Dear John, This is why I blocked you - Women's Agenda

Dear John, This is why I blocked you

Dear John,

Last night I was looking through Women’s Agenda’s Twitter feed and I saw you asked why I blocked you. 

I have blocked very few people in my time on the platform and couldn’t recall why you were one of them. I jumped over to your page and, I’ll admit, it wasn’t especially difficult to recall why I had in fact blocked you.

I also couldn’t help but notice a theme among your tweets: you seem to find it inexplicable that a number of people have blocked you. From this vantage point, to be perfectly blunt, I am quite stunned that anyone hasn’t blocked you.

 

 

 

 

So why did I block you? Where to start? As an aside, ‘losers’ doesn’t have a double ‘oo’ but honestly that’s not the major issue because I’m willing to accept the occasional typo. I am completely unwilling however to accept gratuitous insults from a stranger. If I visited a shop and each time I did someone consistently swore at me or abused fellow customers, I wouldn’t hesitate to stop going. Life is far too short for that nonsense – on or offline.

Twitter itself says it’s a place to share ideas and information and to connect with your communities. I am very interested in all of those things. I am far less interested in tolerating a series of invectives from a person I don’t know that serve no purpose I can see other than being inflammatory.     

You might notice that not all of the tweets I selected to explain my decision relate to me. This is because I am generous in my indignation.

Every one of these tweets is offensive, unnecessary and obstructive. Your entire Twitter stream is. I don’t say this because I am “in bed” in any manner with the women or men you deem to be weak, stupid, gutless or nasty. It’s because I can’t see any constructive objective other you seeking to be incendiary.

If I was interested in a dialogue I would ask what exactly you hope to achieve by swearing at people you dislike. I would ask what you believe these people, like me, who choose to block you are missing out on. I would ask what exactly are you hoping for.

But I won’t ask those questions because I am not interested in a dialogue. I am simply explaining why I blocked you. The ‘block’ button exists to improve an individual’s experience of Twitter. I blocked you to improve my experience of Twitter. Trust me when I say it’s not about me, it’s about you.

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