When I first joined Twitter I was naive, cautious and generally unaware as to the twitter verse norms. It took me a while to catch on to how hateful and vitriolic the twitterverse can be.  I just would tweet like a little fluttering bird. I mostly tweeted, in the beginning, about science and travel. Nothing too controversial. Or so I would think.

Then one day,  I tried to look at someone’s Twitter feed, and I came to realize I had been blocked. I couldn’t see their tweets. I was shocked. Number one, I didn’t know one could block people on Twitter. I told you I was rather naive at first regarding Twitter.  Number two, I was left aghast, wondering what had I done to be blocked by someone.
I was shocked to learn that people blocked people on Twitter. What was the point of that? There is a pending court case where Twitter users are suing because the President blocked them and his Twitter account is an official policy statement machine now. Honestly, this blocking phenomena has gotten out of hand.
There is even something called muting on Twitter where you can remove a particular account’s tweets from your feed without on following or blocking that account. Wimps! I joke, just a little. What’s the point of muting? It seems akin to putting one’s finger in the ear. Why not just use an emoji to signal that? I suppose muting highlights a bit how, we in the real world deal with each other. We nod our head to a spouse without really processing what they are saying. We mute a lot in life. But why in the virtual world? Because you crave an audience but don’t wish to reciprocate. That’s one answer.
And this blocking and muting behavior is bleeding into the collective wworkplace. I admit, I do a form of muting when I delete annoying emails. I delete and eventually forget and move on.
Then there is the blocking. Oh my. Staff everywhere block by leaving people off emails trails, and by going the long way to the restroom.
However, there are times when blocking is useful. A network colleague was recently yelled at by another staff member who couldn’t stop yelling. They went on and on feeling self-righteous and aggrieved. They wanted an audience and they took it out on this particular individual. The person being yelled at just calmly looked at the screamer and just let them scream on and on. However, that is the time when a block button would be so useful in the workplace. While blocking and reading are becoming more commonplace, there’s also the phenomena of just yelling and feeling the right to always express one’s opinion. It lends itself to quite a chaotic work world these days.
Maybe people just need either a laxative or some pepto. Just need to chill a little bit.