.Peter_Fitz: Engage, report or block? My three rules to beat the trolls
When I was in a studio about to go to a live cross to New Zealand on Paul Holmes current affairs television show a couple of decades ago, he opened his show saying, “Thank you, for joining us. Tonight, we look at the John Hopoate using his finger in the tackles story. Is he an animal, is he a brute or ... is he justWhich brings me, oddly enough, to social media trolls.
“Simple,” he replied. “I don’t read them. My staff will bring to my attention anything I need to know, but I just don’t want to start every day carrying that kind of emotional baggage.”Genius! Just like the man who kept reading that smoking causes cancer, so he stopped ... reading. Ignoring online abuse until it goes away is a very good start, but there are three more permanent solutions to dealing with trolls.
The first and most obvious one is when the abuse is clearly vicious and contravenes vilification laws, to report them and have their account taken down. It is called cleaning up Dodge City, and dragging off to the sheriff those who continue to disgrace themselves. Ideally, the sheriff will drag them out of Dodge, making the place nicer for everyone.
The second way is to engage with them. Many trolls are the equivalent of sad souls who open their window at midnight to howl at the moon. When I am the subject of such howls, and sometimes quietly say “I am right here you know, and I want to know why you say that, Two Dogs?” It constantly amazes me how their tone swiftly changes. Someone has noticed! SomeoneAnd the third way is to block them out of existence. This, trust me, is not as difficult as it sounds.
It is true that trolls gain some currency among each other by boasting about who has blocked them, but so what? They are lonely I tell you, and having lots of people block you is, in some strange way, almost compensation for the fact that no-one even bothered replying to your 21st birthday party to tell you they weren’t coming. At least, this time, they bothered looking at your name long enough to press a button telling you to get nicked.Ask not for whom the bell tolls my trolls.
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