Check Yourself - Unfollowing & Blocking on RPL

Rejection. It stings, and makes a lot of us wonder what we did wrong. Our first instinct is to lash out, to demand to know what happened so we can fight against it, offer an excuse/explanation, or so that we at least know what not to do for next time. On Facebook, people lived in fear that unfollowing or blocking someone would cause them to be blacklisted. That one wrong move could get their accounts disabled by a vindictive person. People shouldn't have to feel that way while participating in a hobby that should be fun for them.

That's why on RoleplayLives, we set up the rule that people can unfollow or block for any reason, and you are not owed an explanation of that reason. Nor can you then go blasting your displeasure at them on the walls. You might not like that rule. Tough. Life isn't fair, and everyone doesn't owe you an explanation for everything that you don't like. People should not be afraid to unfollow/block someone they don't want to be friends with, for fear that the person will then attack them or make a scene in public.

However, people deserve a chance to understand what they're doing that is causing a majority of issues so that they can grow, work on changes, and possibly avoid those issues in the future. To that end, we posted a survey that actual users could take to submit their responses on why they personally unfollow or block people. We hope that by doing this, users can see what ACTUAL users show as their reasons, and can take steps to either amend their behaviors or understand why the issue exists and accept it.

When we posted, 200 active RPL users answered the call. Thank you for everyone that helped out with this!

We are going to start with the top reasons that users unfollow /block, and work our way down. In this way, we hope to be able to clarify some things, as well as refute some lingering rumors that persist as reasonings behind some user actions. On with the show, shall we?

They appear to be involved in a lot of drama. A full 74.5% selected this as their reason. We've posted about this time and time again, but perhaps seeing it like this will finally get the point across. People do not like seeing rants on a page. They do not want to see your statuses about bullying, about interpersonal issues. They don't want to see your complaints about other groups, about other writing. They don't want to see your relationship quarrels. When people see that you can't seem to stay out of other people's business or seem to have a problem getting along with other people, they do not see a person they want to take the time to get to know.

Complaints about other members. In close second at 73.5, we have this one. It generally runs concurrent with reason number one. When you post about other members, you make yourself look bad. You may think you're being sly by not using names, but anyone who has seen who you interact with or are mutual friends know exactly who you are talking about. It's immature, bitchy, and petty. If you're having an issue with another member, posting their name is against the TOS. Posting private conversations is against the TOS. Screaming about them or your issues is a quick way to get yourself in trouble on the site, and to lose friends fast.

People see this behavior and they don't see a person "sticking up for themselves" and "speaking their minds". They see a person that will turn on friends the second something doesn't go their way. They see a person that isn't going to be worth the trouble, because gods forbid the slightest misstep will be met with this kind of behavior directed at them. It isn't worth it to damage your reputation by acting like this, and the only people you attract with these kinds of posts are the ones that revel in this and bring more drama.

Too many OOC posts. Coming in at 69%, we have OOC posts. Too many people don't understand why this is a problem here, so they seem stunned to realize they're being unfollow ed for it. People come here to relax and write, and to read other people's writing. We are all dealing with OOC issues. We all have depression, sick family members, job/school stress, 100,000 other things bothering us. That's why we roleplay, to escape from that. We don't want to log in and be slapped in the face with 3 dozen complaints of the same crap we're trying to get away from.

If you want to do nothing but talk about real life things, then use Twitter or Facebook as a real life network. People want to read your writing here. They want to log in and see writing content, to lose themselves in roleplay. They don't want to read your political views, your job woes, your health condition stuff. They don't want to know that your parents are mad at you or that it's nice so you're going for a walk or heading down to the craft store.

If you have good friends here who want to know those things, that's what inbox is for. If people see that all you do is post random things that aren't writing content, they are likely to block or unfollow you in order to keep writing content in their feeds. It's not personal, you're just killing their mood and flooding their feed with things they don't want to see.

No writing on their profile, lack of bio, lack of initiative in presenting themselves as a writer. At 66.5%, this is one item often overlooked that shouldn't be. RoleplayLives is, first and foremost, a writing site. When people send friend requests, they look at your profile first. When they look at a new friend's page and see no blogs, no real bio, nothing posted on the page except pictures and a few scattered posts, generally they unfollow right away. Those people then post a status whining about people not giving them a chance.

