Why Am I Forced To See This Asshole In My Feed?

It doesn’t matter when you block people. If Medium wants to force people on you, it will.

This is not an article. This is not a rant. This is about me discovering, albeit slowly, that all social platforms are trash and always will be.

A guy — you know the type — a faux feminist, faux woke, a man who uses his good guy persona to slip into your life and, over time, making you feel extremely uncomfortable, a man who women talk about on the down low but never publicly because of all the other women who swoon and fall at his feet. You have several interactions with this guy, which become increasingly bizarre, sexual, and uncomfortable to the point where you block him on every platform, thinking you won’t have to see his work, his bullshit ever again, until Medium decides to ignore the people you’ve blocked, because, by god, they have to let you know how much they love certain writers.

So much so that they have to force them down your throat every single time you visit your homepage.

This is a guy who once admitted to me that he created different profiles just to troll people. Guys, mostly, as if that matters. As if I would be impressed he trolled a writer for which we both had mutual disdain. Because here’s the thing — if I don’t like someone, I don’t engage with them. Period. End of sentence. I don’t create profiles to leave them comments. I don’t troll them. I don’t devote time to people who don’t matter.

And no, I’m not going to out the guy (don’t even conjecture or ask), out the bullshit, but it’s making me realize a platform I’ve been on since 2013 is no longer a warm, welcoming place. That it’s always about money (of course, it is) and never about what makes people who play on this platform comfortable.

When I block someone, I want them completely and utterly out of my reading experience. How is this so hard to comprehend? How is this so hard to respect? Granted, no one gives a fuck what I think, but it’s honestly infuriating.

My Substack.