Back in the day, I was very skeptical and sluggish about cutting off friends or blocking pages and people on social media, but these days, I don't think twice before blocking someone and deleting everything concerning the person or page. These days, I prioritise my mental health a lot, and once I notice the slightest threat to my mental health, I kick the person off my sight. Should I be swallowing and accommodating everything that comes my way? No na!
Look at this:
There was a time I logged into Facebook, which is one of my most-used social media platforms, and came across a post showing a human body being butchered. Hold on, it wasn't AI, and it wasn't done on an experimental basis. It was a cannibalistic act in the bush, and the person who posted it did so as a quote or reshare on his account. He did that without adding a graphic content warning, and Facebook didn't even dim the post as a way of marking it as sensitive content.
When I saw it, my body system reacted immediately, and I didn't think twice before visiting the person's profile and blocking him. FGS! This is the modern age, and people should know how to go about making sensitive posts like that.
I don't just block people when they post sensitive things without adding a warning; I also block people who repeatedly post things that annoy me. Hold on, I'm not a sadist, please. There are people who are just known for posting annoying things, either because they're after clout or because they're foolish about what they're doing.
There's this guy I know from home. He's into politics now, and he talks very loudly about this government that 95% of Nigerians are against. It's not as if it's wrong for him to have and support his preferred candidate, but what we know, and what is very true, is that anybody campaigning for the government is obviously fighting for their own pocket and doesn't care whether the government is tormenting people or not. I woke up one day, and the first post I came across on Facebook was about the political party, and voooooom, I blocked him immediately. Till today, he's still on my blocklist, and I'm not sure he's ever going to come out of that prison.
WhatsApp?
I used to be very soft on WhatsApp until the rampant messages became too much to handle, and I just had to start using the block button to get some peace. I don't often block relatives or friends on WhatsApp. I just unsave their numbers and delete them. I don't like stress.
As ugly as it sounds, I have a lot of friends from this Hive community whose numbers I no longer have in my contact list. I didn't block them; I just unsaved their numbers, and that was it.
Currently, I have 61 accounts blocked on my WhatsApp list. It's been like this for several months, and maybe it'll hit 80 before the year ends.
Thanks for reading.
Photo: Screenshot from my WhatsApp account.