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>I won't fault someone for taking the quick route to defend their time and sanity. Nor would I. But there has to be a better solution than blocking, which is o

>I won't fault someone for taking the quick route to defend their time and sanity. Nor would I. But there has to be a better solution than blocking, which is ostracism. It concerns me how easily we ostracize, how it cheapens people. This is especially true for someone internet famous like Julia Evans - she has so many followers, what does it matter to her? But I guarantee it mattered to the ones she blocked. It probably really hurt them, even if they wouldn't admit it.

lapcat 3y ago
> This is especially true for someone internet famous like Julia Evans - she has so many followers, what does it matter to her? She's human, just like everyone else. It matters precisely because of "internet fame": you become an incessant target. Anonymous randos love to take down people who are more famous than them. From the article: "I realize this section makes me sound like a Perfectly Logical Person who does not get upset by negative public criticism, I promise this is not at all the case and I have 100000 feelings about everything that happens on the internet and get upset all the time." > But I guarantee it mattered to the ones she blocked. It probably really hurt them, even if they wouldn't admit it. I guarantee it doesn't. In my long experience of blocking people on social media, I can't recall the blocked person ever being sad or repentant. They're mostly self-righteous or vindictive.
- javajosh 3y ago
  >I can't recall the blocked person ever being sad or repentant. How would you know?
  - lapcat 3y ago
    There are ways of knowing. ;-) Technically, a block mostly just prevents an account from replying to you again — which is the primary goal when someone writes a nasty or annoying reply — but there are various ways of seeing another account's posts, such as private windows. And if it's not a mutual block, it may be even easier.
EatingWithForks 3y ago
Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who wish her harm or want to make her life worse by arguing in bad faith. No one is obligated to welcome people who treat them poorly. I don't care if someone is hurt by my blocking them if they shout slurs at me, for example, and I don't think I should be morally obligated to consider if someone had their feelings hurt by ostracized for shouting slurs at people.
- javajosh 3y ago
  >Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who wish her harm Indeed. I take issue though with assuming a person arguing that "grope" has meanings other than sexual assault wish her harm. That's a stretch, to say the least. It's certainly uncharitable and, in my view, chilling to open conversation. Moreover I think it weakens the idea of "wishing someone harm" by broadening it so widely that it becomes almost meaningless. There is a game I invented called "Take it Personal" in which one player says anodyne things to the other and the other player has to take it personally and get offended, or they lose the point. It's a terrible game that I don't recommend. It's a game that everyone on the internet seems to enjoy playing, and in fact take pride in playing it and assert that anyone not playing it is a bad person. Remarkable.
shadowgovt 3y ago
> But there has to be a better solution than blocking, which is ostracism Mastodon has a time-gated mute feature, which is quite useful. If someone is being annoying, but not so annoying that you want to squelch them indefinitely, you can just hit them with mute for awhile so they can cool off. ... but Julia is under no obligation to serve as teacher of online etiquette to folks who don't know when to self-squelch, so if she wants to grab the block button instead, she's plenty entitled to do so. Her feed her rules; if people want the privilege of getting her signal, they can behave themselves.
- javajosh 3y ago
  I guess I don't see the point in arguing that someone has the right to be offended. Of course they do. Everyone does. But is it a good thing? Isn't being offended a bad thing? Doesn't it feel bad to be offended, and doesn't it also feel bad to be the person giving offense? Doesn't it make sense to try as hard as possible to not get offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every benefit of the doubt, before being offended? The tacit assumption here is that being offended is a good thing. That its a point of pride. I disagree, very strongly. Offense weakens relationships, and dehumanizes the one giving offense. It's not the offense is always illegitimate, it's that it's a reaction of last resort, and encouraging others to take offense is bias in the wrong direction. We should encourage others (and ourselves) to take the least offense possible. That way when we do take offense it's quite meaningful.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    > Isn't being offended a bad thing? No. Offense is a (complex) emotional signal that you may not be able to ally with someone because their worldview differs from yours in a way that your goals are likely to come into conflict. It's no more bad to be offended than it's bad to be angry, or sad, or happy; it's an emotional signal, one that binds to a complex sociological model. > Doesn't it make sense to try as hard as possible to not get offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every benefit of the doubt, before being offended? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the degree of the offense, the likelihood of adjustment of either party into a configuration where the offense is mitigated (very low for random internet interactions), and (here's the key) the potential upside of further interaction with the other party. For an Internet rando commenting on the feed of someone they don't know, the possible upside to that someone is low. As much as we like to, each of us, think of ourselves as insightful luminaries and Renaissance men and women of the new era, spreading truth and novel insight and peering with the greatest minds of our generation on the egalitarian footing of social media... folks like Julia get to see dozens of folks parroting the same talking points as the ones she banned daily. If she's not planning to argue that point (and she has plenty of experience with the point to make that decision), it's fine to just toss a "The odds of any interaction we will have in the future producing value for either of us are near zero" ban on the account and go on with her day. Maybe some day she'll discover she banned someone who turns out to be fun to know in another social setting and she'll unban them. But the odds are near zero. > We should encourage others (and ourselves) to take the least offense possible. Why? What's the upside in a world of more than eight billion people in a context as casual as Mastodon posts? I present to you a counter-model: maybe people should learn to do a lot more reading and a lot less posting. "Reading the room" is a more complicated skill when the room is virtual and varies from feed to feed in something as diverse as Mastodon... But it never stopped being a useful skill.

