muted, blocked, ghosted & cancelled — oh my! the online social battlefield!

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I’ve been wanting to record a video like this for a while, mainly to capture my thoughts on how fragments comms have become and why now in 2020 and beyond we need to make sure we take extra care, security and create ‘trusted circles’ of people we know.

I also wanted to put my take on each of these words and how they play out when I actually use them — i use them quite aggressively on a day to day basis so it’s important to discuss what they mean to me when i use them — with the advent of the new ‘cancelled culture’ terms for so called ‘celebs’ i think it’s important to open this all up.

They are all subtlety different and I’ve experience all of them in some way or another — of course not like the ‘celeb’ do but i can certainly understand the ‘sheep’ group think of when people do that to ‘cancel’ someone out of a conversation but it does not feel the general narrative ‘bubble’ — bit like climate change and the way deniers will use absolutely everything against it.

Anyway, that’s not really where i wanted to go on this!

Let’s break em down.

MUTED
I use mute a lot and not for the reason you might think, most people might use mute just because you don’t want to hear from that person but you don’t want to totally stop them from reading what you put out (block and they know about it, often with no reason) — but for me, it’s not just that i already know that we don’t see life in the same way but i don’t want to insult a person by leaving snarky comments on a post i don’t agree with — muting is something i don’t do right away but often after i realise i don’t enjoy receiving content in my feed or ever would be able to build a relationship with that person.

BLOCKED
The ban hammer, in some ways this can feel like a ‘cancel’ but i feel it’s more severe, i don’t want to see your content and i don’t want you to stalk mine either, i have visions of people looking/waiting for content they can react to, this ‘reactionary’ commentary is always designed for one thing and that’s to annoy and frustrate, best to just remove that from your feed — nobody needs to have process things they don’t want too. I’ll also instantly block a social account with no profile picture, no content or a user name like @bob12691236

GHOSTED
This is the most frustrating one to me, especially when you have opened a dialog in a direct message and then you just don’t get a reply, I’m not a ‘chaser’ down kind of person and just take the lack of respect of no reply as a ‘no’ — that’s on me, i realise that i should probably chase down for an answer for that’s also a way to drive someone away and then you become a blocked!

I have this happen a lot on twitter, fiver and udemy — people ask you for examples and then do not have the decency to give you a reply, even if it’s just ‘sorry, this is not right for us’ or ‘we are looking for something different right now’ — just give people some decency when it comes to a reply especially if a direct message has been started.

CANCELLED
This one is a new one for me but it’s a thing that’s out there. So much so that there is a ‘culture’ around it, i found a description about it

A variant of the term, cancel culture, describes a form of boycott in which someone (usually a celebrity) who has shared a questionable or unpopular opinion, or has had behavior in their past that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media is “canceled”; they are completely boycotted

.. . Typical social media in the 2020’s the notion of a ‘boycott’ — i don’t know how you can’t potentially upset SOMEONE on the internet (unless of course it really is harsh and offensive) the notion that people groundswell around this is a sad reflection of the state of public comms tbh, no wonder everything is going family & friends and private app areas.

Verify, Verify and Verify Again!

My mission from 2020 onwards is to build a social network grid of 150 people in my day to day digital community that all know of each other, all willing to work with each other or at least communicate with each other and are real people, open to communicate and discuss the complexity of life together!

ideally they would be verified profiles, video, audio, content already on the internet and with a clear life mission — i think this 150 strong group of people could really help each other in life, imagine having a group of 150 friends you could count on as you traverse the world around you — being part of a tribe.

What about you, when do you use those processes above?

P.S — if you want to join THE 150 we have a steem community ready for you to join, drop us an introduction post and let’s get into it together! --- https://beta.steemit.com/trending/hive-101442 -- see ya! :)

(Need to make some animated banners here for all my hive groups)

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