Topic: Getting blocked in the comments.

@-wc- thank you, my man! Sorry I took a little while to reply, I was catching up with what’s written in the thread, plus it’s getting a little late here in Kuwait. I’m glad the thread is unlocked so we can have this fun conversation
And about you being confrontational, I imagine this is hard to avoid if you’re a passionate speaker. Honestly, you don’t seem half bad. Any Jason Alexander fan can only be a decent fella!

@FishyS thank you for the kind words, friend. That is pleasant to hear.
Yea, I won’t lie the thought anxiously crossed my mind a few times 😅
though Spacd Channel 5 is a franchise that’s really close to my heart and the Project DIVA collab really made my day. XD

@Pastellioli
Yes, it’s not something you can do anything about. As someone who experienced that a few times on other online forums it can be a little disheartening. 😅

@Pastellioli Right. At least if I got into an argument then I would understand blocking me. But blocking a person for no reason or just because they have a different opinion is wrong which is why I believe that only staff should be able to block people, cause otherwise you get people abusing it. After all isn't that what a forum mod is for?

@-wc- There's been a few times where people have pointed out that I have done that. They will post So and So posted that already which I replied well if they didn't have me blocked I would have seen that lol.

As much as I dislike how this forum is moderated sometimes, and the block feature is certainly part of what I dislike, this is fundamentally a privately owned forum. They can moderate and manage it however they want to moderate it. If they feel that blocking is a useful feature? As much as I might fundamentally disagree it's still a privately run forum and they can manage it however they wish

Also, truth be told, there have certainly been online forums that have been moderated with the sort of Jefferson-esque free-market of ideas idealism I'm drawn to. And said experiments in idealism have, on more than one occasion, ended with people goose-stepping through conventions. Which isn't something I particularly want to see. So as a user I certainly appreciate forums not being managed in the hands-off way I would manage them. I know that, eventually, I would end up not wanting to use a forum managed in the way I would manage it

Especially for a forum that is, fundamentally, intended to be for the discussion of topics relating to what is essentially a toy company. A fairly litigious and conservative (in the traditional sense) toy company at that. A community that happens to attract people from all sorts of perspectives. And in the context of maintaining the value of this place as a place to discuss a toy company? I can understand why someone managing this forum would want to give users the tools to self moderate. Even if I personally believe this particular tool is counter-productive to that aim. There's an attempt there, and I can appreciate the attempt

edit: As a side note, the site formally known as Twitter is NOT the free market of ideas I was talking about. It wasn't far off and to some degree still isn't. But it's still moderated to some degree. All that changed with the change of ownership is the political leanings of its moderators. The moderators just.... now get offended by things other than the usual kinds of things you'd see moderated

Welp was clicking around and ended up in here but I guess I’ll throw my two cents in and leave. I am not trying to derail or start anything so this will be my only response. Again I am not trying to derail but these types of threads are often echo chambers so as a user that has been here for a decade and uses the ignore and block feature heavily I wanted to offer a different perspective. Take it as you will but I won’t respond to replies. This isn’t an intended attack on anyone.

I match energy. If someone comes at me rudely and unprovoked and refuses to disengage I will block and ignore. The poster of this thread is on my block list for that reason. People come here to have fun and most don’t want to be harassed. Some folks are naturally argumentative and aggressive and that’s their business but they shouldn’t be surprised if the people they antagonize don’t want to deal with them or have threads derailed because that person is trying to provoke further engagement (I’ve had both happen and it isn’t fun. There are certain threads I don’t even go into anymore because I had one user that I never spoke to but had on ignore because he is unhinged was following me around trying to provoke a response. I found out about it because the mods stepped in. I started using block after that. ). That’s stalker/bully behavior. And if I feel I am being harassed I don’t care two sheets if I hurt my attacker’s feelings by removing myself from their purview. After all, my only other option is to remove myself from the site entirely. Why should I leave or post less just because someone won’t leave me alone? My goal is protecting myself and to continue having fun on the site. And I get it, most people don’t think they are the problem so then they are upset afterwards. But my empathy is for myself and my safety first (people doxx and harass on the internet. I take no chances with that). Especially since I don’t go out of my way to hurt or provoke others.

