Have I ever muted or blocked prolific and popular Quorans?
Well, what would the point be of muting or blocking taciturn and unpopular Quorans? The whole point is to get people off of my feed that I keep seeing there, and I don’t want to.
Blocks are the results of heavy altercations, and of course Quora doesn’t let you see who you’ve blocked in one place. But I do tend to both mute and block.
The one benign mute I was going to report, I seem to have undone. It was Rob Weir. I am a statist liberal by American standards, but somewhat libertarian by Australian standards, and I wanted to know a bit more about libertarianism. So I started reading Rob Weir’s stuff. And upvoting it, even if I didn’t always like it.
And then Quora turned my feed into Weirapalooza. It was Weir 24/7. It was Weir plus Weir followed by more Weir, and none of it was Thomas Wier, who isn’t spelled the same anyway. It was Beat Back Leviathan: The Movie. It was a Gary Johnson convention. It was Galtgulchageddon.
I wanted to know a bit more about libertarianism: I did not want to be put on the mailing list. I ended up muting him, but I never blocked him, and I felt guilty enough that I unmuted him a year later.
Of the other extremely popular and prolific Quorans… hm, can’t name names, eh.
Interesting: I mute 11 accounts, and block almost all of them. 6 of them have blocked me back, 2 I didn’t know about until now. Three are blocking me because of me being a Quora critic; they have had no other interaction with me. One might be that, or it might be because I called them out by name for a misdeed, in the company of many others. One blocks me because I blocked them and they found out; they were at least civil about it, which I respect (but not enough to unblock them 🙂
I’ll make it +5k followers. That brings it down to 7.
- 2 for being peddlers of chicken soup for the soul pablum that ruins my experience of Quora, and what respect I have for it as a forum. They are the most popular by a ginormous humungous margin.
- 1 for being the worst embodiment of combined 5xTW Entitlementism and ideological self-righteousness (and I never liked what they had to say)
- 1 for being the worst embodiment of combined comment blocking and ideological self-righteousness (I did like what they had to say, but the shtick grew tiring; and I don’t care how much I want the gummint to take away peoples’ guns, if you use the word ammosexual, I no longer care to listen to you)
- 3 for being defenders of Quora Inc in ways I have taken particular offence at (and they have reciprocated by blocking me). It’s not that they have defended Quora Inc per se, but that they have done so in a fashion I consider sneering, oblivious, defensive, and/or unwelcome in my feed.
I’m interested to see that I haven’t muted anyone for being a conservative, and I have muted at least two people who ostensibly are on my side of politics. My feed has done the muting of the opposite side of politics for me. 🙁 (No, not proud of that.) I did block someone for attacking me quite patronisingly when I defended the Australian gummint taking away our guns; but it was the attack that did it, not the “ammosexuality”. And one of the Quora defenders is conservative enough to make me dislike his writings, but that wasn’t why either.