lapcat 3y ago

> This is especially true for someone internet famous like Julia Evans - she has so many followers, what does it matter to her? She's human, just like everyone else. It matters precisely because of "internet fame": you become an incessant target. Anonymous randos love to take down people who are more famous than them. From the article: "I realize this section makes me sound like a Perfectly Logical Person who does not get upset by negative public criticism, I promise this is not at all the case and I have 100000 feelings about everything that happens on the internet and get upset all the time." > But I guarantee it mattered to the ones she blocked. It probably really hurt them, even if they wouldn't admit it. I guarantee it doesn't. In my long experience of blocking people on social media, I can't recall the blocked person ever being sad or repentant. They're mostly self-righteous or vindictive.

javajosh 3y ago
>I can't recall the blocked person ever being sad or repentant. How would you know?
- lapcat 3y ago
  There are ways of knowing. ;-) Technically, a block mostly just prevents an account from replying to you again — which is the primary goal when someone writes a nasty or annoying reply — but there are various ways of seeing another account's posts, such as private windows. And if it's not a mutual block, it may be even easier.

EatingWithForks 3y ago

Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who wish her harm or want to make her life worse by arguing in bad faith. No one is obligated to welcome people who treat them poorly. I don't care if someone is hurt by my blocking them if they shout slurs at me, for example, and I don't think I should be morally obligated to consider if someone had their feelings hurt by ostracized for shouting slurs at people.

javajosh 3y ago
>Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who wish her harm Indeed. I take issue though with assuming a person arguing that "grope" has meanings other than sexual assault wish her harm. That's a stretch, to say the least. It's certainly uncharitable and, in my view, chilling to open conversation. Moreover I think it weakens the idea of "wishing someone harm" by broadening it so widely that it becomes almost meaningless. There is a game I invented called "Take it Personal" in which one player says anodyne things to the other and the other player has to take it personally and get offended, or they lose the point. It's a terrible game that I don't recommend. It's a game that everyone on the internet seems to enjoy playing, and in fact take pride in playing it and assert that anyone not playing it is a bad person. Remarkable.

shadowgovt 3y ago

> But there has to be a better solution than blocking, which is ostracism Mastodon has a time-gated mute feature, which is quite useful. If someone is being annoying, but not so annoying that you want to squelch them indefinitely, you can just hit them with mute for awhile so they can cool off. ... but Julia is under no obligation to serve as teacher of online etiquette to folks who don't know when to self-squelch, so if she wants to grab the block button instead, she's plenty entitled to do so. Her feed her rules; if people want the privilege of getting her signal, they can behave themselves.

javajosh 3y ago
I guess I don't see the point in arguing that someone has the right to be offended. Of course they do. Everyone does. But is it a good thing? Isn't being offended a bad thing? Doesn't it feel bad to be offended, and doesn't it also feel bad to be the person giving offense? Doesn't it make sense to try as hard as possible to not get offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every benefit of the doubt, before being offended? The tacit assumption here is that being offended is a good thing. That its a point of pride. I disagree, very strongly. Offense weakens relationships, and dehumanizes the one giving offense. It's not the offense is always illegitimate, it's that it's a reaction of last resort, and encouraging others to take offense is bias in the wrong direction. We should encourage others (and ourselves) to take the least offense possible. That way when we do take offense it's quite meaningful.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > Isn't being offended a bad thing? No. Offense is a (complex) emotional signal that you may not be able to ally with someone because their worldview differs from yours in a way that your goals are likely to come into conflict. It's no more bad to be offended than it's bad to be angry, or sad, or happy; it's an emotional signal, one that binds to a complex sociological model. > Doesn't it make sense to try as hard as possible to not get offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every benefit of the doubt, before being offended? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the degree of the offense, the likelihood of adjustment of either party into a configuration where the offense is mitigated (very low for random internet interactions), and (here's the key) the potential upside of further interaction with the other party. For an Internet rando commenting on the feed of someone they don't know, the possible upside to that someone is low. As much as we like to, each of us, think of ourselves as insightful luminaries and Renaissance men and women of the new era, spreading truth and novel insight and peering with the greatest minds of our generation on the egalitarian footing of social media... folks like Julia get to see dozens of folks parroting the same talking points as the ones she banned daily. If she's not planning to argue that point (and she has plenty of experience with the point to make that decision), it's fine to just toss a "The odds of any interaction we will have in the future producing value for either of us are near zero" ban on the account and go on with her day. Maybe some day she'll discover she banned someone who turns out to be fun to know in another social setting and she'll unban them. But the odds are near zero. > We should encourage others (and ourselves) to take the least offense possible. Why? What's the upside in a world of more than eight billion people in a context as casual as Mastodon posts? I present to you a counter-model: maybe people should learn to do a lot more reading and a lot less posting. "Reading the room" is a more complicated skill when the room is virtual and varies from feed to feed in something as diverse as Mastodon... But it never stopped being a useful skill.