My hypothesis is that the ignore button is largely used to give people justification for not responding to others, but users still often show posts of the people they ignore, just because they are curious what that person is saying.
I started ignoring some users recently, but than I realised - fuck it, I can handle any shit anyone throw at me, bring it on!
I don't really think it's a question of you being or not being able to "handle it", but more a question of why do you need to bother with sociopaths vomiting garbage around here?
The ignore button is not a psychological defense -- it is a time saver.
