How to deal with trollish comments?

[Preety_India]

@Leo Gura

Let's say someone out of the blue mentioned you with a trollish comment 

How do you deal with a trollish or hateful comment without derailing it into an ugly fight?

How do you signal such trolls to leave you alone?

@Inva need your input. You know what I mean. ☚ 

 

[Opo]

Let it go. 

[LastThursday]

Trolls only want one thing: getting attention by provoking a reaction. So really the best thing to do is to remove their attention supply and ignore them. But if they're honestly being a pest or worse, then obviously report them. Try not to get emotionally wound up by them, but instead have pity on them that they have nothing better to do. 

[Preety_India]

3 hours ago, Peter Miklis said:

Why even thinking about it? Why is it important to you?

Because I'm sensitive to it. I don't like disrespectful people. Their behavior affects me emotionally. 

If someone says something bad about me publicly , it affects me emotionally  

It creates feelings of anxiety and combativeness.. 

I go into defense mode.  

If someone is doing it privately, I can easily control by blocking. 

But what is being said publicly is very hard to control and then it impacts me that others are reading bad things being written about me.  

I'm very guarded about my reputation. I easily feel shamed. 

Self respect is important to me. So if someone says something bad, it begins to tense me up. 

To be Frank, most people won't be able to handle the amount of trolling I get per day, stretched over 3 years. They would have left the forum permanently by now if they were in my place .  I have somehow managed to keep persistent. But I sometimes reach my breaking point where it can get a bit too much.. 

If someone told me that I should spend less time here, there is no use of telling me that, because my growth per minute here has been exponential. Much of my life growth happened here on the forum, I can't lose the benefit I get here just because some troll is trying to scare me away.  I don't want to compromise on my daily growth that I have by interacting with people here. 

Honestly if it wasn't for the trolls posting nasty discouraging  comments, I would have felt extremely happy here. 

I don't have much gripe against the forum, it's only these pesky people and their comments that ruin my mood  

I expect a much higher standard of public decency here. People saying hateful things, trolling, bullying, ridiculing is not in my book of how a personal development place should look. It is a hassle and a real obstacle to deal with. 

Over time when you have made many enemies here through disagreements or conflicts, the situation becomes a bit tough.. 

And the ignore button function is lame because the person can continue posting nasty things behind your back for people to read.. 

Generally this kind of behavior creates an antagonistic environment on the forum, is not healthy for its overall harmony. 

It makes people more upset and defensive over time.. 

The forum guidelines and moderation doesn't really help. Only helpful in severe cases. Most people who troll obviously don't care for guidelines and rules, breaking rules is what they want. 

It's very hard to moderate each and every comment.. That is the crux of the situation. 

There should be a way to deal with when someone(who doesn't know you well) mentions you and you get a notification and you read their comment to find that they have written something nasty about you and now you are sitting with the dilemma of how to reply to it and how to stop the person from further communication. There is no good solution or trick for this. I tried to scratch my brain a lot over this. 

I don't like fights and conflicts and negative stuff written. I don't like provocation. It's not in my nature to provoke a stranger who I know nothing about. I have the decency to keep to myself and not engage in conflicting commentary and or comment to ridicule or shame a person. If I don't like a person or their personality, I simply avoid that person, which I believe most decent people would do. It's no rocket science. 

So people who purposely don't avoid are probably looking for a fight. Or they get a sense of satisfaction by attacking it seems. But this is unhealthy behavior. It is simply antagonizing and provoking someone for absolutely no reason and no good purpose but to just rile them up.. 

I wish there were better ways to handle this. 

Where you could click a button that sends a private communication to the troll or user that stuff they have said is antagonizing and they should avoid future communication with the person to whom the comment was directed at. 

Pretty much like Facebook where if you block a person they can't comment to you anymore  

Let's say even if the person commented again , the mention will appear in a different color to notify everyone that this person was blocked by the mentioned person, so people know who  the aggravator is.  Only a person who wishes to aggravate will keep commenting despite receiving the notification to not post to the mentioned user. This will help to understand who is trying to troll constantly 

Another method can be an option that says "no comments" and it appears  like a system generated response, like different from usual writing,  it can appear like a tab,  when you click it as a response to the person who is trolling you, so its like publicly telling the person that you're not interested in further communication with them.. 

Any of these methods would be highly effective. 

It is nonsense to believe that people will always get along with each other. It is bad to force them to get along with each other when they aren't being harmonious with each other. 

Most people don't get along each other. This is Facts  

Instead of expecting people to get along by serving them warning points if they don't ( I find this abusive ) it's best to reduce conflict by simply separating the parties that are conflicting by telling them to avoid each other, by reducing interactions between,   using specific methods that I mentioned above. The focus should be on separation or cancelation of interaction because anyway nothing fruitful is achieved by coaxing people to get along, it only leads to continuous fights and resentment. You keep fighting with the troll and then a new troll appears. 

Best is to make options available for avoidance of communication that sends a clear signal that communication between two people is no longer necessary. 

This will help to control the feeling and unease and insecurity that comes from knowing that a particular person can keep trashing you throughout the forum despite being kept on ignore. 

It will remove a lot of unnecessary conflict and constantly dealing with provoking people. You can easily filter who you want to talk to and the person who you don't like to talk to is informed that they shouldn't talk to you. This only keeps you around people who you easily get along with without running into those who you  don't prefer any future communication with. 

This idea will be great way of filtering out trolls and instigators naturally.. 

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Preety_India

[Preety_India]

Maybe @Leo Gura can consider this for the future in order to make the forum safer in the future.. I have given a lot of ideas in the above post and I'm sure these ideas are worth considering and testing. 

