A Great Way To Handle Trolls and Haters
Photo by T. Chick McClure on Unsplash
Hey there!
A friend asked me recently how I handle haters. I asked what was happening with him, and he related a story of how a woman he knew fairly well in real life, felt slighted by an innocent event, and began taking out her anger with him in vicious posts on social media.
I shared with him the true secret of dealing with haters and trolls.
Hope this helps!
David
Raw YouTube Captioning
hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
just got off the phone with a dear
friend who was telling me about his
situation with a troll a hater and
someone who he didn’t expect to be a
troll or a hater someone he’d worked
with many times thought the relationship
with her was great and because well let
me tell you the situation so he worked
for her on a couple of projects that
were deferred they were sag low budget
and she wanted him to work on her new
project and because his situation has
changed his schedule is much tighter he
said hey just work it out with my
manager and we’ll figure it out and she
went ballistic and started insulting him
online
why thought we knew each other I don’t
know you anymore and it really like took
him aback it was like wait wait hold on
wait I just you know these are the this
is the way I handle things now it wasn’t
anything against you so you can see how
you know these things that pop up out of
nowhere there are people who are just
simply always going to be trolls and
haters and then every so often there’s
this boil that forms and then pops and
people go a little nuts
they don’t understand your motivations
and they become abusive and the question
is how do you handle that well in this
case it’s different from handling normal
haters and trolls people that you know
are gonna be nasty to you all the time
because you expect that in this case he
didn’t expect that from her and you know
the answer there is it depends you know
a lot of the answers in life are it
depends you’ll get you you can Google
how do you deal with trolls and haters
and you’ll get typical advice about
ignoring them and disconnecting from
them and blocking them and making sure
to memorialize any of the conversations
you know screenshots or copies and
pastes of what they’re doing but I find
it hard sometimes to resist what I’m
about to tell you not to do and
is to out troll the troll I feel like
I’m pretty creative I get a certain joy
out of you know doing that but what I’ve
learned is it’s a no-win situation I had
a situation that happened to me recently
where a guy who connected with me on
LinkedIn just very casually very
dismissively said hey let’s let’s take a
call with each other so I can figure out
whether or not I should study voice over
with you
I think you said consider whether I
should take voiceover from you and I
wrote him back and I for like a half an
hour before I hit the send button but
well here’s what I wrote back I wrote
back and I said a meeting isn’t
necessary here’s a free class that you
can take called you know getting started
in voiceover where you can see how I
teach and when you’re done with that
class I’ll consider depending upon how
you did in that class I’ll consider
whether or not I want to continue
working with you PS if that line had any
sort of charge to it or felt insulting
you might want to go back and look at
your last line of your message because
that’s how some people might take it and
again I really thought long and hard
about it it fits in with what I’m about
to give you in terms of advice but it
still was one of those things where is
this really necessary is this really
what you want to do and that is if you
can’t resist the urge to fight back try
this instead instead of fighting back
with competitive insults fight back with
kindness fight back with understanding
even if it looks like you don’t
understand that they’re trolling you you
don’t understand that they’re insulting
you just be the take the high road it’s
hard I know it’s really hard there are
people in the world that the media
really exalts really compliments for
being awesome at really nailing trolls
and haters and politicians and so on
people like JK Rowling and Wil Wheaton
and pink and who else patton oswalt
Kathy Griffin Pete Budaj edge one of the
Democratic contenders now he’s excellent
at it but one of the things that they
have in common is they’re often not all
of them the comedian’s tend to be really
cutting and insulting because they’re
used to handling hecklers but everybody
else is kind of really good at dealing
with trolls and haters by killing them
with kindness and facts
if you’re not up to that kind of
competition the best thing to do is
block them ignore them disconnect from
them don’t respond avoid them don’t even
have anything to do with them leave the
conversation and ignore them if they’re
if they’re talking in the threads that
you’ve posted but you might want to
consider if you really have to using
kindness rather than insults rather than
trying to out troll the troll out
beautify the beauty you know take the
high road I’ve seen it work a million
times and it’s so satisfying when it
does work I don’t know just a thought
what are your thoughts leave me a
comment below how do you handle trolls
what do you do when somebody insults you
online I mean the independence and the
anonymity of the online space makes it
really easy for somebody to do that and
I’m sure that you’ve you had situations
where that’s happened how do you handle
it tell me leave me a comment below if
you’re watching this on vo – go go comm
that’s a great place to leave a comment
because the conversation is troll free I
don’t allow there to be trolls and
insults and so on if you have to leave a
message on vo – Gunn YouTube fine that’s
fine but leave it over on vo – go go
because we’ve got lots of really cool
tools for you there use the big ass
search box at the top of every page to
find the things that you’re looking for
if it’s not apparent because we’ve got
tons of resource if you’d like to
subscribe to my youtube channel and be
notified when every new episode we’re
doing one a day for the entire year
that’s the challenge 365 videos if my
heads over there click on it if it’s not
look for a subscribe button if you want
to see the latest episode I’ve done
click on that frame and it’ll take you
to YouTube to play it I’m David H
Lawrence xvii thank you so much for
watching and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Great advice. It costs nothing to be kind except to the ego. Haters don’t know how to respond.
