Much Like A Coat, Your Opinion Should Be Checked At The Door

It continues to blow my mind how brazen and “cheeky” some folks become when protected behind a keyboard in the safety of their home. Even with some of the more enlightened societal concepts that have supposedly become the norm, many still believe in calling out others and speaking against them in online forums.

I recently read a post by someone who had been listing some homemade clothing and purchases they had made at a thrift store. Almost immediately, someone hit up their comments section and started calling the person out, claiming that wearing second-hand clothing was disgusting as you had no idea where it came from and that the writer should know better. This was apparently even someone who KNEW the writer.

This is a pretty tame example and they tend to get worse. I, myself, have even had people commenting and arguing with me in relation to martial arts and Buddhism on this blog! Kind of hard not to, I guess, since religion is one of the most disputed topics of conversation out there. But I’ve even had it where I’ve been verbally insulted and attacked on my blog posts. I tend not to allow an argument to ensue and simply block person and their comments as I don’t abide by unnecessary negative energy.

It’s almost a safe bet that if you go online (on any forum) and say left, someone will say right. Then they’re usually game to argue their view to the point of becoming insulting and belittling to the writer. So why are people like this? For the most part, I can almost guarantee that the same people wouldn’t be arguing like this, if they were face-to-face with the person in question.

The popular term that has labeled to this phenomenon, is known as “trolling”. This is not to be mistaken with people who genuinely want to discuss and even debate their opposing view through your comments section. Trolls basically take the time out of their day to comment in a negative fashion against anything they find online. They usually make it a point to make their comments as insulting as possible and are actively hoping to elicit a reaction from people.

An article posted on PsychologyToday.com states, “[…] trolls have markedly different personality styles: they are more narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic and sadistic.” This basically means that they comment for their own self-gratification based on the responses they elicit as opposed to actually contributing to the conversation. Nice, eh?

The article goes on to explain that the best thing you can do with trolls, if you find them commenting on your post or article is to simply ignore them. This can be quite difficult, if your post is of a personal nature or you’ve vested yourself in the message you’re sending. But if you don’t engage them, you essentially take away their influence against you.

Here’s the article, if anyone wants to give it a read: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/significant-results/201408/what-you-should-know-about-online-arguments

For those who may not be a troll, I like to use a popular term I’ve found often online: “Just scroll on by…” Basically, if you don’t like what you see or read, there’s nothing wrong with just scrolling past. There is no genuine need to comment. Unless of course, you wish to genuinely debate. In which case, let me grab you a coffee! We’ll be here for a while… ☯