Nowadays, trolling on the Internet has become so rampant. Sadly! If you are a content creator and reaching heights on Internet, you would have certainly encountered trolls. Trolls are cyberbullies who try to provoke fights, spam social media posts, junk blogs and websites, clutter your creativity and try hard to attack you emotionally.
The motto of trollers can be anything from gaining your attention by creating issues, picking up arguments or spreading hatred or anything else. Dealing with trolls on a daily basis can be challenging and tricky, but you can overcome them smartly.
Just with a screen name, hiding behind the Internet, trollers can’t stop you from being a content creator or hamper your peace. We have listed down a few tips and tricks that will help you deal with trollers & trolling and how to overcome them eventually.
#1 Responding to the trolls
Depending on the situation, you can respond to the trolls in many ways. Sometimes trolls can be harsh critics or go beyond that and be annoying or have absurd humour. Some might be threatening and name-calling, while others can be stalking or display predatory behaviour that intends to spread hate.
You need to choose how you want to respond to trolls, considering the nature of the troll, level of threat and type of platform on which it occurs. We have mentioned a few ways how you can respond to trolls.
Report –
If trolls start to misbehave with you and spread hatred against you, report them to the social media service providers. They will look upon the trolls and will take necessary actions to keep their platform secure.
Expose/Callout –
Anonymity is the trolls’ major weapon and if you can break it, they will not survive. You can screenshot their comments and acts and call them out in your post. Hold them responsible for their acts publicly.
Let your community act up –
If you have huge followers and a loyal community for your content, then let them act upon the trolls on your behalf. Your community will stand for you and will take care of the trolls.
Reply –
If you decide to reply to a troll, try to respond with humour, wit and professionalism. Beat trollers with facts and records so they will not come back again with any faulty claims.
Ignore –
Ignore the trolls as much as possible. As said before, the main aim of the trolls is to grab your attention, irritate you and make you pick an argument. So, if the trolls seem harmless and want your time and attention, then it is better to ignore them.
Block –
If trolls are continuously trying to bug your social media or website and leave no space in disturbing you and your community, block them without thinking twice. Social media platforms also have the option to restrict accounts, which will let them access your content, but their comments and tags will not reflect on your page.
2# Minimising troll-attacks
You can never make social media or content publishing platforms troll-free. But there are a few ways to make them less reachable to the trolls. Turning off comments completely or not checking DMs and inboxes will stop the opportunity of building community and engaging with your audience. Use these tricks to mitigate and minimise the troll attacks on your content.
Community guidelines and commenting policy –
If you have your own website or content sharing platform, develop strong community guidelines and frame an anti-trolling policy. The guidelines and policies should summarise what kinds of comments are welcomed and what action will be taken if comments are unruly or uncivil. Having solid guidelines will help you set a tone of engagement and create a safe online community.
Moderate commenting –
If you can check, moderate and approve a comment to get posted on your content platform, you can avoid tolls disrespecting or spreading nuisance in your community. But this is highly time-consuming and sometimes requires a lot more effort than necessary. Moderating comments will disappoint trollers heavily as their faulty efforts won’t get displayed instantly and they will stop disturbing you again. Platforms like Instagram have introduced features like moderating comments or even adding comment and viewer moderators on Instagram Live to mitigate troll attacks. Even YouTube and Twitch have similiar features.
Delete –
If you feel the trolls are abusive, contain foul language, and disrespect your content, delete the account from your website, delete the comment, etc.
3# Dealing with trolls
Being amidst trolls every day might affect you mentally and emotionally. But you need to deal with it without letting it affect your creator space. We have listed a few tips that will help you overcome the trolls.
Take quality time off –
As a content creator, your presence online will be much-expected every day. But it is not healthy for you to be around judgements and trolls all 365 days. So, take some time off from the Internet and detach yourself from negativity. Get into a relaxing mode and de-stress yourself (or hey! maybe come to our Creator Pad.) It will also help you create content with a renewed zeal.
Take time to process emotions –
It’s completely okay if you feel disturbed or low with hate, insults and threats. No one can be strong all the time and ignore the negativity thrown at them. So take time to process your emotions. Once you are feeling fine, you can get back to your routine – be it creating content or engaging with your community.
Don’t take it personally –
Being a content creator, you are always on many people’s radars, including your fans, followers, and sadly trolls. But you or your content can’t be satisfying to everyone equally. Unless the criticisms are constructive, never give your attention. Never take trolls and negative criticism personally. If you are doing so, it will take a toll on your emotional and mental well-being.
Take action –
If a troller is continuously behind you stalking, spreading hatred and being abusive and if you are feeling threatened, lodge a cyberbullying complaint. If you’re being targeted and need protection, take legal action to safeguard yourself.
Seek professional help –
Sometimes it becomes too overwhelming to process the negativity and come out of it independently. If you feel so, seek professional help to overcome the trauma caused by trolls. You can talk to therapists and attend counselling sessions.
Trolls are like pests on the internet, causing tremendous sound and disturbance. If dealt with, you can understand that they are mere obstacles and can never silence your voice or invade your creative space.
We at TagMango do not entertain or tolerate any kind of trolling and are working 24×7 towards creating a safe space for creators and their community. We facilitate and provide content creators with the utmost freedom to create, monetise their content, build a sustainable income source by utilising their skillset, and a lot more.
