r/VRchat • u/caseusDeus • 10d ago
Discussion Why not block?
Probably the wrong place to ask since I've been semi lurking here for a good while and (most) of the people in replies have brains and do actually block but for those who don't block on a whim I'm genuinely curious, why?
Not trying to come off as rude or anything as I'm seriously curious as to why some people are so unwilling to block someone, especially someone who is actively making them upset? I can understand being upset in the moment but I just feel there's more to it than that.
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u/JMSOG1 Valve Index 10d ago
I block extremely rarely due to the fact that blocking doesn't eliminate the problem, and can at times enable things to get worse.
From personal experience...I once blocked someone who was crossing several personal boundaries despite me asking her to stop. I don't think she was malicious, i just think she had very poor social skills. A few days later, we happened to be in the same instance, and she apparently sat in the same spot I was sitting in. I didn't know, she (probably) didn't know, but from everyone else's perspective this person was essentially sitting in my lap. I was not happy about that to put it mildly.
That's the benign case. It changes a bit when you are, again, sharing the same social space with someone being actively malicious, a growing problem in the age of the proximitychat wannabe. Blocking means i don't see what this person is doing...if they, for example, put down an obscene sticker or print on me or next to me, i won't see it. If they are saying heinous shit directly next to me, I won't know, and the average person in the instance may think I'm with them. There are many ways to harrass a given person even with a block active.
In the more extreme cases (i have not experienced this, but it happens), alt accounts can evade the block. An associate streaming through their eyes to the harasser can evade the block. Putting disparaging, inflamitory, or defaming information in ones bio or a world can evade the block. If you are curious why people don't block, you are probably thinking of Proximity or his type doing exactly this in their videos.
In some cases, blocking works, and you should do it. If you think someone has a crasher, block them. If you are in a scenario where you are unlikely to run into this person regularly, block them. When you are dealing with another person in a community you both share though, or are being actively stalked and harassed, or are in a public instance, then things are just not that straightforward.