How to Prevent Online Harassment From Ruining Your Day
It’s no secret that people on the Internet are mean, and if you live on the Internet in any significant way, you’re likely to run into some sort of online harassment, which most likely sucks. However, there are several steps you can take to bounce back.
Internet harassment does happen, but you don’t need to ruin your day. As a woman who has been prominently on this world wide web for some time now, I have developed several strategies to keep these bastards from confusing me, and I will share them with you here.
Strategy # 1: block, delete, report
Great news: Even if you make money from being seen on the Internet, it’s not your job to scream about your appearance, sexual orientation, or even the quality of your work. If someone wants to offer “constructive criticism” that is actually constructive (and polite), okay, listen and talk to an adult about it. But if someone just wants to ruin your day by talking shit, you don’t have to put up with it.
One of the former editors once told me about it this way: if a person walked into an office from the street and started yelling at an employee about how stupid, ugly, fat and unloved he is, and how they bring quality from this particular institution, they will simply exist accompany and (most likely) deny entry to this establishment.
Conversely, having a Twitter or blog account is not – despite what people may tell you – an open invitation for people to resent you. This even extends to Facebook and that high school guy who says he “just loves good discussions.” This is your damn account, and you can curate its contents as you please. So lock profiles with the default icons, remove comments and report anything that really bothers you.
Strategy # 2: make a joke about it
I often take (non-identifying) screenshots of emails I receive from angry , agitated and morally resentful and post them on my Instagram, and I find it quite cathartic.
First, it allows me to take what should have upset me and process it into something that will increase my online presence. He also gives my friends material for witty jokes and observations, which almost completely deprives him of his power. I have never shared a rude comment that got a friend or family member to say, “Actually, they’re right,” and it always helps when someone else confirms that the funny thing someone told you is actually is actually ridiculous.
Strategy # 3: Logout
This may sound overly simplistic, but going outside always helps, even if you’re quite sure it’s not. At the start of my online writing career, I upset a very nasty corner of the Internet and received a fair amount of verbal abuse regarding my looks, intelligence, and (oddly enough, because the topic discussed had nothing to do with) blowjob skills. I didn’t do it that well, and instead of blocking out angry men and staying away from Twitter for a while, I obsessively checked my mentions by shaking my hands about five times an hour.
It was a terrible strategy. Fortunately, then my partner realized what was happening and made me run along a very beautiful waterway. Running helped, but I remember very clearly how I looked at the water, palms and pelicans and thought: “Nature does not care what happened on the Internet.” It sounds silly, but it made me realize that while people were saying really terrible things about me, it didn’t really change anything tangible. Pelicans still existed (I like them). I still had work to do. No one I really knew or cared about got angry or upset about me. In fact, nothing has changed in my life.
Also, just because you know you are being criticized doesn’t mean you should read it. Writing about your personal life online can make people feel like they are involved. This can be both great and terrible. Overall, it was a pleasant experience for me, but last year when I was going through a divorce it was pretty awful.
One night I myself decided to go to Google and found myself on a forum, the participants of which were wildly talking about why I suddenly enter Instagram from another kitchen, why I did not publish a photo of my husband for a while and if my career change (from a laboratory assistant before a freelance writer) was the reason for my (now alleged) divorce. It sucks, I couldn’t do anything about it and it would be better if I just didn’t google it myself. I say don’t Google yourself.
Strategy # 4: Focus on Good Feedback
Most people are very hard on themselves and, as a result, take criticism too easily. Many of my friends are writers, and when someone criticizes one of them on the Internet, my immediate reaction is usually, “This person is just a loser troll with no life.” However, my critics are almost certainly supermodels of nuclear physicists, and they “have some good arguments.” I also tend to cling to negativity. There might be 30 very happy comments on the article, and I’ll find and focus on the one that says I will die alone because I’m wearing a jumpsuit or something. (Spoiler alert: We all die alone.) Don’t do it. Instead, believe when people tell you that you are cool and assume that your haters are just haters.
You can never please everyone, and trying to do so will turn you into a (now insane) very boring person. People will always shit about other people, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it, respond to it, or even read.