mekka okereke :verified:
Part of my joy comes from blocking angry dudes that feel entitled to engagement. Highly recommend it! 👍🏿
I don't have to talk with everybody. There are so many people that are genuinely curious and open minded, that I just don't have to deal with these dudes.
There's an effectively infinite supply of "dudes on the internet." There is absolutely no shortage. The marginal cost of blocking one, is close to zero.
"Well, what about the marketplace of ideas huh? Not very inclusive of you!"
OK! 🤣
mekka okereke :verified:
Paradox of tolerance and all that.
I don't see it as a paradox at all. You cannot include all ideas, because one of the loudest ideas, is "We should silence the ideas of Black people!" 🙂🙃
You cannot include this idea without excluding other ideas. So absolute inclusion shouldn't even be anyone's goal. It's certainly not mine.
And dealing with annoying people online can be exhausting. Even if they're not malicious! Me doing "racism 101" individually for millions of people, just doesn't work.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@mekkaokereke There's a song to go along with that: Block party https://vid.wildeboer.net/w/6Svd4a5aQGQvyJRbd1HEBa
Do Not Comply
Since when are you obligated to buy the entire market?
Marketplace, you buy what you want, you shop for what interests you. Leave the rest. Where's the problem?
Orca? | ??️⚧️
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
It's almost like:Keep hateful people around.
Good people that doesn't tolerate assholes left, or refuse to join.
"Why did they go?! Must be woke!"🤡
Irene Zhang
@mekkaokereke this is great on Mastodon when you host your own server.
Duncan Bayne
@mekkaokereke The marketplace of ideas means you don't have to shop at McDonald's if there's better food available.
The Evil Microwizard
@mekkaokereke The marginal cost is at least slightly positive, I would think, given the mental space not occupied and the negativity avoided. 😎👍 Or to use an anime reference:
Lady Errant
@mekkaokereke It's almost always disingenuous on their part. They don't care about the marketplace of ideas, they want someone to be forced to listen (and agree) with them. Their girlfriend made them sleep on the couch for this crap and now YOU are going to listen to their Very Important Ideas(tm).
Pengilly
@mekkaokereke Bookmarking this for a rainy day. I often feel guilty about blocking people, particularly preemptively, even if they've shown consistently that they lack the maturity to engage in good faith. I honestly hadn't considered the fact that there's no shortage of better people to interact with, and I'll try to keep that in mind. :ablobcatheart:
Alaric Snell-Pym
@mekkaokereke the thing about the "marketplace of ideas" argument is that it's only a marketplace if people play by the rules. That's how a marketplace works. People can only claim to participate in the "marketplace of ideas" if they actually debate in good faith, and other participants are welcome to protect the marketplace by shunning them, just like fraudsters and theives being kicked out of a commercial marketplace.
Silver Huskey
@mekkaokereke Once I stopped feeling bad about blocking people my enjoyment of social media increased.
No, I don't have to listen to bad faith arguments. It's freedom of speech, not obligation to listen. :blobcatcoffee:
Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)
@mekkaokereke this is exactly how I feel about online dating.
I do not suffer fools gladly.
Rupert
@kitten_tech @mekkaokereke In the marketplace of ideas, a whole system of right wing think tanks exists to dump poisonous ideas at below cost.
John Maxwell
@errant @mekkaokereke - Yup. You wanna talk to me about a marketplace of ideas?
Fine.
First order of business is a standard of behavior, and how we enforce it.
That was the original point of markets; special enforcement applied as well as special tolerance, and everything was done openly with witnesses.
Misuse Case
@kitten_tech @AngelaPreston @mekkaokereke This is funny because I made a joke to someone this morning about how we need regulation for the marketplace of ideas
John Maxwell
@errant @mekkaokereke - And the important part of that is learning to ask: "How would I know if I were wrong?" instead of "How can I prove I'm right?"
Lady Errant
@jmax @mekkaokereke Given recent history I'm likely to open one of my seven mouths and sing the song that ends the Earth if someone actually tries to use the "marketplace of ideas" line with me, either in good or bad faith. It has become a dog whistle.
John Maxwell
@errant @mekkaokereke - For the record, I believe extremely strongly in the "marketplace of ideas". But the first rule is respecting reality, and the current version of it is called "science".
Not applicable to everything, and certainly not without limitations and its own problems. But that's the ideal, at least.
poswald
@mekkaokereke some people think blocking is bad because it limits your voice and your ideas won’t get out into that part of the world. But those guys aren’t listening anyway
wet forest moon folklorist
@mekkaokereke there IS effectively an infinite supply, I always think of them as droid soldiers coming over a hill. you could totally exasperate yourself defeating each one only to succumb to another wave of fresh reply guys seconds later
arceuthobium
@mekkaokereke there’s plenty of spoiled milk in the marketplace of ideas. None of us are obligated to drink it, and pulling it off the shelves is good for everyone.
Dan Neuman 🇨🇦
@mekkaokereke That's my perspective as well. You get more free speech if you exclude hate speech. If you include hate speech, then you lose *all* the speech from the victims. It's a loss for society because minorities have the unique perspectives you don't have in the dominant culture.
Thad
@mekkaokereke One of the things I've noticed about dudes (and it's almost exclusively dudes) who preach the importance of markets — whether that's literal free markets or the marketplace of ideas — is that they really seem to have a lot of trouble understanding that the point of a free market is that nobody has to buy shit they don't want.
