I get it. There's some real jerks around here. Whether they're constantly argumentative, downright rude, always acting in bad faith, just plain trolls, overly opinionated on every subject, have the social skills of a Nausicaan, or whatever - the Fediverse is growing, and it's bound to attract toxicity in one way or another.

This post is mostly a PSA for anyone who's feeling like leaving because they're tired of dealing with things like that. I've been there several times myself, I know exactly how you feel, and I'm tired of seeing good people harassed off the platform.

Just remember that blocking is a very powerful way to stay in control of your experience. Be it a set of users, me specifically, a list of keywords, a whole community, or an entire instance: if it's causing you nothing but stress, hit that block button and see if that improves your experience here. Unlike the alien site, there is no limit to the number of entities you can block; you're in control.

Another thing to keep in mind is different instances have different vibes, and the experience can totally differ depending on the instance's moderation and federation policy.

In conclusion, your experience here can be what you make of it; don't be afraid to just block the parts that stress you out. You're not "creating an echo chamber" as everyone likes to say (often in bad faith) -- you're just taking care of yourself.

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[–] TON618@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You've been here for year and blocked 264 people, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but ever consider the problem is not the people you block? I think i've legitimately blocked maybe 20 people in my whole entire online life (I'm almost 40), most of it spent on platforms like Reddit.

But then I have a high aversion for echo chambers and only block obvious trolls, mostly to keep them from blowing up my notifications. I feel it's much better to just not give random strangers on the internet the power to actually affect your mood.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I have a high aversion to echo chambers because I too am a human same as everyone and find people just agreeing with me grossly unstimulating and seek out takes opposite to mine to understand them, deconstruct them and apply them to my own views either to refine/change them with a newly gained perspective or to argue against the opposing view.

I blocked all of those people because they are just unsalvageable people in my view. I was discussing the finer points of relative drug danger with some guy in a thread, talking about hypothetical lethal dosages for ht-2a classical psychedelics, and the guy was bringing up "Woodstock" and "brown acid" and how he "heard of a guy" etc etc.

There's no point discussing anything ever with a person like that, it's clear that we think along such different lines the differences are irreconcilable, like trying to convince someone not to be a bigot or disprove someone's belief in religion/conspiracy with evidence and reason, when they just believe in that stuff, they don't think about it and weren't reasoned into it.

[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 3 points 4 days ago

Blocking them actually is removing their ability to affect your mood 😌