Alternate headline: Gotta know when to troll em, know when to fold em, & know when to walk away.
This post isn’t for the masses. It is for only a small section of people who have an itch that needs scratching when they scroll through their Facebook feeds, compelling them to post something negative in reply to the posts they’re seeing. This affliction is typically suffered by know-it-alls who have been recently radicalized by something like a health trend (extreme veganism), academia (an angry gender studies major), or personal relationship with the author (an ex or ex-friend) for example(s).
This post is here to advise against feeding these impulses in negative ways and will seek to offer a guide on how to channel the energy into something slightly less destructive, and certainly more logical so that you may know yourself and your relationship to how you are perceived by others in a more thorough manner.
Rule #1…
Add Value…
The first rule of social network commenting is to add value to what you are commenting on. If it doesn’t add value to the post and instead only self-serves, then you are being a jerk and shouldn’t be making the post unless you are willfully and knowingly being that jerk for a reason (which we’ll get to later).
For those with ruthless senses of humor and discerning eyes for both aggressive and passive-aggressive correction – fear not. Value-added doesn’t always have to be positive. Adding value to a post can come in the form of a roast battle or sharp comment or blatant disagreement. The other person will probably hate it and hate you for it (another topic I’ll cover further on in this post) – but objectively speaking, content-wise, you will have added value to their post as long as there is substance to what you’re saying. You can’t just negate.
If someone comes to argue with the logic or merit of a post, then there’s something there to work with – an opportunity to explain or forcibly re-examine the reason either side took the angle to an issue that they did. The author might not appreciate the dissent, and that is something you have to take into consideration, but again – the objective record will at least show that your participation in the comments section added something for the viewer whether it was greeted warmly by the author or not.
However… if your comment offers no substance and just negates the original post, then you aren’t contributing, you are heckling. Ask yourself – who is that for? Unless it is a sincere attempt to viciously attack by way of rallying the other viewers against the author with disdain and rejection – the only person who benefits from a heckle is the heckler. The audience doesn’t like it, the performers post has been hijacked – the only person who profits is the narcissist who succeeded in making noises to make someone elses thing about them.
Know what Trolling is and when it’s inappropriate
I have a few remaining dissenters and haters in my Facebook friends (though the number decreases greatly each year as they get frustrated with me and unfriend themselves) but there are only 2 people who are annoying because their dissent isn’t genuine against the content I post – it’s against me. Actually, now that I think of it, it’s only the 1 person left, as the other – an ex-girlfriend who used to take any chance she could to deride my posts, has since converted and stopped. The other person though continues to post social media comments that are just terrible. Not because they cross any lines of good taste, but because every comment is nothing but a troll. They are comments that don’t build upon a premise, challenge it in thoughtful ways to make it stronger, or add clever barbs in good natured jousting – they consistently and obnoxiously amount to nothing more than saying “nuh-uh”, giving a public appearance that you’re making a bad-faith antagonists drive-by that kills the vibe of the post.
This is fine behavior for trolling – it makes sense if your intention is to hassle and harangue and remind the author that they are under a vigilant critical eye and will have to remain sharp and be ready to answer challenges – but who wants that on their social page?… If you want to be a troll and hassle someone until they block you, then be well aware of what you’re doing. If you’re not trying to do that but all your comments to one person are negative – ask yourself, Who does that serve, exactly?…
My one remaining troll-commenter is, I don’t believe, trying to alienate me. In fact, I suspect I might hurt his feelings if I publicly replied how useless and annoying his contributions to the dialogue consistently are. But this inspires the question of what exactly is going on in that persons head then? What do they think they’re accomplishing by being so consistently negative in my comments? It doesn’t help me in any way, doesn’t bring attention to a brand or marketing strategy, and doesn’t give me an opportunity to engage in a chess-match style text joust. These types of comments are just annoyances. This persons comments has, for years, had people privately asking me who this hater is – something they never ask about the more open commenters who pull the knives out with a clear point to their negativity. Likewise, you’ll find yourself on the negative end of “who tf is THIS guy?” by the other commenters if you post anything outside of what they’re expecting, and is all the more reason why you should have a thoughtful justification for why you’re doing what you’re doing, even if you don’t share it with your opponents.
Just remember that if you want to be a thorn in someones side, then fine, but it’s a foolish and lonely making position to unwittingly be the person who just falls into the pattern of always being another persons nay-sayer and never their advocate.
I empathize with your struggle…
I not only have experience with these nay-sayers back since the Myspace days, but I’ve been that unwittingly always-negative person and I’m here to tell you that it sucks. It sucks to realize that, no matter how right you were about The Lord of the Rings being a shitty trilogy or the facts behind the Obama administrations recession recovery, that all you were received as was a bad-faith shit disturber. In reality, you zeroed in on the text of the post or image you were seeing and when you responded to someone saying how much they liked the Lord of the Rings or lauded an economic claim that was only half-baked and you forgot to consider the context or source and it was too late when you realized that you never had any good interactions with the person you had been antagonizing.
Reminder that Social Media is “media”, not a conversation.
People don’t like to be corrected or confronted with contrary arguments to things today feel strongly about, but when you do this on social media you are doing it on a whole new level because you aren’t engaging with the person directly, you are in contradicting them in front of an audience. The reason they posted that thing you think or no is completely wrong, it’s because they not only feel strongly about it, but they want to broadcast it. When you go against what they are broadcasting, they are likely to feel shamed and defensive because they know that they is an audience to this reply.
If you’re going to mess with that, then you should at least know what you’re doing and have a reason for doing it.
Remember that social media is a form of publishing, not personal interaction. When you engage publicly with someone who says a thing in a group, you’re doing just that. In other words – you’re not taking them aside and giving a good natured wink and razz – you’re challenging, correcting, or mocking them in front of their peers with stoic text providing no context of good natured affect or humor. Which offers nothing to the other person but provocation – in which case, why should they keep such a bad-faith provoker around?
Leave a Reply