of the most potentially toxic when opinions you don't like are only a click away from erasure. I think that this is far too easy, especially in places like twitter where blockchains and such allow people to essentially surrender their critical faculties to a third party. Worse still with how seethingly hostile people of certain ideological bends are to to even mild criticism, if they merely stop at blocking you then you might well have gotten off lightly.
No matter how much some complain otherwise, words are harmless. Especially on the internet. The block button gets too often treated like an easy 'I win' switch for enforcing ideological hegemony without the need to actually engage opposing ideas and discuss their merits or the lack thereof.
Well, it used to be that you only knew people IRL so you were forced to confront them and deal with them, and come to understanding and work things out, and even if you didn't like each other, often times you still had to interact with each other.
Its just not productive, nobody learns anything or gains anything.
Plus it makes the inclusive tolerant speech tone-death, or look like an outright hypocritical lie.