Twenty Eight: 14: Blocking

People say & do some dumb shit.

They do. You do. I do.

When the dumb shit is done & said repeatedly, without repercussions, it gets unmanageable & harmful.

Nobody deserves insanity.

Because of this reality, I believe “blocking” people from being able to access you via social media, text messages, phone calls, & more is an underrated tool.

Too often we don’t use it when we should.

Sometimes we feel bad. Sometimes we’re worried we’ll hurt someones feelings. Sometimes others tell us it’s a dick move. Sometimes it makes things worse.

But our peace is something worth maintaining.

I haven’t had to block more than a dozen people in my life.

Half of this dozen were in the last year.

Most of my life, I needed to be everyone’s friend.

This resulted in people hurting me & me hurting them in the absence of boundaries or better dynamics.

Some shit happened to me.

The shit made me realise something.

I realised I didn’t want to be around people who inspired me to compromise myself & become less.

Pre-pandemic, most of my relationship problems were rooted with my family.

Distance put a bandaid on those problems.

Post-pandemic, I began to prioritise relationships with selfish people.

Selfish people do not lack an ability to love others or empathise with others.

However, the love & empathy they have is rooted in self fulfilment.

It’s a miserable way to see & engage with the world.

I have never witnessed or experienced more destruction than with selfish people or being selfish myself.

So I began to use the tools available to me to cut these people off & to block their access to me.

It’s not as intense as a restraining order.

We still gotta deal with each other face-to-face & in public.

But blocking takes away from bad people their ability to say or do shitty things at any time.

There is no untimed or unplanned toxic notifications to worry about.

Shitty people fuck off while better people fuck on.

12 years ago I got my first phone & within 2 years I found a way to leverage social media for money.

Half of my career the last decade has been learning & using social media to my advantage & the advantage of other businesses.

I believe anyone who spends more than 8 hours a day on the Internet believes in the value of blocking tools & uses them. But I’m not writing this for people like me.

Those of you who live with social media, but don’t know it intimately like I do, need to be encouraged to use these tools.

I’ve heard too many casual users tell me “Just get better with boundaries,” “Just ignore them,” or “It’s not that serious.”

It is when you live on the Internet.

It is when people have constant access to you.

It is when you know how all this shit works & what it does to us.

Blocking is good. Please don’t hesitate to block people.

I am thriving from the peace I earn blocking.

Tell more people to fuck off.

You’re worth it.

Cheers.