Phosphor [&]

Yeah, like, I've seen some adults who get way into this (and I do understand, to a degree, if a big part of your life is being Creative Online) but so very often the person is like... still in grade school, and I try to limit my interactions with those folks regardless.

But lately when I've thought about the concept of a "DNI", I often find that the kinds of things you'd really want to use in combination with "DNI" are usually the kind of things that need not be said anyhow; why DNI when you can just block if that kind of person shows up? What kind of person be the kind warned by a "DNI" but also heed the warning/demand? Maybe something with how tumblr worked on a technical level.

Yeah no, I have the same exact feelings! Like, for example, someone saying "racists DNI". It's like:

• Like. Everyone is racist, because no one escapes learning fucked up things from society. I'm POC and I'm still racist - I have some ingrained antiblackness that I'm doing my best to excise, but it's still there!
• And like, I know that in this example it's pretty obvious that this refers to "blatant fashy racist assholes" but there's also just... a lot of people who are racist in subtler ways, in ways that even they don't recognize as racism. And then there's the whole issue with people labeling stuff racism when it isn't, or doing what's ostensibly antiracism in really fucking racist ways, but that's a diatribe for another post. Anyway, the point is, the people you're hoping to keep away with that won't stay away and putting "racists DNI" is not going to keep your experience racism-free.

I do think there's some use in having DNIs to show where you stand in niche slapfights that nonetheless have an outsized impact on people in those niche communities. (See: plural exclusionism. A lot of plural folks are afraid to interact with anyone who doesn't explicitly say where they stand on the topic of Which Systems Are Valid, which is sad but understandable.) But even then, I feel like there are better ways to communicate that you are someone who is safe than slapping a bunch of Terms on a DNI, like saying "inclusive of all plurals" or "I will block exclusionists" or something. Something that gives people information without putting the onus on them to make or not make the move.

And yeah, I think it's an outgrowth of like... How Tumblr Is. I don't have a link on hand, but there was some good discussion about how everyone everywhere on Tumblr (and Twitter) gets mashed together all the time, unlike, say, LiveJournal, where you had more options for privacy and had to go a little further out to discover people. Combine that with a lack of tools for curating your experience (read: blocking people in a way that matters) and a young userbase who's still learning how to social, and you get all these antipatterns.

I've enjoyed using it in semi ironic use, i.e. "Safari DNI" for posts that have have an opus encoded ogg container marked as m4a 🤫 (and thus will not play in safari). I hope no one takes this joke the wrong way.

ALSO NO this is the correct way to use DNIs I think

I ACTUALLY LAUGHED OUT LOUD THANK YOU FOR CLOWNING ON IT