So I feel personally the best option is to not start fights so I never (wait I take that back. Sometimes I will post a comment like “gamers are always angry about something” but usually on the latest “scandal” like review bombing. That is more a “I find this thing annoying” response rather than me targeting someone though. But other than that my intended tone is neutral or my own personal experience. ) post anything with the intention of antagonizing others. I post my thoughts (I usually don’t tag others unless I have a question or they tagged me first) and sometimes others take offense, but sometimes I get stuck dealing with someone that wants to start a fight. If I feel it is a misunderstanding or a rudely worded but honest attempt to just have a conversation I have a three strikes rule. Unless one comes out straight hostile I will clarify my initial comment and usually try to disengage (I tend to write Have a nice day) but I match the energy I am given. If the person wants to fight about it the after strike three I move on and block. Again some people are argumentative and to them that is a “conversation” the block feature saves time. I am fine with people disagreeing with me but the second someone is rude, attacking or hostile I am done. Some people feed off of negative engagement (some people even find conflict to be bonding behavior. That thought process horrifies me btw) they keep coming after you no matter how much you try to move on or even if you are tagging some else. I don’t feed that if I can. I am never bothered when blocked by others (frankly I usually don’t notice). Nothing wrong with walking away.

Also people edit posts to make themselves look good (I edit to fix typos and clarify, hence my text walls and if I make changes I post what I did). I have had folks hit and run and after I respond they literally alter their entire comment or delete it. One person even deleted their account and recreated it. Figured that out because I had blocked that person and later on could see their posts. That is DARVO behavior. Not dealing with that. So some see it as a middle finger or whatever but for me it is to escape unprovoked abuse and hostility. Think restraining order but digital. Full stop.

Edited for clarity.

@Ryu_Niiyama I’ve luckily not come across people like that and a majority of the users here in this thread are friendly, but I am sorry you’ve had to experience and deal with behavior like that…It’s crazy that someone deleted their account over a comment.

I also edit comments a lot, but I also only do it to fix grammatical errors, rewording some lengthy sentences, or to make walls of text easier to read, since I have a bad tendency to write long comments and explanations. Some have disagreed with a few unimportant opinions I have, but they do so in a respectful way, and if I respond to them with a rebuttal, I avoid coming off as rude and still respecting what they have to say.

For me, if someone has a different opinion on something, like say a situation or a video game, I don’t think that would warrant a block from me, since I’d hate making an echo chamber for myself, plus I like to see all perspectives on something and interacting with as many people as I can. Differing opinions don’t bother me, and it would also be nonsensical for me to block someone I never interacted with. However, if someone acts really rude or hostile or tries to antagonize another person for no real reason, then that is where I’d likely use the block feature, since that type of behavior can really suck the fun out of enjoyable sites like these.

That “hit and run” behavior thing you described with how some users acted towards you definitely seems to be from them wanting to have some sort of control that’ll give them a sense of correctness. I think that if they have an opinion that gets rebutted with a stronger or more heavily favored opinion, they feel embarrassed or don’t want to look bad, which I think could be a reason why they delete their comments or significantly edit them to be something else. I feel it could be from cognitive bias as well or wanting to make the other person look bad.

The use of reason and logic is sometimes confused with being rude and argumentative.

Someone with a rational point of view themselves will generally just respond.

It's typically those without a valid argument that will block, because there's nowhere else for them to go in the discussion.

There's a fair few people online and off that claim to be free speech absolutists until suddenly they're not.
They'll also fairly often lash out and then play the victim when logical questions about their emotive outburst come their way.

Have a good Sunday- to those that can and to those that cannot see this

Well. I got blocked and ignored by you-know-who. To be honest I did admittedly have it coming. I probably should’ve been more positive like “if you like it go ahead” or something along those lines.
I usually block people when they’re constantly negative because it gets a bit old.

Lol. As if blocking someone impacts their free speech...

man, I had a real negative exchange in the comments that has really gotten under my skin. I even apologized to try to smooth it over but I'm afraid I've been ignored already. worse, I kind of brought it on myself. I can't believe how negatively I ended up feeling, when I was just trying to kind of think out loud about a concept in gaming that interests me.

is any of this worth it? I sometimes wish this site had DMs so some of this stuff could be hashed out privately. 😔

@-wc-
Preach. Sometimes things pan out in a way you have no control over or worse, you’ve lost control over it long before you could even realize there was something you could’ve done. I’d say the only thing that “isn’t worth it” is fretting over it, sometimes that’s the way the cookie crumbles and there’s no use fretting over spelt juice. The DM function could be handy though.

