How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Blocking People

On the 25th of November 2022, amid accusations of Trump Derangement Syndrome and poorly-chosen hyperbole about the corpses of children, author and podcaster, Sam Harris, deleted his Twitter account, which at the time had around 1.5 million followers.  

Even more shocking, he did so without the traditional, “here’s why my choice to delete Twitter is both momentous and courageous” tweet. 

A few days later, he released a podcast entitled, Why I Left Twitter, in which he clarified his motivations. And I’m going to quote him at length here. Because, despite my disagreement with his conclusion, it was one of the most relatable things I’d heard in a long time.

…Twitter, for me, became like a malignant form of telepathy where I got to hear the most irrational, contemptuous, sneering thoughts of other people a dozen or more times a day. But the problem wasn't all the hate being directed at me, the problem was the hate I was beginning to feel. Hate probably isn't the right word. It was more like disgust and despair. Twitter was giving me a very dark view of other people. And the fact that I believed, and still believe, that it's a distorted view, wasn't enough to inoculate me against this change in my attitude […] 

I used to never block people. But when I discovered that the platform had become basically unusable I installed a browser extension that allowed me to block thousands of haters at once. I had probably blocked 50,000 people on Twitter in my last week on the platform. It was like a digital genocide. I would see an especially idiotic or vicious tweet directed at me, and I would block everyone who had liked it. […] 

But then I asked myself, ‘How did I become the sort of person who was blocking people by the thousands who just happened to like a dumb tweet?’ […] How did I begin to view people as intellectually and morally irredeemable? How did I begin to view myself as totally incapable of communicating effectively ever about anything with these people? How did I give up all hope in the power of conversation?

Twitter.

For a long time, I saw the block button as a sign of weakness. A choice, not simply to end an unproductive conversation, but to eliminate any possibility of future conversations. I saw no reason to use it unless somebody was being actively abusive or threatening.

I still mostly feel that way. 

As most people reading this will know, over the past three years or so, I’ve had thousands of conversations online, many of those with people who vehemently disagreed with me, and until a few months ago, I’d only blocked a handful of people. No more than five or so. I can't even imagine a world where I block 50,000 people.

But I must admit, there’s a cost to sticking too stubbornly to the other end of the scale.

As my audience grew, I received more and more comments from people I’d never met, who’d never interacted with me in any way, and who claimed they’d never even read one of my articles before. Yet, they generated a level of rage and vitriol so extreme that it was almost comical. 

Their attacks were so disconnected from who I am or anything I’d written that it was impossible to take them personally. And, of course, they weren't personal. These people were using me as an escape valve for whatever pain and misery they were too scared to face in their real lives. 

But after a while, these crazed outliers began to colour my view of my audience. And because I didn’t like these people, I began to like writing less. 

I became less patient, even with people who weren’t being especially unreasonable, because I was braced for them to fly off the handle at any moment. 

I even began to feel a faint sense of dread as I hit “publish” because I knew it would mean dealing with those people.

But then, like Sam, I asked myself: how had I let a few idiots taint my view of my audience? How did I lose faith in my ability to communicate with readers? What had shaken my faith in the power of conversation? 

And I realised the problem wasn’t Twitter or social media in general, it was me.

Because social media platforms, by which I mean all online platforms that facilitate interactions with other people (comments, tweets, DMs, etc.), are built around a single cognitive quirk in human beings; for better or worse, however accurate or inaccurate it might be, our sense of the world is shaped by the people we’re exposed to. This is what makes the algorithms so addictive, it's why echo chambers form so easily, and it's why so many people become radicalised by online content.

If we expose ourselves to negative people, our whole world feels more negative. If we surround ourselves with positive people, the world feels more positive. And if we expose ourselves to “the most irrational contemptuous sneering thoughts of other people a dozen or more times a day,” well, it’s not hard to imagine what that does...

For the record, despite all of the above, I still believe in the value of social media. Because I still believe, unshakeably, in the power of conversation. 

When I think about the most enlightening conversations I’ve had online, even though they sometimes feel like snowflakes in an avalanche of ignorance and toxicity, when I think about the perspectives I’d never have heard or the attitudes I’d never have outgrown without the help of smart, gracious strangers on the internet, when I consider how much poorer I’d be, as a writer and as a human being, if I blocked everyone who seemed to be an idiot at first pass, there’s simply no way that talking to people online has been a net negative.

But when I think about the psychic weight of those dumb conversations, when I acknowledge that negative experiences weigh heavier on the mind than positive experiences, there's simply no way that blocking people isn't sometimes a net positive.

Yes, it’s childish to block somebody because they “liked” a mean-spirited tweet. And even more so to block somebody, as so many people do, because you decided to characterise their disagreement as “hate.” 

But some people (or, at least, their online personas) are too angry, too dogmatic, and occasionally, too dumb to reach. And I refuse to allow those people to become my baseline. 

So for the past few months, as carefully as possible, I’ve been removing this last category of people from my online world. Not only that, but I've learned how to quietly bow out of conversations with people who, in the immortal words of Thomas Sowell, confuse thinking with feeling.

And all of this means that in 2024, I’m anticipating a decrease in the number of conversations I have online, and therefore the number of conversations I post here.

To be clear, that’s not going to translate into a decrease in the number of posts. I’ll still be writing here just as regularly. But I’m expecting the ratio of articles to conversations to shift in favour of articles. As I demand more from my conversations, I expect the quantity to decrease but the quality to increase. Better still, I'll have more time to clear the backlog of things I've been dying to write about.

A true win-win.

I’m not about to disappear from the internet. This isn’t a “here’s why deleting my account is both momentous and courageous” post. I've just learned to stop worrying and love the block button.