 

 

[JohnnyAb]

Cringe

[Mason Riggle]

Rule of thumb (for real Trolls, or the internet kind).. 

Don't feed the Trolls.

@Preety_India my advice- get some thicker skin, don't take what strangers on the internet say personally.  When you do, you become a magnet for more trolling.  Your emotional response is the exact reaction that feeds them. Learn to ignore them. 

It's up to you to become 'un-fuck-with-able'. 

[Tim R]

• Building up higher tolerance
• Ignoring
• Don't feed the troll
• Letting Mods do their job

[Preety_India]

@Mason Riggle does this mean that they can continue doing what they are doing endlessly with no stop on their behaviors. 

Won't it feel like personal humiliation, where you don't respond to them because you don't want a fight, but they can endlessly keep attacking and trashing your character throughout the forum meanwhile you don't address it and stay silent. 

It's a stab to self esteem. 

The forum guidelines are more about against using  offensive name calling. 

But a lot of things can be said to trash a person without the use of name calling. You can't really report such a person 

I mean if a user continues to act in provoking ways, it kinda turns into bullying because you stay silent and they keep trash talking. Or bad mouthing 

You know what I mean?

Silence from your end doesn't stop them. 

 

 

[Tim R]

33 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Their behavior affects me emotionally. 

@Preety_India This might sound a bit harsh, but that's on you. Nothing can affect you emotionally unless you you let them.

Adapt your expectations.

Proper expectation will lessen disappointment. 

It's much easier and effective to change your expectations than to try to change your emotional response. 

Change the root cause, not the symptoms. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Tim R

[Mason Riggle]

@Preety_India it's perhaps counter intuitive, but even though they CAN continue with their behaviors, they will no longer have the desire to.  The silence doesn't prevent them from trolling... it just removes the incentive. 

Blocking them, banning them, scolding them... any reaction at all is what they are looking for.  If they're not getting the reaction they want from you (or on this forum in general).. they will look elsewhere. 

"Troll" actually has another meaning, besides 'a big, ugly, aggressive ogre'-  it means to carefully and systematically search an area for something.. Fisherman go trolling for fish.. 

The thing that internet trolls are carefully and systematically searching for is ATTENTION. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Tim R]

@Leo Gura What do you think, is there a real problem with trolls on the forum? Do you consider "employing" more mods?

[WonderSeeker]

Hey, I'm sorry that you receive this crap and that it affects your emotional stability. 

4 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

[T]hey can endlessly keep attacking and trashing your character throughout the forum meanwhile you don't address it and stay silent. 

How are 'they' actually 'attacking' your character? I know this isn't what you want to read, but I think the quoted line is the perfect thing to contemplate right now. 

I get the feeling, by reading your post and past ones similar to it, that you want Leo/mods to take action, and they probably will to the extent that they can. But I think you can also balance that with some self-reflection as well, so that trolls bother you less in the future. 

Trolls aren't worth your time. Forget them. Only focus on the comments that are conducive to your goals/desires. Your mind is a wonder.

[ll Ontology ll]

sharing off the cuff improvs over the next few hours for fun based on forum questions haha :

 

 

 

 

 

I can't be bothered writing out the lyrics haha

 

 

[Preety_India]

@ll Ontology ll haha, that was kinda unexpected. Lol. Good job though.. 

[ll Ontology ll]

 

^^^ THAT WAS EXCELLENT!!!

[Hulia]

11 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@Leo Gura What do you think, is there a real problem with trolls on the forum? Do you consider "employing" more mods?

Right.. protect gods from trolls!

[Preety_India]

4 minutes ago, WonderSeeker said:

How are 'they' actually 'attacking' your character? I know this isn't what you want to read, but I think the quoted line is the perfect thing to contemplate right now.

Some examples I can give for trash talking is something like this 

"she should leave the forum. "

"she is a horrible person. "

"she deserves a slap in her face "

Leaving a laugh emoji to another person who is saying something sarcastic like a sarcastic attack, in order to signal like "look how crazy she is " without actually saying it, but the implication is there. 

"she doesn't deserve to be here "

"you're ugly "

"you deserve this "

"she is a narcissist "

"your advice is useless "

"I think you're playing victim "

"you're the dumbest person here "

"I have put her on ignore" but still continues to talk about me. 

This kind of trash talking that indirectly implies that I'm this horrible person who needs to be boycotted by everyone or inviting others to gang up on me. Notice that offensive name calling words are not used, because the user obviously knows that it will attract a warning. But they use indirect language to make it look like I'm some horrible person. Yet when I don't respond to their comments, they continue to do that and kind of imply that a lack of defense is a sign that their argument or  accusations are true, it means they were right about it since I didn't defend myself. 

Stuff like that, where you feel like your character is being dragged through the hurt because someone is biased towards you and when you don't respond somehow they declare to everyone what they said is true. 

You can't really hold them responsible because they aren't using any name calling words. They are not being directly offensive yet trying to provoke and defame in indirect ways. 

 

[Preety_India]

21 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@Leo Gura What do you think, is there a real problem with trolls on the forum? Do you consider "employing" more mods?

No mods will not help this situation. Because trash talking isn't exactly against forum guidelines.  

The trolls are careful in saying things indirectly without breaking forum guidelines openly. 

Yet they end up doing the damage they want to.. 

They want to provoke and trash someone's reputation and attack self esteem without making it look offensive, and also making it sound like they are only offering a critique, meanwhile the real objective is to continue attacking the person indirectly, continuing showing disdain and contempt without using offensive words /name calling. 

 

[Mason Riggle]

@Preety_India what other people say about you says more about them than it does about you.