Personal experience: how to deal with a hate on the Internet

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Ivan Survillo on how to live if you are bombarded with insults on social networks.

Hi. My name is Ivan Survillo, in 2018 I was actively hacked on Twitter for the project "Interview about the Personal" and they continue to do this to this day, albeit not so zealously. I want to share my experience on how to live when the crowd trolls you and writes unpleasant things (I bet this column on Twitter will also be discussed).

0. Call someone important, cry

An optional item that will allow you to throw out your emotions and cool your head.

1. Make a list of important people

Open the notes on your phone or grab a piece of paper with a pen and write down the names of people whose opinions about you and your work really matter to you. I made my list in about ten minutes. It included about 15 names: family, a couple of friends, several colleagues-friends and colleagues-acquaintances.

Compare the list with those who write nasty things about you - most likely, you will not see anyone from the list among the haters. This means that you should not pay attention to them. If you saw and your relationship with a person admits it, call him with something like this: “Hi, I read your post about me. I don't really understand why you wrote it. Can you explain? Most likely, the person will delete the post or explain why he wrote it, and the unknown will stop tormenting you - you will understand what caused his anger.

2. Analyze what is being written about you

Open the feed and read: “Ivan Survillo: I wrote good texts for three days. I didn't want to, but I had to. " Then ask yourself the question: "Did I really write good lyrics for only three days?" Understand that "nope, and for one day it will hardly be enough", and move on to the next tweet: "Ivan survillo does not get tired of giving birth to a bucket of live lice." I like that my name and surname are in small letters, I don't seem to give birth to lice, and in general, for physiological reasons, I can't, which means that the tweet is nonsense, we skip it, read on.

Understand that people don't bully because they don't like your activity. People bully because they feel uncomfortable with her (or with you). Evil comments are not about you, but about how people see themselves when they look at you. People write nasty things because it makes them feel a little better.

3. Laugh

For example, I sent funny phrases to friends and family, and posted the best ones on Instagram. Laughter is a natural reaction of the body, which helps not to go crazy. Experts from the University of Oxford believe Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold, that when you laugh, the body releases chemical compounds with pain relieving properties, so laugh.

4. Ignore the offenders

I have never answered the haters on purpose. Firstly, when entering a conflict, it is very easy to lose self-control and become a hater yourself. Secondly, it is pointless. Well, how do you answer the assumption that I am someone's lover and that is why I took a place in the Forbes ranking?

If, nevertheless, you decide to enter into correspondence, I advise you to wait a minute before writing something (so that emotions subside a little), do not respond with aggression to aggression, react to constructiveness and not publish what you could not say to your interlocutor in real life.

5. If you got it - block

If a person pisses you very badly, block them to prevent them from appearing in your feed. You can also block tweets with certain words, for example, with your last name, but then there is a risk of not seeing good and positive posts. Remove negative comments on Facebook and Instagram if you feel uncomfortable reading them. So you will not see them and worry about them.

6. Try to internally agree with your opponent

I advise this technique with caution, because it worked for me, but it can drive someone into even greater neurosis and apathy. Try to internally agree with the abuser and observe yourself. I felt better after I said aloud, "I am the most [terrible] journalist, and I will never succeed." It seems as if you are disarming your opponent: it makes no sense for him to criticize if you yourself agree that you are a bad journalist. Subsequently, I made a sticker for Telegram out of this phrase.

7. Re-read good reviews about yourself

I have a daddy on my computer, where I put all the nice letters and reviews on my activities that come to me. If it becomes difficult for me to deal with a wave of hatred, I open this folder and read everything in turn. Let go.

I advise you to get the same daddy - it helps you not to lose faith in yourself.

8. Find the pearls of the construct

Sometimes there is constructiveness in negative comments. The usual ratio is 98% bullshit and 2% constructive. Don't worry about nonsense, it's about nothing, but copy the constructive into your notes and analyze. For example, after tweets about my terrible diction, I began to utter tongue twisters in front of the mirror every day.

9. Don't get hung up

Remember: The Internet promotes The Online Disinhibition Effect to a sense of invisibility and impunity. People seem to put on masks, under which their real ones are not visible. Anonymity liberates and makes you forget about the norms of morality and ethics. It is curious that in real life the haters talked to me sweetly and carelessly, as if nothing had happened. None of them, in personal meetings, told me what they wrote on the net.

Criticism is more vividly imprinted in memory because of the logic of evolution. Thinking about good events for a long time does not make much sense: they are not important for survival, but the negative is important. In primitive times, if you displeased the tribe, you could be expelled from it and you would die. A chain is formed: it is impossible to displease the tribe, because without it I will not survive. The problem is that over the past 40-50 thousand years, the brain has not changed much and does not see the difference between haters on the Internet and evil fellow tribesmen. This is confirmed by Professor Roy Baumeister's Bad Is Stronger Than Good in his work.

Remember that hate is not about you, and copy the phrase of Salvador Dali into your notes: "The main thing is that Dali is constantly talked about, even if it is good."