so, you opened my profile in incognito to see what the deal was. ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

why did you block me?
don't take it personally! I've pretty much never had a negative interaction with anyone on here and yet I still have more people blocked than I have forum posts. I really wish there were better ways to curate my experience on here, but until that comes to pass, blocking prevails. I yearn for tier-based blocking every day.

reasons include, but are not limited to:

1. nontypical font anywhere text can be found in.
this includes huge text, tiny text, very lightly or brightly colored text, etc; basically anything that isn't FR's default color, size, and font.

I do not want to see tiny text fading into the background while scrolling through forum posts, nor do I want my eyes to get burned when I check someone's profile.

I'm forgetful and if I see someone frequently in the forums, I'll probably want to check out their lair and their lore! sometimes they have very unique bios which're also very difficult on my eyes! blocking allows me to save my eyes from myself :')

2. incompatible aesthetics.
sometimes a person's profile or vista creeps me out or their signature is very cluttered, full of broken links, contains flashing images, is supposed to mimic a bug on the user's screen, etc. the only other simple way to get around this is to just scroll away, but sometimes they're very active and I can't avoid it as easily, hence the blocking.

3. auction house listings.
if someone frequently puts up starving dragons, several identical or near-identical dragons that I'm not interested in, etc, I'll block them to make my searches less cluttered and easier to work through.

I go through periods where I check the AH very frequently in search of potential lore dragons, typically several times a day, and wading through listings like these gets tiring after a while.

4. poor forum etiquette.
ex. #1: clickbait titles. think "guys" "what if.." "omg???" "you'll never believe what I..." "it finally happened!"
again, forgetful. I do not want to be clicking the same thread 10 times over the course of a day because I forget what it was about every time I reopen FRD. clicking a thread and immediately seeing "this user has been blocked-" eats up much less time than trying to figure out if I had been there before or not.

ex. #2: repetitive threads, like open-and-closed topics that have been talked about extensively and/or could've been searched up. think "fae necks??" "when will ancients wear apparel?" "why do people exalt?"

ex. #3: spamming.
if there's a user whose account is about 2 months old yet they already have upwards of 600 posts or a person who posts several threads per hour, usually clickbait-y ones, I'm going to be wary.

ex. #4: (encouraging) posts in the wrong forum.
opening FRD to a "share your dragons!" thread that gets bumped 100 times by people spamming their dragons and burying actual discussion threads is the biggest pet peeve I have with this site :')

ex. #5: all-caps posts.
please. I beg.

5. art that I'm not interested in buying.
the most popular shops are understandably on the front page of their respective forums the most. factoring in forgetfulness for a third time and it leads me to my 7000th click of the day on a shop that I already decided I wasn't interested in buying from the 6999 times prior. like with clickbait titles, looking down and seeing "by Blocked User" or clicking and seeing "this user is blocked" is a very quick way of reminding myself that I've been there already.

the adoptable/art forums are already a nightmare for me to navigate to begin with :') I'd like to make it a little bit easier for myself. I have nothing against the artists themselves.

6. incompatible personalities.
anywhere from someone behaving in a manner that'd make me uncomfortable interacting with them all the way to a trend of being inflammatory on people's posts.

some people just don't mesh well! my personality isn't for everyone either and that's no fault of my or their own.

I consider myself a very laidback person; I greatly appreciate space and relaxation. extremely energetic people who're at full speed ahead all day every day, while often admirable, are very taxing for me to be around both in real life and online— as in, I will end up physically and mentally worn out in real life as a result, which I do not want to put myself through. conversely, my behavior may be very under-stimulating to others and overall not bring the vibe they like to see when they log on, which is okay! no one should ever feel the need to change their personality for someone else.

7. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
sometimes I'm just not in a good mood and something someone says irks me enough in that moment to block them even if it wouldn't get a second glance from me in usual conditions. that moment is then gone with the wind because I rarely check my blocklist.

**

will you unblock me?
if you feel the urge to have a friend of yours ask for you, then no :)

otherwise, time will tell. there've been many times where I forgot why I blocked someone, unblocked them, saw they had no reason to be on there, and let it stay like that.

I have literal hundreds of people blocked and I do not care enough to go through each and every one of them to see who should stay and who shouldn't. never beg a stranger online for an unblock.

why didn't you talk to me about it first?
I don't know you! absolutely no one I talk to regularly or am doing business with is going to get randomly blocked unless it was an accident that they caught in the 2 seconds it took me to correct it.

secondly, I find that disrespectful. I play this game for my own enjoyment and I would find it incredibly rude if someone I had never spoken to before asked me to change something about my own choices and/or customization on the site for their own comfort when they could simply block me and move on.

I know some people would rather be contacted about things like this first and I find their openness and care in this regard very admirable, but I'm not one of those people and I don't want to disrespect someone else's individuality by taking the gamble that they are.

these seem like really minor reasons to block someone..
ah well!