thoughts on DNIs

I think DNIs are interesting. 

If you are taking DNIs completely seriously, what homophobe or racist or terf is going to see 'homophobes/racists/terfs dni' and go Hmmm okay i will leave politely :) ? People who hate people for dumb reasons like that don't typically respect DNIs because they are often very reactionary. It's like an older person going 'hey small child you better not say the word cheese' and then the small child staring them directly in the eyes and chanting cheese. I think this is more relevant on places like tumblr or twitter where people can easily send anon hate.

This also applies to fandom-based DNIs because fandom spaces can be notoriously toxic and just as reactionary. People get Very Heated over shipping and such as we all know and are just as likely to want to interact with someone if they see the fandom they are in in a DNI.

In addition, you don't actually NEED a DNI in order to avoid interaction with a certain group of people. You can just block them as they come up, which most people do anyway. 

So what are DNIs for then? They are more for signalling to other people who you align yourself with and who you don't like. This instantly establishes a common ground with people who share similar DNI things. Groups based on disliking things are a very easy way for communities to form (whether those communities could be harmful or not is for another post).

 They are also a very easy way to sus out another person. I'm quite a neutral person on the 'problematic media' discourse and i really don't like fandom discourse in general, so if I see a lot of 'problematic media' listed in someone's DNI, then I know they probably engage in the types of discourse I'm not a huge fan of. I'll probably still interact if they seem like a cool person, I just know not to bring up fandom discourse.

In a more cut-and-dry example, if someone's got something like 'trans people DNI' then I am Not interacting, just blocking and moving on. In this case, their DNI worked because I don't feel like unpacking that. 

Another interesting thing about DNIs is that a lot of the time you will only find them after going to someone's blog or profile. This doesn't make sense because if person A, who falls into person B's DNI criteria, comments on person B's post, then what? Person B can just block person A of course, but what's the point of asking people not to interact if most public interactions that happen between internet users happen without looking at other's profiles?

I think the answer to all of this is that DNI doesn't actually mean Do Not Interact, it means Do Not Friend Me. 

anyway if you actually read this thanks for reading my Trying To Figure Out Humans post!

The way people interact online is sososo interesting to me, if anyone else has thoughts on DNIs please comment im super interested :3