Ultimately I don’t feel getting discouraged from voicing your feelings and thoughts is worth it. A lot of us like to think out loud and even prefer it when it sparks a nice, healthy discussion and potentially lead into long-term healthy interactions with your new mutuals, pals and friends.

@-wc- @Yousef- Unfortunately the staff here has said that DMs won't be a thing here as it would create to many problems.

I have realised that I have ignored someone by mistake, but not sure how to turn it off. I am pretty sure it is not a block though, as I have seen (while not logged in) that they have responded to me in comments. Whoops. Any one know how to turn if off?

Never mind. I found it.

Coming back to share some thoughts. Now that I think about the person who blocked me, I think the person’s reasoning for blocking me is justified. Even though we almost never had an interaction with each other or had any arguments that resulted in some bad blood with each other, I was scrolling the comments on an article logged out and the person said that he disliked M-rated games and inappropriate content, which was something I knew about already and is fine. However, the person delved in a bit more and said the reason was because he had seen violent media and video games that gave him traumatic experiences as a child. I tend to gush about a certain M-rated game on several forums (and wouldn’t shut up about it a few weeks ago on several N64-centric articles after the Direct) and I had my past three avatars set as the game’s main character (and will likely change my next one to the same character) which likely made him uncomfortable given the game is full of pretty graphic and nasty violence. I know the person is not able to see my posts in this forum or my comments since he blocked me (which will likely stay that way) but to him; I am very sorry for what you experienced and how you felt, and I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable in some way. I really hope I did not remind you of any trauma or give you some awful thoughts in your mind.

Sometimes I did get feelings like that when I accidentally stumbled across people in my family playing violent video games when I was smaller, and there are even some times in recent years where I got similar feelings like that. Although it never traumatized me, it always made me freaked out or made it hard to sleep since the images just stayed inside of my head for a good while. Despite present me being able to handle almost all types of gore and violence in media and games I play or watch, I do get slight chills and sometimes icky feelings if I see the violence in it; one that springs to mind is Mortal Kombat, since some of the fatalities in there are so brutal it sometimes gives me chills. I really cannot handle violence and gore that looks near realistic. I can relate to how he feels, though for me it wasn’t to the point I was extremely traumatized. Just freaked out for a short while.

Now that I know the reason why for the blocking, I am more understanding towards it and I am worrying less over the possible reasons for it. Again, to the person that blocked me, I am very sorry. Apologies if I got too off-topic.

@Pastellioli

thanks for sharing ✌️ I don't have anything to add but there's something wholesome about your whole process there and it felt good on some level to read through it.

I've grown to really like this thread and appreciate y'all for participating 👍

@-wc- I am feeling better and glad that I finally know the reason behind getting blocked, because if someone doesn’t like me for something and blocks me and there isn’t a reason given for it, I get worried and concerned if I did something wrong or said something that is offensive to them and it makes me worry, and now that I know the reason, I feel better knowing the reason, and it’s fine if he feels more comfortable with blocking me. It stings less now actually.

@-wc- despite how melancholic the subject of this thread is, I’m really grateful it let us meet, mate. G’day. ✌️

@Pastellioli I wouldn't get too hung up on why someone has you on ignore or block, people use it for a variety of reasons and not always because the other person is 'at fault'. It could simply be that they are not that interested in what you are commenting on. I've used it in the past (and still do occasionally) for a few users and it wasn't anything to do with interactions I'd had with them personally. For example I had a user on ignore because they were constantly posting links to videos on YouTube and I felt not really contributing to posts beyond posting links to the videos. I never watched the videos, so I'd rather not see them at all. Another seemed to constantly respond to posts (not mine) with unhelpful or just plain nonsense info so ignored them too. I've had a few users on and off the ignore list because they often posted walls of text that were just incoherent rants, a couple that don't seem to be able to cope with others having different opinions to theirs etc.