You aren't giving yourself a chance. People need to see that you take yourself seriously as a writer. At the very least, get a bio up about your character, so people know who you are and a bit about your character. Post a sample solo blog, so people can see how you play your character and your style of writing. Keep your profile clean of OOC posts, tons of photos, rants, and random whiny statuses, as explained in the above sections.

Never post about how you have crap writing so that people will stroke your ego and tell you differently, how people just don't pay attention to you, or "whore" out your writing for more attention. Frankly, it looks bad and will not encourage people to pay more attention to you.

Don't post "Send Me Starters". It looks like you have no initiative and no ideas for yourself, and like you are waiting on the other person to do all the work. It leaves a bad impression, and is the number one reason why people doing this are the first to then complain that no one writes with them. Quality content is key. If all you're doing is complaining about lack of writing while not showcasing any actual writing, people will not write with you.

Unstable account, deletes or renames frequently, causing loss of continuation. Coming in at a solid 63.5%, this is one we see incredibly often that people really don't seem to realize why it's an issue. Recreating an account once or twice isn't a big deal, people do it often. Recreating more than that is a big red flag. People do not like losing their work. Even if you save things and repost them, they've lost the original notifications. They've lost the links. They have to re-do their thread trackers, their bookmarks. Their friends are no longer following the work. Any friends that wanted to continue following now have to friend your new account and re-follow the new blog.

All of this has to be done each time you re-create an account. Not only that, but it wreaks havoc in the site databases, so anyone who knows the tiniest bit about how websites work will be annoyed that you're adding drag to the site for everyone. Most people will not write with others that seem flaky and like they'll drop a roleplay whenever they feel like it. Part of roleplay is making long term commitments to storyline arcs and building a rapport. Someone who disappears frequently shows that they do not have the patience or ability to be a good partner, and people will not see them as someone they can feel safe investing their time and energy in.

Immediately requests sexual RPs or sends sexual interactions. Doesn't respect the relationship on the profile. We're going to go ahead and put these two together, as they generally go hand in hand. People. "Want sum fuk?" is funny as a meme. It's pathetic in actual life. No one appreciates being treated as a hole to stick your body part in.

People want to be treated like actual people with brains and faces and pieces besides genitals. We're all grown, this shouldn't even need to be said, but judging from a 62.5% showing, it's a huge problem. Becky doesn't want sum fuk. Becky's sick of your shit. Bitches don't love sticks, bitches love men that actually can have a conversation that doesn't start with "nice tits, here, suck my cock."

If a relationship status is on the profile, they are not interested, and they don't want some fuk in inbox. You are not God's gift to mated people, you will not be the one that "sways" them to cheat. Knock it off. No means no, in every language. If people tell you they aren't interested, back off and leave them alone. If you do not or you make them uncomfortable, it should come as no surprise when you are ultimately unfollowed and/or blocked. You're being a perv. People don't like that. This isn't a newsflash. Yes, this goes for the thirsty women as well. It's scary to hear, but not all men want women all up on them in chat right after they accept a friend request. Some might like to at least say hello first.

Too many photo posts, breaks feed. At 61.5%, this is another we've mentioned often. When people upload too many photo posts at one time, it breaks the feeds for their friends. This means ALL content in their feed disappears. This can be enormously frustrating, because since the feeds are hidden, they can't even tell who broke it.

Sometimes admins can find and fix it, but other times they just have to wait for new content to be posted, meaning they've lost all the content that came before that. For people that want to see what their friends are writing, this can put a damper on their enjoyment of the site. Once they find which friend is uploading tons of photos, they unfollow to keep their feed stable.

This is simple to solve. After uploading photos, simply go to your profile wall and remove those photo feeds. This simple action can help make sure you're not frustrating your friends and hiding everyone's writing content for ALL your friends. This way, you aren't getting unfollowed for something that's so easy to fix.

Rude or antagonistic character/driver. At 51%, many also clarified this in the "Other" section, so we'll go through those answers here as well. Rude/antagonistic characters are fine if there is a plotted reason for the character to act in such a way. Or if the character in canon is kind of a dick. If you just insert yourself everywhere being rude though, that's not necessary, and can quickly turn people off.

If you play an antagonistic character, the best way to handle this would be to contact people behind the scenes, introduce yourself and your character, and ask if it would be alright with them for you to hop on a post or to plot with them. Don't just assume that everyone knows who your character is and how they act. Many people might not be familiar with your character or genre, and might take what you're saying as an attack to them personally because they don't know if you're even in character or not.

