How To Actually Keep People You Don't Like Away From Your Blog
and why DNI's don't work and are kinda... weird?
I see a lot of folks on tumblr (and sometimes other sites) so desperately try to keep racists or bigots or whatever off of their blog. But it's almost always in the form of a "DNI" (or "Do Not Interact") a small or sometimes huge list of descriptors of the kind of people the user doesn't want interacting with that blog.
But the issue is... 99% of the labels of people listed aren't concepts people self identify with.
People who are racist, xenophobic or commit crimes DON'T SELF IDENTIFY AS RACISTS, BIGOTS OR CRIMINALS!!!
Which then completely and utterly makes the concepts of DNIs pointless.
They will read that DNI go "oh! this doesn't apply to to me" and ignore it. Boom completely useless piece of text taking up precious space on your blog for no reason. And even on the tiiiiniest chance you list a label that someone might identify with... they can just.. ignore it if they like ur content..
so in short.. DNI's do nothing.. except they DO do one thing... They fill your blog, bio or intro post (or god forbid every post) with a bunch of potentially triggering words and tons of negative energy. For literally no reason. Nothing makes me assume a blogger is annoying or unfun to be around like seeing a DNI. And not to mention all the times i've had my day ruined by trying to enjoy scrolling thru a tag only to be constantly blasted with "HEY REMEMBER THAT [insert horrible thing] EXISTS???". It sucks. And it's driving me mad.
But I'm not just here to rant about it, about how awful they are and that noone should use them. I understand that people want to enjoy their time on their internet and curate your space, so i'm going to show you the SUPER easy SUPER effective way to actually do that. And it can go RIGHT where your DNI is!
HOW TO ACTUALLY KEEP PEOPLE YOU DON'T LIKE OFF YOUR BLOG IN ONE EASY STEP:
List the things you DO support.
That's it.
Take your DNI and invert it. List all the groups you support. Wanna keep terfs off your blog? say I LOVE TRANS PEOPLE!!! TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN! want to keep racists off your blog? I SUPPORT BIPOC RIGHTS. etc etc.
How does this work? Well lets go back to that hypothetical racist on the internet: They come strolling upon ur blog dum dee dum and now they see ur intro and bio. They see that you support bipoc rights, landback movements and insert other movements that support marginalized groups. Said hypothetical racists will see that, go 'ew' and then leave. Probably.
is it 100% effective? no. many ppl don't even read bios or intro posts and some folks follow ppl they disagree with. But for the most aggressive of these types? 10-20% of them going ew and leaving is better than 0% doing anything after reading a DNI they don't believe applies to them.
But that's not the only thing this method does. Because here's the thing.. I don't really believe people have DNI's to keep people off their blog. Shocking.. i know. For most ppl it's a list of their morals so they can show off how 'morally good' they are. Which is a whole can of nasty worms I'll go into in another post. But for now I'll take it at face value and go with it. And tell you that if you want to broadcast your morals, why do it with hate?? Because all that does is spread that hate and negativity, all it does is remind all the marginalized folks who you DO want around, of all the people who suck and hate them and making feeling like shit. But a support list? a list of groups you support? well now you just have a paragraph dedicated to love, the folks you actually want interacting with you will be like 'oh damn, they like and support my people. awesome :)'
and to me that is far faaaar more important than just listing down all the people you hate.
That's it for my ramble on this topic- "oh but mr throwawayblog what about [x, y, z] or people who disagree with me on [x stupid internet discourse topic]?" that is once again another nasty can of worms that I will be saving for future posts, either on this blog or another. But it's a lot harder pill to swallow then this. And I want this post to be shareable enough to spread at least somewhat and reduce the amount of DNI's im forced to look at. by idk, at least 10%?? at least?? please?????
thanks and good night.
*This does not apply to minor's DNI requests on 18+ accounts. While also not.. super useful.. it at least makes sense and has a precedent. This post is not talking abt that.
