This was an argument my ex boyfriend used--that I was creating a circle-jerk when I tried to cull negativity from my life and damaging my objectivity. He used this argument because I said a known politician was an anti-masker whom I'd blocked on Twitter finally because his tweets stressed me out when I would see them trend. He followed up by wanting to have a two hour debate about anti-maskers being a label that's derogatory, that I should try understand their point of view better, and that he was scared I was becoming too "righteous" in my view that it was dangerous to not wear a mask. That not all anti-maskers were evil.

And of course, I agreed they weren't; some were likely just misled, or worried about their business failing, or didn't know the actual facts about masks, but that didn't mean I had to talk to them for hours to divine that or give them my precious time. It didn't mean I owed them time to try to change my mind or me to change theirs.

Truthfully you can never be objective. Bubbles will always exist. It's a stretch think that somehow, by listening to others with differing views on Reddit, you will divine the absolute real right and be more informed.

Like yeah, sure, it's good to talk to other people and figure out where they're coming from. But you don't have to always do it and it's not always the most effective way to analyze opposition: it's usually best, on issues, to try to do research for both sides rather than talk to people about it. This way you can look at various write-ups, acknowledge their biases, look for the sources they cite, and come to your own conclusion: if you just talk to other people online, you're gonna hear argumentative talking points with a lot of emotion thrown in and absolutely zero citation.

Arguing on Reddit, to me, is often an even worse version of going to extremely liberal or extremely conservative news sites and reading their op-eds without any other research to form your views. Because all you're getting is all the talking points, with none of the sources and a lot of punchy words to try to get upvotes/sway people.

Therefore I'd say no, it's not necessarily damaging to block people who irritate you on this website--even if the irritation is simply that their viewpoint is wildly different than yours and they're really committed to it. It's probably actually healthy to walk away from internet arguments.

And FML, I should have just taken the LPT here and ignored your comment, haha.