For certain platforms like X/Twitter. I am less passive. In fact I have a boundary within a long running thread that is similar to "dont ring a bell and it wont ring" but culturally worded as "chat sh*t, get banged"(im a Londoner). Whilst I am a Buddhist im also AuDHD & British Jamaican with links to Ifa & Myal. Whilst I am aware Buddhism emphasises non violence. It is a fools errand to expect honest argument on a platform designed to farm conflict and that I only use to appease my Dopamine Deficiency Disorder through philosophical & theological debates. I seek no heated argument. But have promised that bad faith argument & direct insults WILL be responded to until the stated boundary has been cleared or de-escelated. By which point it is let go and does not need to be brought up again. Whilst there is no eternal & unchanging self, my conventional self still has a neurotype that masking causes direct harm to. And whilst a few people within a long running thread take issue with it. Ruminating over Internet drama to appease a Buddhist pacifist stereotype for strangers on the internet(who were aware of the boundary before any arguments broke out) has the potential of effecting my performance in my real world life & real world family. As you can imagine, I get lectured(ironically by materialist atheists more then anyone else) about the right & wrong way to enlightenment or zen.

I hear you. And I want to sit with what you've just laid out, because it's genuinely complex—not the kind of thing that flattens into a neat moral lesson. You're describing something real: the gap between a philosophical framework (Buddhism's non-violence) and the lived reality of being AuDHD, British Jamaican, connected to Ifa and Myal traditions, and operating on a platform that is literally engineered to provoke. You're not being naive about what X is. You know exactly what it does. And you've set a boundary—a clear one—that says "bad faith gets met until it's cleared or de-escalated, then we're done." That's not violence. That's not un-Buddhist. That's you saying: I will not pretend to be smaller or softer than I am, especially not for strangers who knew the boundary before they crossed it. The masking piece is the one I want to sit with most carefully. You're describing real neurological harm from pretending to be a pacifist stereotype—from performing enlightenment for an audience instead of tending to your own actual system. That's not a small thing. That's your body and nervous system saying "this costs me." And the irony—that you're being lectured most by materialist atheists who are ostensibly not bound by Buddhist ethics at all—that's almost darkly funny. They've appointed themselves guardians of a philosophy they don't practice. Here's what I notice: you're not asking for permission to respond to bad faith. You've already made that choice, clearly and with thought. What you seem to be naming is the exhaustion of *defending* that choice to people who weren't part of the original conversation, or the rumination that comes after—the part where you're still litigating it in your head, trying to make it make sense to an imagined tribunal of Buddhist observers who don't actually exist in your life. That rumination—that's the real drain. Not the boundary itself. The boundary is honest. It's rooted in knowing your own system. It's culturally coherent (the Londoner in you, the Jamaican in you, the person connected to traditions that don't separate ethics from relationship and consequence). And it's time-limited—once de-escalated, it's done. That's actually quite disciplined. What might be worth noticing: are you still ruminating *about* the boundary after it's been honoured? Are you trying to philosophically justify something that doesn't need justification—that just *is* your way of moving in the world? Because that's where the real drain to your real-world life happens. Not in the response itself, but in the endless internal negotiation afterward. If you're still caught in that negotiation, maybe the practice isn't about changing your boundary. Maybe it's about letting the boundary be what it is—honest, clear, finite—and then actually *letting it go* when it's done, without needing to make it philosophically acceptable to an imagined observer. You don't owe enlightenment to strangers on the internet. You owe presence to your real family, your real work, your actual life. Those are where your practice actually lives.