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Its best to ignore trolls and personal attacks. Be the jedi of online discussions, in control of your emotions helps.
Now if I have time and are feeling froggy I will bait the troll, reel them in and then make them look like an ass for the rest of the world. Most trolls are illogical, emotional driven and it's easy to find their triggers. But that's if I have nothing better to do, like clean the cat box.
There are a great many people, many of the snowflake generation, although it certainly isn’t limited to them, who believe that if someone disagrees with them, they are being personally attacked. Nothing could be further from the truth. It “isn’t about them.” They are simply pointing out that you’re wrong.
(I don’t know anything about you, and I’m not suggesting that you fall into the type of person that I’ve described. Your post simply resonates with me, as I’ve experienced first hand exactly what I’ve described, and it isn’t a rare phenomena).
So have I and don’t disagree with your point,it can also be a tactic to divert or derail the conversation.
I honestly and truly like to have online discussions with interesting people (I like to do it in person as well). As we all know (and you can see from the politics forum), the internet is full of trolls who either intentionally stir things up or they're just such sanctimonious *******s, that they stir things up anyways.
I try really hard to let things go most of the time, but when someone acts me personally, especially in a chat where my name is known (facebook), I feel this urge to defend myself. I find that I usually don't return the insults, but either ask them questions trying to get them to clarify their condescending comments or I mock them.
I know I should just let it go, but I have an ego. I'm working on it and I've reduced the amount of political conversations I have online cuz I know how they're all going to go. But sometimes I'm really looking for an interesting political debate with people I agree or disagree with, but it always goes sideways because of one person.
My questions:
1. Why do people think it's okay to be so cruel to each other online (even in non-anonymous social media like facebook)?
2. How do you control your ego when someone attacks you personally?
I too respond to trolls. It's fun to tease these defective people. The game is to goad them but not to the point that the moderators penalize you.
It's not okay to be cruel to anybody, any time. People do it because they are out of arm's reach and nobody can smash them in the nose.
I don't need to control my ego when somebody attacks me personally. I consider the source and realize I'm being attacked by the scum of humanity. I realize they are stupid people. Considering that it's an ineffective attack, I'm the only one who can make me feel bad. My job is to make myself feel good and I'm doing a pretty damned job of doing that. You don't have a needle sharp enough to pop MY bubble.
Instead, I like to hand trolls the rope they need to hang themselves. I just love it when a few polite wry comments from me makes them turn livid. I'm really good at knowing where the forum's chalk line is, and how far I can push it.
A troll's object is to push you to the point where you do something crazy and get points off or banned from the forum. I won't let them do that to me. Instead my job is to infuriate trolls enough that they themselves cross the line and they get points off or banned. Then I just laugh and laugh and laugh!
Yeah, I block the rude ones on FB, too, and it's nice because once you do that they're totally gone. And I can literally feel my blood pressure go down. On CD you can still see their names, unfortunately.
What I've noticed is that people hate being blocked by someone on social media, because it puts an end to their harassment of that person. I think blocking is a great feature to have, though.
I've blocked a few people on FB, because they don't need to contact me and don't need to see my profile anymore. They need to move on with their life.
For now. I predict the day when the average 12 year old can enter a user ID and a domain name into an app and get a real name, address, phone numbers, and pet's name while yawning and chewing bubble gum in English class.
Mark my words.
Already can be done, although most people here think they are anonymous...they're not. People are easy to find just by their username.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vacanegro
It's the Internet. No one can see you or knows anything about you besides what you post.
If a person feels personally attacked by someone responding to a post expressing their opinion it boils down to insecurity.
+1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TabulaRasa
Being disagreed with isn't bullying in grade school, either.
I don't know where the notion that we all need to think the same things and see things one particular way came from.
1. Why do people think it's okay to be so cruel to each other online (even in non-anonymous social media like facebook)?
2. How do you control your ego when someone attacks you personally?
1. Who knows? I assume they are wounded in some way and acting out of that.
2. My ego doesn't take things personally. How someone acts toward me is on them alone and has nothing to do with me. If I'm coming across negatively a reasonable person will point that out to me and not attack over it.
I used to take things personally until I ran across this:
The Taoists have a famous teaching about an empty boat that rams into your boat in the middle of a river. While you probably wouldn’t be angry at an empty boat, you might well become enraged if someone were at its helm.
The point of the story is that the parents who didn’t see you, the other kids who teased you as a child, the driver who aggressively tailgated you yesterday – are all in fact empty, rudderless boats. They were compulsively driven to act as they did by their own unexamined wounds, therefore they did not know what they were doing and had little control over it.
Just as an empty boat that rams into us isn’t targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain.
Until we realize this, we will remain prisoners of our grievance, our past, and our victim identity, all of which keep us from opening to the more powerful currents of life and love that are always flowing through the present moment.
1. Why do people think it's okay to be so cruel to each other online (even in non-anonymous social media like facebook)?
2. How do you control your ego when someone attacks you personally?
1. Who knows? I assume they are wounded in some way and acting out of that.
2. My ego doesn't take things personally. How someone acts toward me is on them alone and has nothing to do with me. If I'm coming across negatively a reasonable person will point that out to me and not attack over it.
I used to take things personally until I ran across this:
The Taoists have a famous teaching about an empty boat that rams into your boat in the middle of a river. While you probably wouldn’t be angry at an empty boat, you might well become enraged if someone were at its helm.
The point of the story is that the parents who didn’t see you, the other kids who teased you as a child, the driver who aggressively tailgated you yesterday – are all in fact empty, rudderless boats. They were compulsively driven to act as they did by their own unexamined wounds, therefore they did not know what they were doing and had little control over it.
Just as an empty boat that rams into us isn’t targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain.
Until we realize this, we will remain prisoners of our grievance, our past, and our victim identity, all of which keep us from opening to the more powerful currents of life and love that are always flowing through the present moment.
Thank you so much for posting this. I found it really helpful!!
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