Oftentimes it’s the simplest of truths that hold so much meaning in this world, and every once in a while they come from places you least expect it.

Imagine my surprise on Wednesday to be scrolling through my Twitter feed to see a retweet from a follower who shared the solid advice rapper “Ice T” doled out in a tweet where he gave his opinions on how things were going on the social media platform since Elon Musk officially took over as CEO back in October.

Opinions on Musk’s short time at the helm so far obviously vary, but in Ice T’s view, it’s “actually running BETTER right now.”

Further, he advised people who routinely complain about seeing things they don’t want to in either their main feeds and/or their mentions that the block and mute options were available literally at the touch of a button:

'In my opinion' Twitter is actually running BETTER right now.. Anything you don't like can easily be dealt with by using the Block or Mute button…

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) December 21, 2022

Survey says: EXACTLY!

https://t.co/5x377pokg5 pic.twitter.com/nDcc4Lfaqg

— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) December 21, 2022

Another Twitter user also pointed helfpully to other functions for people who wanted to “reduce the rabble dramatically”:

Additionally, these settings reduce the rabble dramatically. pic.twitter.com/EjvWUuVYkC

— Eric Wojciechowski (@ericwojo) December 21, 2022

As I’ve said before, Twitter is a bowl of dumb on any given day, and if I didn’t need to use it to promote my stuff, I probably would have left there long ago. So while I’m there, I’ve taken advantage of a full range of tools to make my experience the best it can be considering the source. I use mute on occasion for annoying users, the block button from time to time when people get beyond just merely being annoying, and also have used a little-known function that allows you mute certain words you may not want to see (like a topic that is trending that you are absolutely sick of seeing).

This is the thing that the perpetually offended on Twitter – most of who are on the left – either legitimately don’t get or purposely ignore. If a person doesn’t like what someone has to say and it bothers them that much, they should just hit the mute or block buttons. They shouldn’t rush to immediately report the person to Twitter simply because someone posted something with which they disagree (this applies to all social media platforms, I should note – not just Twitter).

Disagreement isn’t the end of the world. In fact, the world would be a pretty dull place if everyone had the same opinions.

In my view, the only times a Twitter user should use the “report” function is if they feel like someone’s work was stolen, feel like they or someone else is being threatened with harm, or see that someone has posted personal information about them without their permission (which is done most often to try and scare someone into shutting up).

The “report” option needs to be saved for those instances, not used because a person got offended over someone tweeting something they find disagreeable and/or offensive. We’ve simply got to get to a point in this country where people who have opposing viewpoints can agree to disagree instead of having one side or the other (or both) going into orbit because they got their feelings hurt.

It is this mindset that is, in part, responsible for the massive amounts of censorship that took place at Twitter under the old regime, and sometimes at the behest of Democratic officials and federal intelligence agencies.

Anyway, that’s my .02 – that, and to restate for the record that a using a little common sense in all matters usually goes a long, long way. 🙂

Related: ‘Journalist’ Gets the John McClane Treatment After Sudden Discovery About Twitter’s Rules