There may be an age or generational explanation for this, but I especially notice this behavior on Reddit while not nearly as much here on Lemmy (though maybe that’s also a mater of implementation).
It seems many are so quick to assert overly-confident positions, but then hit-and-run with some smarmy remark at even the slightest challenge, then quickly block. Like, not even crazy stuff. Just basic, civil disagreements. I can pretty well predict when it will happen, and it always feels like such a petty ego-sparing fingers-in-ears denial thing to do, and to me if anything shows they were not very confident in their views being challenged.
I think I’ve only blocked a handful of people over a decade who were actively spamming, stalking, or spewing extremely hateful rhetoric and I just reported them simultaneously. You have to cross a pretty extreme and irrational line for me to do that.
The reason I ask is to see if I’m missing something; to better understand the mindset of those who do.
I use it to curate my lemmy experiance. 99% of the users/communities I block aren’t for anything personal, they’re just clogging up my ALL feed with things I dont care about (for example, sports ball or foreign language comms).
next you’ll tell me you don’t like incredibly low effort political memes reposted from (social media site you specifically joined lemmy to avoid), smh
Why are you subscribed to them? No need to block just curate.
They aren’t subscribed to them.
Yes, I am curious why anyone would want to look at ALL. Easier to just curate what you want and be done with it. Works better for Lemmy too since there is no algo.
How would you discover new communities when only browsing your feed? And there is plenty of topics I’m not interested enough in to subscribe to but I might still want to see when a popular post there blows up.
I find it much easier to browser ALL and just block the communities I’m definitely not interested in.
How will you see anything interesting that “blows up” if you are blocking it?
In any case: Lemmy is not reddit. So a lot of the subs I belong to would never show up in ALL. There is no algorithm to show me things based on my tastes or comments.
Discovery is up to you.
When I joined, I browsed communities, searched for topics I was interested in and once in a while revisit the list. I am truly using it like a forum aggregator. Links to other things and subs I am interested in often show up in the comments and that is the best discovery tool out side of browsing.
By the way, switching to scaled helps pull in more of your subscriptions to the top even when they are smaller communities.
I’m not blocking them. I’m only blocking communities I’m definitely not interested in, for example AI art or video games I don’t play.
I’m often browsing ALL ordered by “new” or “new comments” so with proper timing even the smallest communities will show up there. I’ve discovered plenty small ones like that.
New Comments does seem like a good way. Just wanted to say thanks for the conversation, obviously no right or wrong way, just what ever works for each of us. It’s nice to have a civil conversation.
I subscribe to ones I’m interested in. But sometimes I browse all to stumble across new interesting communities. I block the ones I see repeatedly and aren’t interested in. I block mass posters, I block bots, I block tankies, I block mods/admins of larger communities. It just makes my all browsing time more efficient.
What’s the purpose of blocking mods/admins of larger communities?
I just noticed a pattern of personality types that I didn’t mesh well with. So it’s best I don’t see their opinions, nor give them mine.
Like blocking all hexbear users. I’m sure I’m probably missing something worthwhile here and there, but overall my life is better without it.