I think our instincts may be misleading here, because internet works differently from real life.
In real life, not interacting with someone is the default. Unless you have some kind of relationship with someone, people have no obligation to call you or meet you. And if I call someone on the phone just to say “dude, I disagree with your theory”, I would expect that person to hang up… and maybe say “sorry, I’m busy” before hanging up, if they are extra polite. The interactions are mutually agreed, and you have no right to complain when the other party decides to not give you the time. (And if you keep insisting… that’s what the restraining orders are for.)
On internet, once you sign up to e.g. Twitter, the default is that anyone can talk to you, and if you are not interested in reading the texts they send you, you need to block them. As far as I know, there are no options in the middle between “block” and “don’t block”. (Nothing like “only let them talk to me when it is important” or “only let them talk to me on Tuesdays between 3 PM and 5 PM”.) And if you are a famous person, I guess you need to keep blocking left and right, otherwise you would drown in the text—presumably you don’t want to spend 24 hours a day sifting through Twitter messages, and you want to get the ones you actively want, which requires you to aggressively filter out everything else.
So getting blocked is not an equivalent of getting a restraining order, but more like an equivalent of the other person no longer paying attention to you. Which most people would not interpret as evidence of cultism.
This is the key to understanding why I think it’s more okay to block than a lot of other people think, and the fact that the default is anyone can talk to you means you get way too much crap without blocking lots of people.
I think our instincts may be misleading here, because internet works differently from real life.
In real life, not interacting with someone is the default. Unless you have some kind of relationship with someone, people have no obligation to call you or meet you. And if I call someone on the phone just to say “dude, I disagree with your theory”, I would expect that person to hang up… and maybe say “sorry, I’m busy” before hanging up, if they are extra polite. The interactions are mutually agreed, and you have no right to complain when the other party decides to not give you the time. (And if you keep insisting… that’s what the restraining orders are for.)
On internet, once you sign up to e.g. Twitter, the default is that anyone can talk to you, and if you are not interested in reading the texts they send you, you need to block them. As far as I know, there are no options in the middle between “block” and “don’t block”. (Nothing like “only let them talk to me when it is important” or “only let them talk to me on Tuesdays between 3 PM and 5 PM”.) And if you are a famous person, I guess you need to keep blocking left and right, otherwise you would drown in the text—presumably you don’t want to spend 24 hours a day sifting through Twitter messages, and you want to get the ones you actively want, which requires you to aggressively filter out everything else.
So getting blocked is not an equivalent of getting a restraining order, but more like an equivalent of the other person no longer paying attention to you. Which most people would not interpret as evidence of cultism.
This is the key to understanding why I think it’s more okay to block than a lot of other people think, and the fact that the default is anyone can talk to you means you get way too much crap without blocking lots of people.