I'm just middle aged and lost all energy for unproductive discussions. The second another poster posts something genuinely hostile, like "touch grass" kinda shit, I'm just done talking. Also if we're six comments in and the other guy won't even admit to being wrong to the thing he said on comment one, despite me doing twenty minutes of research to prove conclusively that he's wrong, I don't want to waste another second of my life on him.
I gotta have 10% of the "disengage" comments on this site.
I dont think they can reply to you, I've blocked someone for being overly hostile in an argument and they couldn't reply to me
Blocked people have replied to me in the past. It definitely only half-stops you seeing their posts.
I've blocked a bunch of people and sometimes I see I have replies I can't see. I checked the comment chain while logged out and it was someone I'd blocked, so they can still reply sometimes at least