@jerry Breaking point theory, to put a name to it, emerges from the fact that it's often far easier to sever a link than to re-establish it. A block (individual, mutual, adminstrative / instance / server / network level) tends to remain in place once instituted. Which means that within any group, interactions occur up to some tolerance boundary after which they're disabled and are likely never reestablished.

I've seen this both personally (online and off), as well as in commercial and other contexts --- say, a business, vendor, or customer who crosses some annoyance threshold sufficiently often or egregiously that there is a decision by the counterparty to never do business again (or only under extreme duress / protest).

That of course is further confounded by issues such as monopoly / monopsony, other power imbalances, cultural and institutional biases or oppression, and All That Jazz. It's one thing to boycott your local sandwich shop for the transgression of putting sweet mustard on rye, another when Ye Global Information Monopoly Firme is the only option for reaching a large-scale audience, or participating meaningfully in public life, and yet it consistently violates not only deeply-held personal moral values but demonstrably supports / incites / enables mass atrocities.

I strongly suspect there's a sociology literature on this, though I'm not aware of it. I'd love to see it though.

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#Tootstorm #BreakingPointTheory #SocialTopology #Privacy #Public #Blocking #SocialNetworks #SocialMedia #Sociology

@jerry Right, and strong agreement all around.

On replies: it strikes me as strongly inconsistent for someone to insist on the right to publish publicly (a redundant phrase itself, to "publish" is "to make publicly known": https://www.etymonline.com/word/publish), but not suffer responses, and I'm a bit chafed when the immediate response is to attack those replying ... but, and this is a BIG BUT: I can also understand and sympathise with that viewpoint, especially from disempowered / minority viewpoints who must be under a unrelenting barrage of such responses. So I cut a lot of slack there.

Though I'll also make an assessment of whether or not there's likely to be any productive mutual engagement, and if it seems not, I'll block without prejudice simply to spare us both further pain. (That is, no harm, no foul, this is for the sake of equanimity for both of us.)

And you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to / pick your battles.

#Tootstorm #BreakingPointTheory #SocialTopology #Privacy #Public #Blocking #SocialNetworks #SocialMedia #Sociology

Edit: Added #AllTheHashtags

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