On blocking, muting and posting

Just the other day, I had an interaction with someone in the Fox News Politics community on Google+ that I would like to share with you. I can’t remember the subject of the post, but I remember how the comments went. One person criticized another for poor spelling and grammar, even when the first suffered the same malady. So I pointed out that the first person had made grammar and spelling errors, too. He said that I had made an error by putting a comma before the word “too”. So I replied with a link to the Chicago Manual of Style with a link to the precise page on the use of a comma followed by “too”.

I came back to the post after receiving notification of a new comment only to find that I was blocked from reading or posting comments. I had an exchange with someone who moderated comments on his post and he blocked me. I don’t usually get blocked, but I was struck by why I got blocked. I don’t use profanity online as a rule and I really did use neutral language to keep it sane. I like to use neutral language to stick to the facts. I was blocked because I presented facts to show that I was right.

Some of you might be wondering what I’m doing there on Fox News Politics. I’m there for exploration. I’m there to check my assumptions. I’m there because I can preach to the choir anytime. I have posted a few of my blog articles there to see what kind of response I get. I can tell you that it’s mostly positive, but it’s interesting.

What I saw exhibited in that community is the impulse to punish more than rational…