What I see in these threads is the reverse. People insist that their pet solution is a panacea for every use case and when someone points out that it doesn’t work for them they get downvotes and sarcasm. Making use of the best software for your use case is not equivalent to complicity in animal torture and environmental destruction. Nobody’s being forced into constant pregnancy or having their calves taken away at birth because I feel like third party security patches for Windows will be a better option for me than fully swapping to a Linux distro.

But what is definitely happening is people stop reading pro-FOSS threads by the third rabid fanboy response and actually miss what could be a useful alternative.

The way people act while advocating for something does in fact affect the efficacy of their advocacy whether they want to admit it or not.

Threads like this are why people don’t use open source. It sounds like a reality-denying anti-intellectual one-size-fits-all cult in here. This is also like half the threads about Linux. Just armies of tech bros who couldn’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes if their life literally depended on it.

I don’t know how it works in the UK, but if possible I’d look into getting a protection order against harassment. Definitely gather whatever evidence you can (a security camera might be a good investment), but with someone like this they may very well tell on themselves if it goes to court. A reasonable person wouldn’t be doing something like this in the first place, so they may well make it readily apparent that this is the sort of thing they think is acceptable in a court room. Especially if they’ve admitted to you to doing it on purpose.

If you’re able to request police body camera footage, it might be worth it to do that after calling in a noise complaint, and if you share a hallway you might be able to record the interaction yourself if not. If you rent and do share a hallway, consider asking your landlord to install a camera in a shared space so that you can get footage that way. Make sure to check the laws in your area regarding consent for recording. If you’re allowed to record secretly, maybe you can get them to admit it again on camera.

I had a similar situation to this with a transphobic neighbor who was doing this for about 6 months. A court date got it squared away, because she told on herself to the police while on our hallway camera. It might help in your situation too.