Think quick: Who was the last person you blocked on social media?

Was it a stranger? Was it a well-known [insert horrible social view here]? Was it an ex of any variety, be they an ex of one app date or one marriage? Is it someone who you’ve been friends with on Facebook for years, for absolutely no reason, who you wanted to block, just to get the thrill of blocking? (No judgment for any of these, but maybe that last one could require some inner reflection.)

Now think again: Why did you block this person?

Did they do something to [display aforementioned horrible social view]? Do you not want to see them any more? Does their mere presence in the online world annoy you? Does your history with this person, the history that is closest to the present day, cause you huge amounts of stress, anxiety or sadness when you see them, or do you anticipate these emotions when you might possibly see them turn up on your portable dopamine machine in the future?

There are as many reasons to block people as there are people to block in the world.

I would know. As of this writing, I have 9442 accounts blocked on Twitter (I refuse to call it by its new, stupid, name), 419 muted, and 200 muted words and phrases (this one has a maximum on it, and trust me it would be more if I could). 

I have a mere 16 accounts blocked on Facebook, and 24 on Instagram. I could not count the number of times I’ve clicked “not interested” on an Instagram ad or story, which is probably why my algorithm now is full of Lynchian nightmares posted by people with 13 followers, but that’s a burden I bear.

Look, some context: I grew up in the age of MSN Messenger – less a social media platform and more an app where you would socialise and share media. Wild how those two concepts are distinct from each other, but that’s the hellscape that tech companies have created for us. On MSN Messenger, a block meant something. The genderless green mannequin icon that represented an online person suddenly had a big X imposed over it. The person wasn’t gone, and you could see whenever they were online. It was like a test – “do you want this person to remain unblocked?”.

A block in the new era is something entirely different. It’s like erasing a person from your online existence. It’s as much “You don’t get to see me” as it is “I don’t have to see you”. A smarter person could point to how this is a reflection of the modern brain, where we are curating the world’s access to us as much as we are curating our own access to the world.

Me, personally? I will block anybody, for almost any reason. Racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia? Obviously gone. No questions. But even comparatively small breaches of internet etiquette earn a block from me, especially if they’re being posted by strangers. Someone says something stupid? Blocked. Somebody willfully misinterprets somebody else? Also blocked. Someone uses an old internet joke that is as dead as a doorknob? You might as well block yourself.

This kind of internet etiquette is easy to endorse. We inflate and defend our own bubbles, each bubble being their own snowflake. Some people use it for news, some people use it for activism, some people use it for validation, some people use it as an ad-hoc dating app. However you use it is however you choose to use it.

Personally? Social media is not a news platform for me. I was raised in the age of dial-up, my news sources are print media, and urls typed into browsers, the Gen-Z equivalent of the town crier. Social media is where I go to see the most unhinged things on the internet (excluding the above).

But that’s more a directive on how to block when you’re wading through the mire of strangers on the internet. How about when you actually know the person? When you’ve seen the whites of their eyes in a bar? When, because this is New Zealand, you have the bare minimum of five friends in common.

That… is trickier. When you block someone you might actually encounter in real life, you’re not engaging in social media etiquette, you’re engaging with actual social etiquette.

When it comes to actual social etiquette as opposed to social media etiquette, when to block gets a little bit trickier. With those people, the question is less “when to block” and more “when to allow a benign presence to remain in my social circle”? 

Without affording more oxygen to people who don’t need it, there are a certain few people who I would physically cross the street to avoid (and they would do the same to avoid me, frankly) who remain unblocked on all social media accounts. To block them would be an action, it would let them know that they bother me, and is there any greater social sin than letting someone you loathe with at least a few fibres of your being know that they bother you?

You probably know your relationships and the people in your life better than I do (depending on the reader and the people, again, New Zealand is very small). Therefore, you know when a block is necessary. The fact is that most people, unless they are extremely socially unaware, will not be surprised to be blocked by somebody. People generally know what they do, and know when they’ve hurt or offended you.

My advice? If you’re not in doubt, block. If you are in doubt, mute.

A little bit of advice on top of the advice though: there is every chance that someone will notice if you mute them. I’m not generally someone who obsesses on who likes my posts or watches my story, but I recently noticed that a friend, who is otherwise extremely lovely to me in person and in every other interaction, had stopped liking and watching, and it drove me insane. Then I realised? None of this really matters, not really.

Also, maybe, sometimes the answer has been inside you all along. Poster, block thyself.