If you insult another character's intelligence or nature, whether directly or indirectly, people take offense to that. If you post a starter without asking if it's okay first and the setting is somewhere you shouldn't be and you get angry when they try to correct you, they have every right to unfollow you as you are showing you're incapable of compromising. Godmodding their character or ghosting their characters thoughts/actions/reactions without explicit permission all counts under this, as it's a way for you to get what you want without taking their feelings or character into consideration.

Responding IC to an OCC post, or OOC to an IC post on someone else's wall is rude, and derails conversation between other people. If you're not sure what a conversation is about or whether you have something to add, ask! Don't bumble your way in and risk potentially upsetting a hornets nest if you've possibly misconstrued the situation.

If you are rude and belligerent behind the scenes though, that is fairly inexcusable. People come here to relax and enjoy writing. If you're obstinate and mean to people for no reason, they have no reason to keep you around, and you really have no reason to then be stunned that people won't interact with you. If people have a rule blog posted, read it and abide by it. Respect the driver and the character, and appreciate that they're taking the time to write with you. Practice being polite, and people might respond better to you, and respect you in return.

Content of their writing is something I don't enjoy reading. At 44%, this one is negated somewhat by proper handling. Some people don't enjoy reading adult content. Others prefer not to read rape, or abuse. Some don't like reading gore or things with puppies or whales, what have you. Everyone is entitled to their own likes/dislikes here, but as long as things follow the TOS, they are allowed to be posted.

With trigger warnings and blog tags, many people can avoid content they don't want to read while still remaining friends with people they'd like to keep a friendship with. Others prefer not to come across it at all, and choose to unfollow/block to keep their feeds clear. We cannot be upset with people who choose to protect themselves by blocking content they don't want to see. That is their choice. We can continue to post tags and do our best to highlight content that some might find objectionable, so others can make their own determinations on if they want to read or not, but we have to allow the right to people to remove it completely if they so choose.

Constantly re-shares their own writing when the first hasn't left the feed yet. At 22%, this one doesn't seem high, but almost all of the "Other" category dealt with this as well, so we will group them all together, which makes it a rather bigger problem under the umbrella of "Feed Flooding".

When people log on, the first thing they do is check messages and notifications, then they'll generally scroll the feeds to see what's going on. When people are re-sharing the same items that haven't left the feed yet, it creates a loop where that's all people can see. That means, people are actually less likely to go read it, because they're tired of seeing only that link showing up in the feed.

You might be having a great music night, but posting 20 YouTube links in one night means people get to see all those covering up writing they might actually want to read. Instead of writing, they're seeing music they probably don't care about. Post one video, and then post the rest in the comments under it. People can click those if they're interested, and the rest won't be clogging up the feeds for everyone else.

When all your friend's re-share your blog with "This is so awesome, everyone needs to read this because it's awesome, go stalk cause awesome!" you're again flooding the feeds and irritating people. Seeing it once in the feeds is enough. People want to see content from everyone, not just one person. If people really must shout from the rooftops that their friend is a perfect unicorn in a field of horses, try having a Shout-Out blog where they add new LINKS once a week or something. Or creating a Shout-Out group that people can join to share interesting writing they've come across from the entire site, not just one or two people.

Too many posts in general, whether IC or OOC. RPL is a busy community. The feed moves fast. When people are posting a hundred times a day, their friends list is missing out on seeing tons of content from other writers. Many people in the "Others" section highlighted issues with photos with only a single word or phrase and no writing content, prompt posts like "Send me a word for this/ask me questions" instead of actual writing prompts, comments about writing you're doing but no actual writing being shown anywhere, group advertising posts that come 20 one right after another, comments about muses being dead instead of going to find inspiration, comments about clearing friends lists/if you can see this you're still here type posts.

We have mostly parsed the "Other" comments into the sections above, however, there were a few that didn't really fit the other categories above, so we'll quickly summarize them below.

Unreliable- If you disappear for ages, you cannot be upset that people unfollow you. If you promise a starter and don't deliver after months, don't be shocked if the person re-uses their ideas from it with someone else. If you drop an RP, you can't complain that the person deletes it. You cannot expect people to put their characters in stasis on a shelf until you decide that you'd like to play with your toys again.

