@thesotiris 27 December 2025 more from that month

Why You Should Block Anyone, Anytime, at the Slightest Provocation The most useful and underused social media feature

Your online social experience will drastically improve the moment you begin to block distasteful people at the first sign of ill intent toward you. I promise. **Whom to block?** You know the block-worthy type: those who are angry before even reading anything you write; who have already decided to oppose you before they finish the first line of what you have to say; who deliberately misrepresent your arguments to gaslight their audience (and yours) about your message; who twist, make light of, or belittle your arguments and you personally; who imagine that insults, accusations, and opinionated characterisations are somehow valid “arguments” for anything; whose words ooze with unhinged emotion and sly sarcasm; whose only intent is to one-up you instead of engaging in a constructive back and forth; whose only interest is not to approximate truth but instead to be right; who can’t imagine themselves ever being wrong about anything; who only seek to ridicule you instead of showing respect despite disagreement; who have the gall to accuse you of everything they are obviously initiating; who use shaming manipulation tactics in an attempt to publicly humiliate you so they can satisfy their **diabolical schadenfreude and tendency to hate people almost as much as they hate themselves**. **The stigma of blocking** Block-worthy people use the shaming as a manipulation tactic to cultivate a perceived sense of shame in the act of blocking. They do this by calling you a “coward” or “loser” whenever you block. Ridiculing someone who blocked you is just butthurt coping, and it shows. If you fall for the shame of blocking, then they own you. You will be hooked by their petty provocations, or you will simply waste your time reading nonsense that makes you dumber and poorer. You should lament the time wasted on people who matter even less than their triggering, because **you’ll never know what inspiring message you missed if you weren’t misdirected thus**. **What blocking is** Let’s face it: blocking is simply a choice of association, a privilege you can only enjoy online. I don’t want to waste time and brain cells on the vomit some people call “comments”. I judge their nonsense to be beneath me. I have nothing to gain from reading their pornography. I relish disagreement when it comes from a place of genuine care and respect for me, but mostly, for my message. I follow people who hold antithetical positions to mine, not because I agree with them, but because the way they conduct themselves shows they disagree with me because they care about me, not because they hate me. They want to change my mind, not because they desperately need validation, but because they believe their worldview would be better for me. And perhaps they’re right. **I give them every chance to change my mind, so long as their true motivation is empathy**. **To block or not to block?** You should block generously and abundantly because you will never change the mind of the already-decided, and all you accomplish is ridiculing yourself for passively responding to and adopting their frame. Yes, you worry that their misrepresentation of your argumentation will affect your audience’s perception of your message, and you thus need to destroy their straw men. But being misinterpreted is always a risk when writing publicly. Besides, the more you engage with those who are determined to straw-man you, the more opportunities you give them to straw-man you even more. You only make things worse. Instead, if you block them, you deprive them of the opportunity to keep on straw-manning you. The main reason to block, though, is that you have extremely limited time on this planet, and you should reserve it for those who matter to you, those who have earned and deserve it. Every second spent on reading filth is an insult to the people who are owed your time and attention. Even if you can’t give time to anyone worthwhile at the time, you should still refuse to spend it on lowlifes, out of principle alone. Spending time on your haters cheapens your attention in general, and disrespects the people who truly deserve your time. The good thing about social media is that you can totally block people you don’t like, and thus their existence ends for you forever. They are, in all the ways that matter, dead to you, and you don’t have to give them a second thought, ever. It’s an advantage you don’t get to enjoy in physical reality, where you can’t delete people from your life so easily; you still share the same physical space, or you have to interact with them due to circumstances you can’t control. Since we spend a huge chunk of our time online, it makes sense to use this gift of blocking in abundance. **Objection** *“But if you block people, you end up in an echo chamber”.* No. This isn’t the case. You can follow and allow to be followed by accounts that voice disagreement respectfully. Indeed, there’s insight to be gained from those who disagree with you in a respectful way. Haters validate you because their emotional response proves that your message hit home. Hateful disagreement is the most undeniable agreement and verification of your message you’ll ever get. So, if anything, people who hate on you are the ones drawing you into an echo chamber, forcing you to argue in circles, asking you to say the same damn thing again and again because they pretend to ignore it every time. They offer nothing new, no alternative viewpoint, just noise. This is what a true echo chamber is. **To sum up** Go forth and block! Don’t fall for the stigma of blocking; it’s just a shaming tactic to get you to keep wasting your time with people who hate you, and steal it from the people who love you. And the more you expose yourself and your message to ill-intended individuals, the more opportunities you give them to misrepresent you. Better cut your losses and block them sooner rather than later. Blocking bad people is respecting the good. Blocking bad people is the opposite of an echo chamber. And I’m willing to bet that the most insane, unhinged, block-worthy accounts are just bots by whatever useless alphabet agency wastes money on useless psyops just to justify their wasted paycheck.