Love. Thank you, David for always keeping it classy.
I had a face-to-face trolling kind of event with a customer at my Hideous Survival Job. I’ve known him for years outside of the gig, and he has never liked me from day one (the reasons are just too long to go into here). One day he comes into my store to pick up some cough drops and the paper, and he’s drunk (this is in the late morning or so). While I’m ringing out his purchases, he’s quietly berating me. Each time he says something to me, I give it back to him at the same soft volume, but without the vitriol. Finally, he goes for the F Bomb. I reply with a line I remembered from a Live Journal entry I’d once read: “Only if we can cuddle latter.” He was so flummoxed by answer that he said that he’d hoped that he’d see me outside the store (I’m 6’2″, and this guy is bigger than me in a lot of ways). I’d had enough. I went into my best Michael Keaton Batman voice, dropped the pitch of my voice down about a 5th and said to him without blinking, “You’d better hope to God that you NEVER see me outside the store…” He apologized the next time he was in the store, and this time he was sober.
I killed him with kindness until it had no effect, and then I went darker. Usually the kindness works, but when it doesn’t, I gently fight back. Like you always say, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Or as George Martin used to say, “Horses for courses”.
Yup, just walk away. Nothing to be gained by engaging them.
Excellent topic today David!!!
I’m still hanging in there with you. Haven’t missed a video yet. I think this topic is something we all have to deal with from time to time.
With most trolls and haters, I ignore them and move on. It’s seems easier, as some people just “get off” on the keyboard warrior thing. I will never understand why.
Not too long ago, I had an instance of someone I knew going troll on me, or so I thought. The strange thing about the written word (texts, comments, etc.) is that the intention can sometimes be hard to figure out, or easy to misinterpret.
A post can be read in different tones that can make it seem either normal conversation, or seem terrible. In this instance, I read the text with the “bad tone” in my head. It bugged me enough I finally decided to respond.
I did exactly as you suggested in this video and went for the “kill em with kindness” angle…and I’m sure glad I did.
I had misinterpreted the intention completely, and If I had fired the shot across the bow, I may have damaged a good relationship. As it was, the conversation carried on in normal fashion, and I was saved the embarrassment and consequence of jumping to conclusions and losing a friend.
Another point to make is the other type of passive aggressive text or post, that says negative things, and then ends the line with LOL. I suppose this is a way of stating a positive intention, while saying something possibly unflattering or negative. I’m never sure how to deal with that one, so I ignore it as well, because it’s really hard to figure out.
Again, Great topic. Thanks for the videos!! 43 more and you are halfway there.
You could also ask a lot of questions with a very kind tone. “Why does that upset you? What do you think that means?” The wrong question can certainly be insulting but sometimes they actually get tripped up because they have to think about what they’re saying. They may even realize how stupid they’re acting and stop doing it Thanks for the video David.