First of all: wow, I’m so sorry!? That’s incredibly fucked up. Hang in there, anon. If there’s anything that would help you out don’t hesitate to mention.
Second: im so fascinated!? By this choice…??? Entitled is right.
I’d be curious to know: are they telling you to block them based on your relative ages? Or are all of the antis attacking you with this demand 21 and younger? Because I can see that fitting a certain ‘adults (that is: anyone older than me) have to look out for my safety even if they’ve never met me’ attitude that I find lines up with the increase in ‘trust authorities to protect you’ culture shift that followed 9/11 in the US.
Either way: isn’t it interesting how antis are insisting you are dangerous to them, and yet trusting you to block them instead of try to harm them if they put themselves in contact with you?
It’s almost like they know you’re not actually dangerous to them and this is all performative outrage and playing at activism.
Wild.
[image ID: anonymous says:
I’m the DMMD thread person who said the very controversial statement that kids shouldn’t be playing DMMD since it’s meant for adults. That really rustled their jimmies. I’ve honestly not looked at their profiles, just reported the really offensive ones and muted the others. But everyone demands I block them, and from friends who been curious, apparently there is an anti culture precedent of refusing to block people they consider bad because they think that means they lose.
End ID] (emphasis mine)
Blocking people who ship things they hate means they lose?
Well that’s the most 4chan thing I’ve ever heard.
I’ve said before that I think anti-shipper circles have learned their argument style by watching people from the alt-right argue on YouTube comments and twitter chains, b/c their ‘argument’ method is an extremely effective trolling and harassment style. This seems to reinforce it.
Bless you for your maturity in dealing with them.
The reason why this precedent exists is because internet bullies need a way to declare victory when people ignore them. Here is the thing: Bullies need a rise out of their target in order to get their satisfaction from bullying, proof that they have hurt their target. If the immediate response to a bully is block and ignore then the bully has usually put effort into their bullying and gotten nothing out of it – objectively, at best, they can hope that they hurt their target, but they will never get the actual satisfaction of knowing they did.
So they have redefined blocking people is a sign of deficiency – cowardice, moral inferiority, and most importantly trying to equate it to admitting defeat. This way they can still get their violence thrill when someone ignores them. They know they won, they know they hurt their target, because they have defined blocking to be irrefutable proof of such.
But it only works if they believe it. They have to convince themselves, not their target. Which is why people go in other’s inbox and demand that they be blocked. They have built up their world view so that they are unable to block or it is actively admitting that they are cowards, morally deficient, and are and always were wrong.
And, unfortunately, because anti culture is based on bullying and abuse they have managed to convinced a lot of younger people that this is the case, so now lots of people are unable to block people because it makes them feel that they are cowards and morally deficient.
This is yet another way in which anti culture actively harms minors. It has rendered many minors incapable of using the tools that allow them to protect themselves in online spaces.
This is an incredible analysis! Thank you.
Unfortunately it is not just analysis. I know a girl who is being stalked and harassed by a man on social media but she refuses to block him because “blocking is cowardly”.
I figured out all this by talking to her, trying to address her concerns about blocking people, and trying to convince her it is ok to block this guy. This has been going on for 4 months and still she refuses because people have drilled it into her head so much that blocking people makes her a bad person. I finally got her to turn off anon asks though, so progress is being made.
I’m really glad you went to that effort. You’re a good friend. Unfortunately, I know it’s not just theory to think over … it’s seriously screwing up a lot of lives. That’s why I think it’s so important to understand the mindsets of the people doing it, so you can see it in yourself and others before you hurt yourself or anyone else, and before you get tangled up with people who are spouting that rhetoric before you meet them.
Also: thinking back to when I was younger, blocking was considered the ‘cowardly’ thing to do even before antis were shitting things up in a particular way. On LJ, on FB, on MySpace … only assholes blocked people, at least in the geeky spaces I hung out in. Which makes me think that maybe the Geek Social Fallacies also play a part in this? ‘If you exclude people you’re a dick.’ ‘You’re a coward who won’t confront people. You just avoid them.’ Which of course, feeds into an environment where even people who don’t buy into anti-shipper rhetoric are set up to be afraid of blocking people, lest they be seen as the ‘real’ problem for failing to negotiate a ceasefire and excluding other nerds from their nerd experience.
It’s all just conveniently feeding into a space where abusers have full time access to victims and denying that access makes the victim equally abusive. 😦 I hate it.
I hope your friend ends up okay.
Huh. I recently had an encounter with a couple of trolls who turned out to be antis. I tried trolling them back, which sometimes gets people to block me first, but I got bored before they did and I ended up blocking them – for which they then mocked me (in separate posts, of course). It seems that I as well as they have somehow absorbed the idea that blocking is admitting defeat… but that’s only the case if I decide to return-troll rather than blocking after the first salvo from them.
To be clear: I never initiate trolling, except inasmuch as some people seem to consider counterargument, however civil, to constitute trolling. Some of my aversion to blocking comes from the fact that I’ve been blocked for expressing reasoned disagreement, or even preemptively blocked by people who have seen from commentary posts that I disagree with them about something, and I don’t like the way this approach to disagreement tends to partition fandoms into echo chambers. Or maybe it’s just the old Geek Social Fallacy about exclusion rearing its head.
Loki is the Philosopher King 