Thread by @brief_fiction

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s Because others will see it, and because like you, the person I blocked was a lowlife.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s Logic does not lend itself to expression through isolated soundbites, but Twitter is built around the concept of forcing users to limits themselves to those soundbites. Thus the tweetstorm.

Tweets are strung together to get around Jack's limit.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s But this becomes a problem when dealing with users who, like MK White, are all mouth and no brain. As one takes the time to set up a carefully reasoned argument, they'll be breaking in, demanding an answer to their brain dead spew now now NOW.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s While straw manning endlessly. The pretentiously poorly though format (see Jack Dorsey's blathering about tweets as "haikus") encourages this, as natural human laziness will give the reader a natural tendency to see tweets in isolation, even when context should tell him not to.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s Blocking the loudmouths one encounters puts an end to that process. Not blocking them leads to a problem that can (and usually will) escalate, almost exponentially, and be made a lot worse by the soundbite format.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s After somebody lies about what one has written (or merely gets it wrong, to much the same effect) and one corrects him, one's correction of that misrepresentation will be misrepresented, and this process will continue, until one's original commentary is lost in a mass ...

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s ... of misrepresentations and corrections and misrepresentations of corrections that will keep growing at a speed roughly proportional to its size until the exhaustion of its participants puts a cap on growth.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s The trolls / i d i o t s will have won, at that point, because almost nobody is going to take the time to sort through all of that mess to find out who really said what.

The person making the reasonable argument will, in effect, have been shouted down.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s This is a problem in regular fora, and a reason why the objections heard to the use of the block key are highly disingenuous ones. People like MK White know that what is being walked away from is not a rational or an honest discussion.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s That without blocking, trolling becomes a highly effective means of censorship.

On Twitter, even more so, because the rational arguments being kept from the reader are broken up.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s In a regular forum, one could at least go on a slog through the mess, find the original comments and then read them at one's leisure.

On Twitter, there would be nothing leisurely about that.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s A real argument is going to stretch through a series of tweets, and at each point, the reader would be forced to look through a stack of replies, seeking out the one reply that was the continuation of what he had just read.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s At every step along the way, he'd have to drop everything as he hunted down and assembled the pieces, instead of just being able to sit down and read the piece.

Because @jack had a d u m b idea, and the world jumped onboard with it.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack This being the case, one only has even more reason to block m o r o n s and bad actors in conversations on sight, and really, what reason could one have to NOT block them?

The fear of being called "b i t c h made" by a f o o l like MK White?

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack I think that if, at this point, I mention being a PhD student, almost nobody is going to be tremendously surprised. I learned a long time ago that I couldn't really hide what I was, and I don't really try.

Not that there is any reason why I should.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack In real life, away from the computer, if a loud, belligerent d u l l a r d approached somebody like me looking for an argument and I indulged him in that, as fashionable as pretending otherwise might be online, we all know what almost everybody would really say.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack "Why do you waste your time talking to that j e r k?" And they'd be right. That would be beneath me.

It doesn't cease to be beneath me when I encounter the same sort of s c h m u c k on the Internet.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack He will remain unworthy of my time and attention and he will get blocked and remain blocked, no matter how much crybullying follows, and no, this is not censorship.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack There's nothing stopping the person I blocked from reading my comments in an incognito window and responding to them in a tweetstorm of his own, or from others from reading that tweetstorm, in they so wish.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack All the person I've blocked loses is the opportunity to play disruptive games as I set up my own arguments, and to bother me after I get tired of sifting through the trash he posts, looking for some sophistry of his to rebut.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack He's not entitled to my time or my attention, and certainly not to the opportunity to be disruptive, and so somebody like MK White is left with no legitimate complaints to make at all.

Not that this will slow him down, at all. Which is the best reason of all to block a d o l t.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack Until one does, he'll never go away. One knows that one will have to do so, sooner or later, so why procrastinate? Just do what needs to be done, and don't look back. Or apologize.

@ThirtyOneMKs @CandidToAFault @Ponderosa1415 @teacake90s @jack Thread unroll

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