foone:

I TRIED to avoid mastodon reply guys. I was making a joke about a cable, and I put it under a CW saying “this is a joke. don’t reply seriously or I’ll block you”

and, well… it mostly worked. I only get one reply that was serious, and that person apologized for not reading the CW later.

But you know what happened instead? I got like 30 replies of people not being serious. no one told me what the cable actually was, yes, but 30 people told me what it wasn’t.

So I guess you can (mostly) avoid reply guys if you state up front that this is a joke and they shouldn’t reply, but you’ll get just as many replies making jokes instead.

It’s up to you if that’s better.

I’ll admit I sat there trying to figure out if you meant you didn’t want replies or if you wanted unserious replies and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.