Dealing with Childish Behavior Online
June 19, 2008 2:03 pm Social Media
On June 4, I wrote a post about the five levels of voting and commenting behaviors online. During an IM conversation with Julie Lujan , she mentioned similar concerns.
This is a guest post by Julie Lujan (AKA Calinazaret). She is an active participant and contributor to Mixx and is a co-host on Saturday Night Monkey every Saturday at 10 p.m. PST. She is also a psychology student at a university in California.
I’ve always thought social media’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness– people. People are caring, supportive, creative, funny and friendly, but people can also be immature as hell.
Recently in my online endeavors I fell into a nasty interaction with someone who could benefit from going back to kindergarten. This user submitted a story to Mixx which I felt was not entirely accurate and I down voted it. This user then visited my profile and down voted every story I’ve submitted to Mixx in the last month! Of course I respect a person’s right to disagree and down vote my submissions, but this was done out of the spirit of meanness which is untenable. I have to wonder how long it took him to go through it all, and why on earth anyone would take that much time out of their day to do something that makes so little difference.
It continually amazes me the ways which people find to express their emotions in virtual environments. It’s as if humanity must reinvent communication altogether for this new medium, and some who are barely able to communicate in real life revert back to childhood on the internet. Hence all these poopy-heads who are barely cognizant of their behavior.
Here are a few tips for dealing with internet asshats:
- Be an adult. People tend to mimic the behavior of those around them, so if you start flinging poo at an aggressor then prepare for a shit storm. If you can make yourself act calmly, rather than react angrily, most of the time it’s enough to get the situation under control.
- Kill them with kindness. Yeah, I don’t try this one very often because I hate those asshats and being nice to them is the last thing I want to do, but even if they don’t change you’ll feel better about yourself for doing the right thing.
- Gather evidence. On some social media sites (such as Mixx) you can gather evidence and the admins will ban them if their behavior is deplorable enough.
- Just walk away. This is the hardest one, but if nothing else works, it’s what you must do in order to maintain your dignity.
Always remember that there are some awesome people online that make the experience worth it. In the process of stewing over this situation and trying to vent without losing my cool I told a friend about what happened and he promptly voted up all the affected stories. How cool is that? The asshat’s efforts were totally thwarted and all was set right by the power of friendship.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
All that’s well and good, but don’t try to tell me not to fling poo. That’s what us apes do!
June 19th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
By the way, loved you posting this article, Reem. Julie’s a great writer and this is a perfect example.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
great post, you hit the heart of the matter- how to react… I get bogged down with this type of action all the time, and its all out of bitterness. I feel I am harmless… guess not.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Julie, your use of the term “poopy-heads” is of the highest caliber.
PS-Just like the ape, we monkeys live to fling the poo. :p
June 19th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Good points - although hard, being nice + forgetting the clown in question is a person’s best bet.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
@honest_ape & Mark Carras
I would never try to take away your right to fling poo. That’s every American Monkey’s right.
@Erin
You’d be amazed at how easy it is to diffuse a situation if you stay calm and act with maturity. One of my favorite quotes is “Don’t argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
@Sonny Gill
Thanks. I agree.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I find that “oh yeah?” and the “I’m rubber and you’re glue …” to work best in situations like that.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
What about the slowly dissecting the person’s words to calmly and concisely use lots of big words to tell them that they and everything they believe in is wrong? I call it ‘The quite kill.’ >:)
Great post dear. I’m so proud of you!
June 19th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
American Monkeys? What are you, a Nationalist??
June 20th, 2008 at 8:22 am
I wish I would have known this back when I started getting trolls on my site - I just started moderating comments
June 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Great post!
Our site’s been dealing with similar “asshat” issues!
http://www.toastedrav.com/post/2455
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
People in general think it’s OK to be rude to get whatever they want. The internet just lets them bypass the normal guilt or shame they would feel if people could see them. People are afraid to tell others to stop doing something rude even in public. it’s time for the good manners to inherit the Earth.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
i am new to social media, and i find stuff that offend me, and i was wondering what to do about, i think these steps will help
June 28th, 2008 at 12:43 am
UPDATE:
This user continued to vote down my stories and it began to really get under my skin, so the default “avoid” was not working. I sent them a message, here is the text:
“It’s not cool that you are mass down-voting my stories. I understand that you have a right to vote how you wish, but it is very clear that your votes are of a retaliatory nature.
Please stop this behavior, done in the spirit of meanness. It’s not good for the community and, aside from the fact that it’s irritating, it doesn’t affect my stories at all.
Thanks.”
I got no response, but, amazingly enough, it worked. The guy no longer down votes my stories.
June 28th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Well I’m glad it worked hopefully you won’t suffer too much from this. I hope the old saying “there is no such thing as bad publicity” still is true:)
August 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I love that you used the word asshat, it’s probably my favorite word from the American street language. Thanks for bettering my day.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I feel like most of this childish behavior is mostly in those forums. People think they are so cool when they act a certain way.
June 27th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Its not easy to deal with issues like that.
That is my opinion.