If I ignore/block them, it allows them to continue unchallenged. I hate getting into it with them, since they are a baseline idiot.
I guess that’s it. I saw a person with a 6 month account spouting garbage, was gonna block but thought perhaps that wasn’t morally responsible. Wondering what the options were.
My conscience. assuaged.
If that’s the case, I’d recommend treating them like spam: reply and you’ll get a lot more.
Mostly, it’s a huge emotional and time investment if you want to change someone’s behavior and from what I gather, it’s a one on one type of thing and really hard. If you want to stop them from interacting negatively with others, your best action would be to report them.
If you’re upset and want to vent, then engaging will be fun for a while, but mostly futile in terms of behaviour adjustments.
If I respond, it’s mostly for the ‘audience’. I used to argue on r/libertarian or r/conservative, not to change the other person’s mind, but to add a different opinion to the thread. I doubt I ever convinced the other person of anything, but hope I got other people to think a bit more about some of the policies being advocated for.
This makes it look like the post is popular and draws more attention. Depending on the platform, it signals the algorithm to show it to more people.
Doing this is engaging exactly the way they expect you to engage, it helps no one.