hello

——-

“Guys, we have a situation,” Emily rushed down towards the bullpen with JJ behind her, both of them looking equally upset.

“What’s going on?” Reid asked as he sat up straight, alarmed at the way the women were visibly shaken. JJ made eye contact with them all, her voice grave as she replied.

“Ilikepipecleanerswitheyes was just terminated on tumblr.”

A chorus of disbelieving comments left the group. Rossi frowned, the lines on his face growing deeper as his anger became visible.

“Where’s Garcia? She’ll undo this.”

———-

“Is it done yet?”

Penelope chuckled as her friends looked over her work desk. They were all eagerly anticipating the revival of their favorite tumblr blog and the excitement radiating off of them was noticeable.

“Are you kidding? Tumblr has the worst security system I’ve ever seen. Might as well have guarded that with kittens.”

“Garcia.”

“Yes, she’s back up again,” Penelope smiled as she refreshed the page to show that the blog was up and running again. “I’ve even blocked tumblr from terminating her again. If they try, their servers will fry.”

“How’d you do that?” Emily asked.

People get to decide who they do and don’t want to talk to.

Online, part of what that means is that people can block each other. People who don’t want to talk to each other can make the conversation stop.

If someone blocks someone else, all it means is that they’ve decided to stop talking to them. In almost all cases, you have every right to do that.

Blocking someone doesn’t mean you’ve lost an argument. (Similarly, if someone else blocks you, that doesn’t mean you’ve won or that you’re better than them.) It just means that you’ve chosen to stop talking to someone.

There’s nothing wrong with ending a conversation. You don’t have to interact with everyone who wants your attention. You have the right to have boundaries and you have the right to use technology to enforce them.

The only time it’s wrong to block people is if they are entitled to your attention for some reason. That’s rare, and mostly applies to corporations and elected officials.