I’ve been looking for ways to express my feelings about online interactions of late, and rather than articulating them successfully, I’ve been having something of a public meltdown.
I am therefore grateful to whoever the hell it is behind the Twitter persona @pourmecoffee for his recent post, which included this:
I instantly and irreversibly block based on @replies I find annoying. Yes, it’s selfish. Yes, it’s about me. That’s the whole point. It’s not that I care about your brilliant reply or who reads my posts. You could very well be “right.” I just don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. I have no patience for conflict junkies or hyper-argumentative people polluting my stream. I don’t want to debate you. I don’t want to trade clever put-downs. I don’t want to go back and forth trying to get the last word. I don’t like to be trolled, nitpicked, or insulted. This is a personal account. You’re not paying for it. Shocking: I don’t like to get hassled, and will block to avoid it. I’m not the guy to satisfy your need for epic battles, flame wars, or online validation. There are plenty of people itching for a fight, just not me. Go be annoying, rude, combative or your positive spin on those things somewhere else. I will ruthlessly curate my online experience to selfishly satisfy my own sensibilities and make it fun for me, period.
I aspire to this.
Near-Earth Object 
Probably a good policy to have in real life as well. Everyone has different needs and tolerance levels. We shouldn’t feel obliged to give more than we can cope with.
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I hear there’s a hashtag #BS which is intended to mean Block Saturday, as a parallel to the hashtag #FF = Follow Friday. However, the nice thing about #BS is that it works the entire weekend…
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If you want to make a better tool, sometimes you’ve gotta melt things down.
Of course, melting things down can also lead to useless slag. How can you tell the two situations apart? Look for a process or methodology, and see if things are improving. What process do you have for dealing with the feedback? Are you convincing people of your views, or vice-versa? If you’ve got answers for those and similar questions, then it’s all for the best.
If you don’t, get answers. The more clear and concise, the better.
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