@alice

God, those guys are the WORST. I just block 'em whenever they pop up now, they don't deserve my time or attention. Let them scream into the void, maybe the void will give a shit about their opinion.

@alice

Favorite way of dealing with this kind of stuff is to say something like: "Simply no time for this kind of nonsense." And if they persistent, block them.

They assume you owe them a reply, but you have no obligation to respond to their stupid BS.

@alice

It's a Brandolini's law situation.

"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."

Reply guy responses are the laziest form of communication, not even worth the effort of reply. Totally agreed.

@alice I was half expecting that third one to go:

Alice: I'm openly queer so others know they're not alone.
Bob: If you're openly queer, then only the bad guys will be straight.

@alice

You: "dropping little doubt caltrops"
Bob: "You mean those ninja legos?"

Ok, I'm Bob. I just thought your wording was a really cool phrase.

@alice

Well said. <3

@alice

I misread caltrops as catpoops which: yeah. That too.

That aside, I feel like this is as an important an insight as "Unsolicited advice is criticism, always." And "Don't harsh someone's squee."

@alice I was reading something about how the "great firewall of China" operates the other day. They don't block criticism of the government, they block anything that starts to mobilise people to action or cause any sort of community sentiment. The article closed with a question of the was this sort of censorship in the west that we don't know about.

I am pondering if this sort of reply guy thing is acting in a similar way to Chinese censorship. That is, squashing community movement before it starts. I also wonder if this is an organised squashing or purely self inflicted by society by accident (but still being leveraged by those with power for sure).

@alice My deepest and sincere apologies to you if this is how my comments might have come across.

I'm merely an observer of the chaos to come while voicing true Corporate intentions.

@alice

Maybe some of them are trying to justify to themselves why they haven't taken action? 😞

@alice I haven't heard the term concern troll, but I like it

It is shitty behavior, since you already know these things, consequences etc

@alice This perfectly captures the subtle yet damaging tactics of concern trolling. These "what-aboutism" and "devil's advocate" replies serve as veiled attempts to uphold the status quo by chipping away at the resolve of those striving for change. Every movement faces resistance, but these passive-aggressive interactions can be some of the most draining. Let’s call them out and keep moving forward.

#CallOutConcernTrolls #MomentumMatters #SupportChange #EnergyForAction #NoDeadWeight

@alice

I so hate that crap... so far, it's been less of an issue here than over on BlueSky which, because of the recent mass eXodus, has resulted in alot of those types of accounts being created.

To their credit, The Blue Butterfly doess have more granular control over such things, but it's still a situation of "eternal vigilance" (wasn't that a Jefferson quote?).

Thanks for drawing attention to it and I'll try and spread the word.

@alice I remember from a long time ago I told a co-worker I had been on an anti-war march at the weekend. He very loudly and angrily responded that I was wasting my time, it wouldn’t change anything.

I realised he was angry I was doing something he hadn’t and this made him feel bad.

I understand if people don’t have the time or energy for action (now I’m older I do very little, honestly) but I support people who are out there doing something I’m not.

@alice I really hope that's not the only kind you run into, though it sounds like that's the majority. I've run into that on certain other topics... if they wanted an actual discussion, that'd be one thing, but it's a lot of the 'leave a toxic comment and move on' kind of trash.

I find myself jumping into conversations hoping I can be helpful and/or make a friend. All of us could certainly use a few more of those. Hope your day goes better.

@alice regarding Facebook (and X for that matter) their income depends on our eyeballs. We take our attention away and Zuck loses money. It’s the one piece of power we have over him.

I’ve basically quit X for over a year now. I’d like to quit Facebook but it’s the only contact I have with most of my family and they think my encouragement to move to Mastadon and BlueSky is being dramatic.