Complex Numbers

Dealing With Trolls

PROMPT September 20th

The prompt today is from WakeUpAndLive !

Have you ever experienced hateful comments on the Internet? How do you deal with shaming, blaming, and intolerance?

Sure, hasn't everybody?

Long ago, I developed a personal policy of utterly ignoring trolls.

This serves two important purposes: One, I don't get my balls all in a knot, because I pretend the hater doesn't exist. And two, the one thing that trolls want more than anything else is attention, and this deprives them of that. I like to imagine their heads exploding all over their mothers' basements.

You'd think such a thing would be easy. It's not, always, though as with other things, it gets easier with practice. When someone is wrong on the internet  , the natural human response is to engage with that person, show them why they're wrong, and make choice comments about their parentage (or lack thereof), personal hygiene habits, sexual practices, and afterlife destination.

There's no point.

You're not going to change someone's mind, and most of the people doing the hateful stuff don't want their minds changed. Hell, some of 'em don't even believe what they're saying. They're just doing it for the lulz. And the attention, but mostly for the lulz. If they can get a rise out of you - or any response, really - they've won. You've lost.

The only way to win is not to play.

If everyone adopted this policy, the trolls would wither away and die. Well, metaphorically. They might at least go somewhere else, mill amongst their own kind for a while.

It's even more difficult when it's not directed at me personally. Racist or sexist comments, for example; that sort of thing. But I've rarely seen that behavior and been in a position to do anything about it. I mean, sure, if it happens here on WDC there are actions I can take, but we don't get that a lot here, at least not for very long.

And I don't like blocking people. I want to hear what they have to say, even if it's hateful. Otherwise, they're speaking behind my back, and I don't much like that, either.

We've developed social practices around the idea that we're meeting face-to-face. Things are different online. The people on the other end of the internet are real people, sure, but we're under no obligation to engage with them if we don't want to. This is not to say that we should all just hang out with like-minded people exclusively, but there's no reason to tolerate intolerance.