Lately, and I don’t want to get into any specifics here, I’ve seen a disturbing trend. Maybe you’ve noticed it too if you hang out on Twitter. If you don’t then maybe it hasn’t been as prevalent. But lately, I’ve seen a lot of “hater” behavior. My friend Nic Wirtz mentioned a similar trend during the Tweetdiner chat this past Saturday. Now, just like silly bands, hater behavior can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. For example:
Arnie the Argumentative Aardvark: This kind of hater will argue with certain people until said people react, usually in a not good way.
Sally the Slap-Happy Sloth: It’s really easy to “slap” people, especially in Twitter. Sally figures that since the Twitter stream rolls by so quickly, the person she is slapping may not even notice. It’s really easy, in 140 characters, to take a little slap at somebody.
Eva the Explosive Emu: This kind of hater seems to go along all nice and happy until suddenly, for no apparent reason, they explode at somebody, taking that poor somebody off guard.
The list goes on and on. Maybe you have some other members of the set at home.
Here’s the problem, though. When you are on the receiving end of this kind of haterific behavior, the pressure is on you, not the hater, to act in a mature fashion.
Bummer, right? However, I’ve seen this played out over and over again. Someone says something mean to person A. Person A retaliates. Everyone says tsk tsk tsk to person A. For whatever reason, no matter how unfair it is, the person who reacts gets a lot more attention than the person who initiated the squabble in the first place.
Avoid becoming Victor the Victimized Vampire Bat
There are a lot of ways to handle haters without making yourself look bad. The following are some of my recommendations. Maybe you have some as well?
• Shine out an aura of unending patience: The online world is kind of nice in that the general public only sees what you type. If you find that someone is driving you batty, go ahead and punch a pillow, kick a blanket, hit your bed, but when you come back to Twitter or your blog or wherever it is, be as calm and as still as a sea in Summer. Agree that the Arnie the argumentative aardvark is totally entitled to his point of view. Ask Ellen the explosive emu if everything is okay. If a person is truly trying to be a hater, nothing will upset them more. If something more friendly is going on, you’ll get down to the nugget of it rather than becoming an explosive emu yourself.
• Ignore the person: I know, this seems like it might be really boring, but just a thought – if you see a train crash, do you drive your car right into the middle of it, or do you drive away as fast as you can (while maybe looking at the madness in your rear view mirror)? If someone is trying to bait you into an online fight because they’re having a bad day, just refuse to participate. If they keep bugging you, unfollow them, report them as spam, or tell your friends what’s going on so you can get some back-up.
• Pay more attention to people who are treating you well: A lot of haters are fed by the attention they receive for their unseemly behavior. It’s kind of like Ghost Busters II, which altogether was not a great movie, but remember how the slime kept feeding off of everyone’s misery? Online haters are just like that sometimes. So, instead of blasting out a really happy and uplifting song, sing out praises for valued members of your community. Tweet out really good blog posts. Show the hater what he or she could experience if only they would stop hating. And if they’re just plain hungry for misery, let them go somewhere else.
• Explain to the hater that their behavior is unacceptable: I view this as a last resort, as it’s only a step or two away from engaging. However, if you’ve had friendly communications with the person, it sometimes doesn’t hurt to send an email or a personal message just to say, “Hey, you’re really not doing yourself any favors here. I’m concerned about you.” Now, you could also tweet this out in public but that just seems really passive aggressive. And it’s feeding the beast.
Don’t fight fire with fire
Whether you choose any of these methods or none of them, one core fact remains. In the online world, you are what you type. Very often, your followers or the people in your community will only see what you are saying to someone else. If they see you ranting and raving at someone, it’s kind of like seeing someone ranting and raving in the middle of a sidewalk for no apparent reason. They don’t see that someone is irking you. They don’t know that you have been patient for 27 months and now finally you’re losing it. They just see what you’re doing and what you’re typing. This is always the case. You never get a break. So before you retaliate, try to weigh the usefulness of your fireball against what it might cost you in terms of trust and credibility from people who like and respect you. Usually – this makes the decision pretty easy.
Oh, and by the way…
It’s really easy to come off as a hater in a place like Twitter-world. People don’t know you. They don’t know the tone of voice you have in your head. Always play on the safe side, even if you think you’re getting to know someone well enough to joke around with them. As somebody really smart said one time, “Better to be safe than sorry.”
Agree? Disagree? Hate? Love? Share in the comments below!
Image by Felix atsoram. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/atsoram
Margie,
you did it again. Great read, provocative post, and new nicknames for, um, certain peeps all in one post. Would like to add 3 things from my brief sojourn in Twitterverse.
1) yes, entirely too easy to be misunderstood. 140 practically begs misunderstanding and therefore you should expect it and be prepared to respond counter-intuitively. Do not escalate ever and assume you were in the wrong (even if you know you were not). Get HELP, friends who know you better and also know “them” might be able to cool things off.
