I used to be quite proud of myself for never blocking anyone on Reddit, ever. Also I was a mod of a couple of gaming subs, so it wouldn’t have worked in those anyway:-). But eventually I realized… it wasn’t helping my state of mind, and rather it was affecting my irl relationships too. So I stepped back from modding, and finally blocked a particularly onerous troll account that I did not want to ban as a mod, but I sure did enjoy blocking him as a normal user.:-)

There’s a saying about the only thing we must not tolerate is intolerance, and it doesn’t quite go far enough imho as to state the consequences of failing to block intolerance - that they drag us down to become more like them:-(.

They have some… interesting political viewpoints, that is for sure. The thing is, regardless of that, it’s like a self-styled “alpha” person who looks down on everything that they refuse to understand themselves - they dish out an insane amount of criticism (that’s the literal sole purpose of a place like ChapoTrapHouse, read its very own community statement of purpose), yet cannot handle even the slightest wisp of not even criticism but honest questioning in return (anything less than obsequiousness right off the bat).

They are often derogatorily called “tankies”, due to how they believe in the conspiracy theory that no casualties occured at Tiananmen Square, ignoring all the videos, photos, and first-hand accounts from people who were actually there. Also, Russia and China are “communist”, more importantly are “not” doing genocide, and instead it is the USA that is doing “genocide”, not just supporting others doing it but directly I mean, as best I can tell meaning for the reason that it is capitalist and that somehow capitalism = genocide (but again, their preferred nations are “not” capitalistic, nor “doing genocide” in their minds, in complete defiance of all facts otherwise, most especially those experienced first-hand by e.g. someone who directly lost a family member to such).

But again, their political viewpoints aren’t the main thing, it’s what that reveals about how they approach the world. i.e., consent does not matter - or rather, it must but only when directed at them, yet never in reverse. i.e. remember that style of logic that stopped working for you when you were 5 years old? (“I know you are but what am I?”) Yeah, they are still using that - and somehow it works!? Also styles that tbf have baffled experts for years, like gish gallop and reverse gish gallop, etc.

And since they have existed in echo chambers for many years now, they actually believe this stuff. The problem is, they also still believe it when they leave those echo chambers and come over here, to “leave their mark” upon any conversation that doesn’t go 100% their way. You’ll see it yourself soon enough - if you haven’t already - though Lemmy.World already defederates the worst of them, lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. As I mentioned, you might also want to block lemmy.ml.

Also, Innuendo Studios has a cool video series about these matters, titled “Why Are You So Angry”, and then another much better one albeit a bit less related so for this topic more of a follow-up after that one, titled “The Alt-Right Playbook” if you want to follow up further, but basically it’s a super-deep rabbit hole that ultimately may literally end democracy on earth, on the one hand, but also it affects how much we are allowed or not allowed to talk about things on the internet too, without huge push-back from bullies.