Pushy- On the other side of the coin, people have real lives. Real life is the constant, this is the Matrix. Sometimes Morpheus doesn't get around with the little pills and we're stuck being boring for a bit. We have work. We have kids. We have family members, pets, emergencies. We have health issues. As an example, if someone logs in and posts a status or comment, then disappears. You send a nasty message because they didn't message you while they were on. Maybe their kid decided to try putting a fork in a light socket right then. At that moment, honey, you rank somewhere below "Bite into a ghost chili and eat it whole" on the scale of "Shit I need to deal with right this moment". If people are busy and swing in to say "Hello, something is going on but I'll get back in when I can", respect that. If you can't wait or it's been longer than you're comfortable with, acknowledge this and see the section above.

Too Many Accounts- Now, granted, people should not be asking how many or what accounts you play here. However, it's sometimes fairly clear when people have gotten themselves overloaded on accounts that they can't manage. People can tell when they aren't in your top 10 of people that are on your "mains" list, and sometimes it hurts to know they aren't as important in writing to you as you are to them. At that time, they have the right to unfollow and find another writing partner. We can't blame them for wanting to be someone's top 1/5/10 if you can't give that to them.

Poor Writing Skill- This one was also clarified. Many people are roleplaying to learn to write better, or roleplaying in a 2nd language. People were quick to state that they enjoyed helping others learn to improve their writing and didn't mind 2nd language speakers, but those that had attitude and refused to accept constructive criticism or use the spellcheck provided by the site were quickly removed as they didn't seem to want to get better and were hard to understand.

So, that's it for the "main" reasons that people generally unfollow or block. In general, when these things happen, rumors swirl and people swear they know why it happened and state things that are, quite simply, untrue. We had hoped this survey would show this, and were pleased to see that our initial thoughts were verified. We'll go through those quickly, to hopefully stop the rumors as to what may be happening behind the scenes.

I believe they are another person I don't like. At 14.5%, this is a common one that people blame, but this survey shows it isn't as prevalent as users think it is. Most users don't unfollow or block people simply for thinking they might be another account. Most will give others the benefit of a doubt, and check out the writing and friends lists before deciding whether or not their initial suspicions had merit or not.

I don't accept "twin" accounts, or I don't accept that type of account on mine. This one comes in at 6.5%. We mostly see this with things like anime accounts, with people saying that they're being persecuted against for having a certain type of profile or that people won't accept an account because there is already so many of that certain account on the site. The numbers show that this really isn't a usual reason for people unfollowing or blocking here at RoleplayLives.

Friends with people I don't want seeing my things. This one is 5.5%. Some people who have blocked others choose to block mutual friends to prevent those blocked users from being able to see shared content. In general though, this happens pretty infrequently, as the blocking system itself works well to keep most things situated, and a blocked user that "likes" something posted on the blockee's wall by a mutual friend will still get a warning for that, as they know that content wasn't meant for them. In this way, mutual friend blocking isn't something that is routinely practiced here, so you are most likely not being persecuted due to "who you know".

My group admins told us privately to unfollow/block an account. At 4%, again, this one comes up less frequently than users think. Group admins do have special circumstances where this can be done, which will be covered in a future Writer's Corner blog on Running a Roleplaying Group, but in general, this is an option that very few group admins choose to take, for obvious reasons. Most likely, entire groups have not been told to block you except under very rare circumstances.

Someone else told me to block/unfollow them. And here we have the grand finale, the grand poohbah. At 2.5%, this is the biggest rumor-mongering reason of all. No matter what, the first time someone is blocked or unfollowed, we get an email telling us that people are sneaking around telling their whole friends list to unfollow or block this person because everyone is being mean to them.

Now. Does this happen? Oh we're sure some people try. We've caught a few. The thing is? Most people don't unfollow or block for this. Why? Because they have brains of their own, and can see that the one telling them what to think is the one that's actually the drama-stirrer. You can tell me the yellow snow is lemon all you want, but I'm still not going to eat it, and I'm going to think you're stupid because I'm smart enough to know better. Those that do unfollow /block are usually close friends with the person and are doing it out of loyalty, or to avoid more drama, not for any other reason. Simply put, most people do not unfollow or block just because some stranger on a website told them to.

Now, we feel these are some great highlights and examples for the majority of users here. The numbers don't lie, and we had a good selection of users represented. If you find yourself constantly unfollowed or blocked and questioning why, perhaps you need to look above and see what you may be doing to cause that reaction. None of these things are permanent. All of these things can be worked on and adjusted if you'd like to find a way to reach more people, to find more writing partners/readers, or to simply have more things in your feed to read. If, on the other hand, you don't care, at least now you know why these things are happening, and can brush off the unfollowing/blocking issues as they come with the knowledge of why you're not to some people's taste.