John Scalzi has taken up one of the growing practices of the Twitter cognoscenti:
Honestly life on Twitter has gotten much better since I switched to DGAF blocking. Be mildly annoying to me? That's a block. Look at me wrong? Blockeroonies. Like a post from a racist shitbag and I see it? Blocktown, population you. It's glorious.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 26, 2022
For those of you as out of touch as I am, DGAF means "Don't Give a Fuck," which in turn means just what you think it does. Blocking someone on Twitter is no longer something to ponder over or feel guilty about. Just do it. You will feel much better if you ruthlessly block every human being who irks you even slightly.
But there's an alternative! I don't block assholes, I mute them. This is because I get a kick out of the idea that they're going to waste huge amounts of time screaming into the ether, not realizing that I don't hear a single one of their dimwitted insults. And if they do realize it, they're powerless to do anything about it.
Conversely, the advantage of blocking over muting is that it's public. Your victim knows he's been tossed out of the house.
So what does your preference say about your personality? Do you prefer to be above board and simply punch your prey in the mouth? Or do you prefer to exhaust them by secretly making them run in endless circles without ever knowing it? Tough choice.
NOTE: I don't actually mute all that many people. Twitter morons don't bother me that much, and sometimes they amuse me. But then again, my audience is nowhere near as big as Scalzi's.
My cousin could truly receive money in their spare time on their laptop. their best friend had been doing this 4 only about 12 months and by now cleared the debt. in their mini mansion and bought a great Car.
That is what we do.. https://earningblue.blogspot.com/
Of course there is a stripe of user that needs a good blocking, but doesn't a DGAF approach build the dreaded "bubble?" Unless there are many nuances to fuhk - I answered my own question.
Bubbles are underrated. Sometimes it's helpful to have differing perspectives (picking a poorly thought out example: pro-nuclear-power and anti-).
But most of the time it's like inviting creationists into your paleontology discussions - it's just going to be painful with no educational value, for all involved.
I prefer muting, for pretty much the same reasons.
So, Kevin, if you aren’t going to moderate your comment section perhaps we could have the ability to block spam like Jeffrey?
Please?
This.
++1
1+
I am a man for iamr4man!
I would kind of miss old Jeffrey. When I don’t have anything to post, there he is, old reliable.
or preferably the ability to up/down-vote comments and sort. but please do SOMETHING to improve the comments section.
THANK YOU!
C'mon Kevin, don't just sit there in you ivory tower contemplating which is more delicious, do something to help us commoners! =)
I block people who mute me, and mute those that block me. That covers all contingencies.
I have switched from Twitter completely to Mastodon — one of the smaller servers since those admins generally are more responsive, but with the Great Twitter Exodus, my small server went from 3K to 30K in one week. (I joined at the 3K end, but since I can easily follow people regardless of their server, it's not really an issue — and if it were, moving from one server to another is trivial.)
One thing I noticed is the marked lack of hostile jerkdom — after I was there a short while, I sort of woke up to the fact that something was missing, and that was it. It was like suddenly becoming aware that you no longer hear a constant humming background noise.
I admit that at first I was a bit bewildered, but I learned and figured out things fairly quickly. I collected in one post my lessons learned and links to helpful pages: https://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2022/11/09/mastadon-fediverse/
I think it's worth looking at if you're tired of Twitter drama.
Given the arc of history, we will be hearing, perhaps in not too long, how in the beginning, Mastodon was like Twitter/the Internet/New Jersey. New and clean. Then it wasn’t…
Some of my friends who have tried Mastodon have advised me that it is more toxic than Twitter. It's earliest adopters were apparently folks who got banned from Twitter, after all, much the same way Australia was originally a penal colony.
I've heard little of the sort from my lefty friends who've migrated. Maybe it's a matter of taking the time to block the right small percentage of idiots.
i stopped twitter but haven't switching onto mastodon yet. any suggestion on how to pick a good server?
In general, it does not matter. You can follow any account in the Fediverse, so long as the account is not on a server that is blacklisted by your server. A server that does not blacklist anyone is going to end up giving you the same experience of Musk's Twitter.
(How do you check if a server blacklists? On every Mastodon server click on the "learn more" button and click on "moderated servers". If the admin does not make its list public, I consider that a red flag.)
Having said all that, it would make little sense to pick an instance that targets a language, specific community, or topic that you're not interested in, as it will fill your local feed. It also makes little point to joining a highly blacklisted server.
Most people just choose a general interest server, which inherently avoids most issues.
Join Mastodon -- https://joinmastodon.org/servers -- has a very tiny set of Mastodon servers to pick from. These are the ones that want to be known for accepting new users.
If you want to filter a fuller list of servers, the Fediverse Observer -- https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/list -- is solid, but extremely slow to load with the massive expansion of the Fediverse. Since Musk officially acquired Twitter, ~2M new Mastodon accounts have been created and ~2K new Mastodon servers added to the Fediverse.
If you want to see what the Fediverse is made up of, look here -- https://fediverse.party/ -- but note that with each different type of server (eg Mastodon versus Pixelfed), you have to create an entirely new account and they are not tied with each other (eg your Mastodon account is not tied to your Pixelfed account).
A "good" server is subjective. You can move your Mastodon account between servers if you find the grass greener, there.
thanks!
John Scalzi is well-known for punching _down_, Also, he's the king of extruded product, cf, Redshirts.
If you haven't deleted your Twitter account you are enabling fascism. Full stop. End of story. Period. So an even simpler fix for all the things that are going to be awful about Musk Twitter is to delete you f*cking account already.
+1
i didn't delete, just stopped using it and uninstalled the app so no one else can claim my username. but yeah, i'm kinda surprised scalzi hasn't quit twitter.
Post getting a lot of buzz,
https://www.thewrap.com/what-is-post-twitter-alternative-news-social-media-mastodon/
Since you never reply to comments I just assumed you muted all of us.
+1
Also Bob Somerby can never be bothered to comment in his own blog, but posts here occasionally. KD and BS are odd cats.
From a friend who’s a heavy Twitter user:
The advantage to blocking is that they can’t post crap in your mentions (replies). If you just mute them, all your followers are still subjected to the torrent of BS that the trolls create. If you block, they can’t post on your mentions at all.
I think muting is not for keeping trolls quiet, but for taking a limited break someone you follow. If you want to keep trolls quiet, you block them.
Having said that, I don't see a future for Twitter with me. I've scaled back my time on Twitter, starting two weeks ago. Anyone who has failed to move to Mastodon has slowly disappeared from my vision. Sports Twitter is especially absent from Mastodon.
Just use Tweak New Twitter as a browser add-on.
You'll see nothing but direct tweets from people you follow, with their retweets available in a separate tab.
No trending, no random posts inserted by "the algorithm".
I have the same philosophy as Kevin: I probably block two or three people a month. I probably mute 150
I don't like nor use Twitter, and I certainly support blocking obvious trolls. If you're gonna block anyone who irks you even slightly, I'm sure it feels great, but then you're making a pure echo chamber for yourself, no?