Here's the thing. The latest guy I blocked on FB is an ex-bf. One of the reasons why I dumped his ass is because I suspected him of spying on my internet activities (we were in a poly relationship at the time, so there was no reason to have done so, other than fucking entitlement, which I'll get to in a moment).
He is a rather skilled computer networking type guy. In fact, I learned a lot of my own networking skills from him. Sometime after I moved out, my computer crashed. I was dating another somewhat skilled networking type guy at the time who helped me recover my hard drive data. During the deep recovery process, we uncovered a keystroke log buried in my hard drive.
This keystroke log did, in fact, show exactly a private IM conversation I had set up with a friend to "test" to see if this guy was spying on me. We said some things in that conversation, and when my ex let some things slip that he would only have known if he had seen that conversation, I moved out. And now here was the evidence that I was not paranoid, he did, indeed, spy on me and it wasn't by chance that he happened to say the right things to make me suspect him.
So, years later, he found me on FB. Contrary to all my advice to other people, I have a habit of keeping toxic people in my life, justifying to myself that I want to "keep tabs" on them. So, after about 3 years of letting his friend-request sit in my queue, I dubiously accepted it.
Now he fancies himself a "photographer" because he has money for all the latest technology, which makes just about *anyone* look like a competent photographer without doing all the hard work of learning the foundations of art, like composition, photography history, art theory, color theory, light theory, etc. and he's not a total bull-in-the-china-shop with computers.
So he decides to contradict me online about photography and Photoshop, which he himself admits to not being an "expert", even though *I am one*. Most of y'all ought to be aware of how I respond to mansplaining my job to me. So I blocked him. Because fuck him. I was already on edge with him with the whole violating-my-privacy thing.
He immediately contacted me using another account. Not with an apology, of course, but to whine about me responding to his last comment and then blocking him so that he couldn't see my response, and he wasn't trying to argue with me anyway, so why I gotta be so rude and block him?!
Here's that entitlement thing.
You see, when people are told in no uncertain terms "I do not want to talk to you anymore" (which is exactly what a block is, and y'all fucking know it), and they keep trying to talk to you anyway, this is entitlement. They feel that their desire to continue communicating with you is more important, and worth more consideration, than your desire to NOT communicate with them anymore.
It doesn't matter if it's an apology, if it's to continue the argument, to "explain" that they weren't trying to argue, or what, when someone tries to end communication and you try to continue it, you are, in fact, absolutely saying that your desire to continue trumps their desire to end it.
Here's why I get so pissed off at this: His entitlement to attention at this very minor argument and his entitlement to my privacy are the same thing.
He feels that he has the right to access me even when I have explicitly said he does not. My express wishes to cut off contact were dismissed. The very idea that I could have private internet communication without his knowledge was dismissed. Whatever reasons he had for violating my privacy, he believed those reasons justified violating my privacy.
And this is why I get so pissed off at people for doing seemingly minor infractions. These infractions do not happen in a vacuum. These infractions are usually part of a pattern. Entitlement is a foundational value, and that value will affect all other interactions with people. Feeling entitled to access someone, *even when they said no* can and will manifest itself in different ways. Maybe he has some kind of line drawn somewhere in his head where his entitlement justifies his intrusion into [Group A] people or situations but not [Group B] people or situations.
So, like, maybe if a girl he hit on in a bar said she wasn't interested, he would totally respect that rejection. But other things that other people told him that he couldn't access, he wouldn't respect those rejections.
"Entitlement" doesn't have to mean that everyone who feels "entitled" are all equally capable of exactly all violations.
But it does mean that they are capable of *some* violations.
And, as a former partner, I happen to know for a fact that he is capable of some violations.
Not only did he install a keystroke log on my computer to spy on my internet activity, he also was one of the MANY former partners I've had who did not take "no" for an answer.
I fully believe that he would never meet a stranger in a bar, ask her for her phone number, and when she said she wasn't interested, he would never, not in a million years, follow her out of the bar and violently rape her in the parking lot. He would, however, ask a girlfriend for sex, and when she said "not tonight, honey, I have a headache", he would wait until he thought she was asleep and then start touching her in ways she just said she didn't want.