2) People if not Loved would rather be Hated than Ignored. (grade school learnings and just as true in Twitter). Do not return hate energy, you just feed it. Ignoring someone is actually the best response in many cases.
3) God gave us a head and feet to use. Walk away. If someone if really annoying you then you can do what a friend of mine did just yesterday. She blocked him and deleted all of her previous posts to him… He no longer exists for her and she is happier for it….
Great commentary, Josepf, thank you!
It’s definitely extremely easy to be misunderstood – not just in 140 characters, although that magnifies the issue, but anywhere online. In real life, I am generally a very sarcastic, dry-humored person. Even then, when people can hear my voice and see my demeanor, it doesn’t always go over well. So online, when people can’t hear my tone, and when I can’t depend on them knowing me, I have to conscientiously move away from my usual manner of being sarcastic and smart-allecky. Well. most of the time 🙂
And yes, just moving away is sometimes the best way to go. There’s just no reason to mess with folks who want to bring you down.
Margie
Haters are looking for a reaction. To get your goat, to get you to do something for them that they feel they should be doing. Others are just doing it to see how you will react. We have to look at it and take a step back and think before we react.
As you say, the pressure is on you. Funny how that happens but it does. If someone is saying things like you are pigheaded, ignorant, stupid, cannot read and write english, you have to know they are begging you to respond in a rant to fuel their fire. Their intent and motive are to get you to notice them and act in the way that they wish you to. Which generally is not notice them. However when they take it up a notch and say things that are wishing you dead or harm then we have to look at the motive a bit differently as they are not wanting you to do something for them other than be eliminated from their lives. They are powerless and so erratic that they focus all their attention upon you as if you are the seed to all their being.
Behaviorally this is disturbing and many times not the intent of people. Haters on twitter are seeking acknowledgment and attention or to “get you” so they can talk about it to give themselves a boost. Emotionally there is a disconnect.
We all lapse and react in a manner that is defensive when we are protecting. They attack we defend – but only when it hits something within us. We ignore when we are able to see it for what it is and it does not hit that nerve of big wall of defense.
I agree with ignoring but yet sometimes it only allows more hating as how dare we ignore them. Gosh, makes me think of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction – I will not be ignored Dan. Heebie jeebies!
You raise a good point – haters can sometimes get to a point where they can be threatening, and at that point, it’s time to call in authorities. I wish Twitter would be more engaged in these kinds of events, and I hope that they change their mind about their policy sometime soon.
For the most part, though, people fall into the first category you speak of. They want attention or want their name attached to yours for whatever reason. What I find bothersome is that very often, they get exactly what they want. That is the trend I think we need to stop.
What about Tristan the loud mouth troll? There’s a postscript to the matter initially brought up, not content with deleting Martha from the group they then proceeded to hound her on Twitter. Coming from an alleged award winning journalist I’m almost shocked, then I remember there’s an awful lot of resistance/fear of social media in media circles – I can see why given that it’s forever changed the industry and is leading to massive job cuts.
So after attempting to explain herself a couple of times, she eventually gave up and blocked them, by them I mean there were two people in a virtual tag-team.
As the dust settles I’m really surprised that it came to this, Martha was accused of, in their eyes, the worst crime a journalist could do which is to gossip. They claimed the article was full of inaccuracies. Even after explaining that she did not write the article, nor could it be gossip as it was an admission of guilt in a court of law they still hounded her.
I remember some of the advice given in #tweetdiner was engage, ignore or block well she did all three at varying times until block became the only option. Sometimes block is the only option. Use it well.
I love the descriptions of the various people you can meet and have probably been guilty of all three at varying times. The problem with Eva is that it could happen to anyone – you’re having a bad day, somebody posts the wrong thing at the wrong time and you snap. Never has the 10 second rule been so useful as in online communications. If you feel like you’re going to explode step away from the computer, if possible get out of the building, this means at least five minutes before you return.
Which do you prefer five minutes of walking around or one second to ruin your reputation?
BTW Eva the explosive emu changed to Ellen later on, is there a family of explosive emus?
Ooops. Guess I can’t keep track of my own naming devices. I think that particular situation was just bound for ugliness and there wouldn’t have been a way to end it cleanly. When the online world overlaps with the real world you get into real trouble.
I love your last line. Something to learn from!
Am I a “hater”?
No, you’re an agent provacteur. Without the lingerie.
How do you know? 😉
Too close to Christmas for those mental images to have any effect.
I’ve seen your smushy nuggety center 🙂
No, I think you’re passionate and you like to engage. I think sometimes your tonality can be hard to read, but you’re not a hater.
Tonality is hard to read on anyone’s tweets, dry, sarcastic humour with additional rolling eyes is very difficult to convey in 120 characters.
Yes. Yes it is.