I think people get so worried about liberally blocking causing you to get yourself into an echo chamber but honestly that doesn’t sound that realistic of a broad range concern to me.
Firstly the social justice, fandom(I’m here), and aesthetic sides of Tumblr are all gonna have vastly different outcomes just by the nature of the kind of things that tend to start disagreements over in each. But in most cases I don’t think blocking a person a few times a month will ever get you in a situation where you stop seeing opinions and beliefs you disagree with. There’s so many millions of people and every one of them contains multitudes. A person you agree with wholeheartedly on one thing might have beliefs on another thing you just kinda tolerate.
But also I think people hear peoples block criteria and assume they mean “I block people who disagree with me” instead of what people usually mean which is “I block people who do not approach conversations with civility”.
Like, I’ve had brilliant conversations on this site with people I did, and continue to, care about deeply specifically on the topic of our different worldviews! I’ve delved into discussions about the intricacies of the morality of fictional characters and how the interactions of morality within a single story reflect differently on different characters based on what point of view you see the story from. The disagreements are always numerous, yet the basic human respect still stays regardless.
I find what people don’t tend to take into account is how little you can gain from a disagreement with someone who doesn’t have basic human respect for you. There are more and less extreme examples of this across the board. But the people I tend to block after a disagreement are those who felt their beliefs had to be step by step explained to me, yet did not level the conversation to approach me like someone who might learn something from them. Because there is a vast ocean between: 1. A person who believes they have something to teach you and gets on your level to teach with compassion and respect first. And 2. people who are not going to let go of the standpoint that they have some aspect of intelligence over and above you which makes you the idiot with the wrong opinion because you can’t conceive of the right one, and them as the enlightened intellectual who can think about things. That is the difference between a compassionate disagreement between people, and a pointless argument which will bring no real change or even understanding.
Tldr. If you talk to someone like they’re another person just as capable of critical thought as you, you’re probably not gonna get blocked.