I know he would do that because he did that to me most nights towards the end of our relationship. We even fought about it a few times, but he still did it, until I banished him from sleeping with me anymore (we had our own bedrooms, he just slept in my bed every night because I slept in my own bed every night).
Then there was the Tupperware Incident. I had been engaged before, and my ex-future-mother-in-law bought us a set of Tupperware as an "engagement gift" (considering that she hated me, this was kind of a big deal). I took the Tupperware when my ex-fiance and I broke up (another relationship I had to "escape" from, but that's a tale for another time).
So, here I am, moving all the way across the country, my first *real* time away from home, and I move in with this guy. And I bring my Tupperware with me. Then the suspicions start, then the "test", then I move out. I tried to mostly get my stuff out of the house while he was at work, to avoid a confrontation. He knew I was moving, but I was hoping to just not be there one day when he came home.
On my very last trip back for the last of my stuff, he came home as I was putting the last load in my car. It was awkward and tense, mostly because I didn't actually, "officially" break up with him, I just said I was moving out to try living on my own (since I never had, at that point) and to live closer to campus, where I had started going back to school.
As I walked to my car, he asked about the Tupperware. He accused me of stealing it from *him*, that he had stolen it from his ex-wife when he kicked her out, and he wanted it back. We argued, and I tried to end the argument (as I often do) by just leaving.
Before I could close my car door, he literally dived, head-first into the driver's seat and across my lap, holding onto the steering wheel, pinning my legs down, and blocking my view, to prevent me from leaving.
So I laid on the horn and screamed "rape!" It was dirty play, because he wasn't trying to rape me, but he *was* assaulting me. Startled, he backed out of the car and I peeled out of the parking lot with my door still open. I used to street race, and I have a manual transmission, so as long as I could physically operate the car, he was not going to win against me in a car.
I also used to do really foolish shit, like drive with two of my friends hanging onto the hood of the car and one guy laying across the roof of the car, really fast around curved roads. So I am *not* afraid of using my car ... unconventionally. I also hit one of my closest friends with my car once, in retaliation for an injury he gave me, so I'm also fine with using my car as a weapon (we had an, let's just say "interesting" relationship - my teen years were kinda dramatic).
All I needed was enough room to operate the vehicle, and I would have driven off with him still hanging on through the open door, if I had to, with absolutely no concern about flinging him out of the car by simply taking a fast turn. Because I used to do shit like that for fun.
Fortunately, for him, he was startled enough by the scream and the horn and he voluntarily backed out of my car. I never contacted him again. We had run into each other a couple of times after that, and he never once apologized for physically restraining me as I tried to leave, or even acted awkward or concerned about our last encounter. As far as I can tell, he doesn't think there was anything unusual about how we broke up, which is fucking frightening.
So when someone violates a boundary like "stop talking to me online", I know that this violation is possible because of a sense of entitlement. And I know that when someone has a sense of entitlement, it is not isolated to one specific action. It is an underlying belief structure that informs many different actions.
Which ones, I do *not* know for every single person. But I know that entitlement sends out little tendrils at the base of their behaviour decision tree, and those tendrils flow under and around and through that decision tree, touching various branches here and there.
So while I don't know exactly what else someone with entitlement is willing to violate, I know that they are willing to violate some things. When a person is blocked on social media, and that person *immediately* tries to contact the other using another account (and I will make a small exception for those whose attempt at contact is a humble, contrite, PROPER apology with no defensiveness and an awareness of wrongdoing and a willingness for accountability, but I have never actually seen this from anyone who was blocked who then attempted to force more contact within a few moments), then I know they are willing to violate boundaries.
I know this person is unsafe, because they have *just* demonstrated a lack of respect for boundaries, a willingness to violate boundaries, a sense of entitlement that their desires trump others' needs, and *I don't know what else this entitlement will affect*. But I know that it will affect other interactions.
That makes someone a *very* unsafe person indeed.
So, sure, trying to contact someone after they've blocked you might not seem like a rage-worthy offense in the grand scheme of things, not in isolation. But doing so reveals that they *are* willing to make rage-worthy offenses, because doing so requires them to have an underlying sense of entitlement to access another person against their express wishes, and that value does not exist in isolation.