Max Gross
@mekkaokereke I usually have a few go's at attempting a rational discussion but it always ends the same puerile, abusive way... and that's when I block.
Benoît Jones
@Thad @mekkaokereke
Also, in a marketplace of ideas, you only need one of each, so if there's a million dudes with the same idea, you only need to listen to one of them.
Jürgen Hubert
@mekkaokereke When I was still on Twitter, I used some mass-blocking tools to block anyone who liked certain particularly horrible opinions of particularly loathsome people. I must have blocked tens of thousands of accounts, and this was the only thing made Twitter in its late stages remotely bearable. Of course, when they changed the API and disabled those tools, that was my final cue to get out of there.
Everyone is entitled to say their piece of mind, but no one is entitled to a captive audience. And any social media which violates _this_ part of the social contract won't get any of my time.
mekka okereke :verified:
The US has never really had free speech. Ever.🤷🏿♂️
There's never been a point in US history when Black folk could speak freely without severe consequences from their government. By severe consequences, I mean government programs designed to falsely imprison or execute them.
Slavery was obvious.
To Jim Crow: cops & politicians targeting "uppity" negroes.
To COINTELPRO.
To "Black Identity extremists."
US free speech usually just means "Let the nazis talk"
1/N
ktp_programming
@dan613 @mekkaokereke
Maybe it is because USA was born with that principle of free speech that they have a hard time what it meant not having it. Free speech is about not being persecuted by officials for stating an opinion, about the state, about the church, about science. It has never been about gaining access to a platform or a right to a public.
Free speech applied to hate speech gives them the right to not be jailed for stating their opinion in a KKK rag.
Free speech also means that everyone is free to set up rule in their media, social or otherwise, to select opinions it wants published.
mekka okereke :verified:
And the most obvious: voting is arguably the most important form of free speech. But it's 2024, and there has never been a single presidential election in US history where it was as easy for Black people to vote as it is for white people to vote.
I don't think most folk in the US realize how shameful that is. We just... kinda accept it. We don't realize that we're the only major country that restricts the free speech of *an entire race* this way.
2/N
mekka okereke :verified:
The US government had a specific program for "neutralizing" people who they perceived as a threat. Neutralizing is... what it sounds like.
MLK was targeted by the US government for neutralization. For how speech!
All civil rights leaders were targeted, because saying "There should be less racism, maybe?" was seen as dangerous. And MLK was perceived to be "The most dangerous negroe" because of his "I have a dream" speech.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111759677741315727
3/N
mekka okereke :verified:
So no, the 1st amendment isn't real, if it's "Yes, you can say what you want! But if you say stuff and you're Black, your government might murder you for it, under an official tax-payer funded program."
Similarly, the 2nd amendment isn't real either. Because it's "Yes, you can be armed if you want! But if you're armed and you're Black, there's a pretty good chance that your government will murder you in the street without hesitation, and without consequence."
4/4
Strange Culprits
@mekkaokereke @ktp_programming @dan613 RIP brother Fred Hampton ✊🏽
Strange Culprits
@mekkaokereke @ktp_programming @dan613 💯
We went into this latest debacle with so few of us knowing the first thing about this aspect of our actual history.
And why? Well duh, people who look like the slave masters on our money don't want that shit taught to kids, they might reject the whole disgusting notion
Auka Kapak
@mekkaokereke @ktp_programming @dan613 I think it's not just the US but most of the Americas countries where the dominant classes were of European descent. Here in Argentina, for example, the african descending populations were not only used as cannon fodder but also erased from official history for a century and a half. And aboriginal peoples were also denied, suffered genocide and their mere existence disregarded in a blattantly way.
MemphisDaPlaya 🎲🎲
I block them immediately. I don't suffer fools.
Boots Chantilly
@mekkaokereke One of my life mottos has always (even in an analog world) been, “You don’t actually need to hear from the trash; just put it out by the curb & forget about it.”
RegressionToTheMeme
@mekkaokereke 😄 The "marketplace of ideas" is all the red flag I need to block a MF.
Bro, scientists don't find the truth by burying it in a deluge of never-ending bullshit and seeing if anyone can pick it out of a lineup. That's just dumb.. 😆
mekka okereke :verified:
🤣
Kevin Riggle
@TeeCeeGee @mekkaokereke I for one look forward to some SEC enforcement actions in the marketplace of ideas to ensure a fair and level playing field for all market participants
Clay Rivers
@mekkaokereke I am all over this!! I don’t enjoy blocking people, BUT I don’t have a problem shutting angry dudes down by blocking or simply ignoring them. I dont have for time for that.
Joanna Holman
@mekkaokereke marketplace of ideas is such a silly metaphor that bears no resemblance to any market I’ve ever been to. I have never been to a market where I have wanted or had the ability to buy everything. Any market with more than a couple of stalls that required every visitor to examine the contents of every stall would be essentially unusable. Market stall holders yelling at people to look at what they have drive a lot of customers away
Dean Johnson
@mekkaokereke I largely stopped arguing on the internet, inspite of loving it, when I realized that all I was doing was asking someone to be right. A rando person on the internet, who I don’t know or care about. Instead I have adopted the “t-shirt cannon” method and lob my knowledge bombs into the crowd and move on, never looking back. I leave the scene at peak mutual value.
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