Learning to Tune Out the Negativity
Tips for maintaining your cool in a heated online world.
I have high blood pressure. Like, really high blood pressure that I struggle to keep under control thanks to heroic quantities of daily medicines, yoga, and everything else under the sun my doctor and WebMD can come up with. Having to spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer and on the internet hasn’t helped matters at all lately.
Beyond the obvious stresses of the news and politics, it seems that even the most benign social media and YouTube video comment threads inevitably devolve into hostility, fear-mongering, and name-calling. For example, yesterday, I watched a 24-second video from America’s Test Kitchen about the right way to crack an egg so you don’t end up with bits of shell in your bowl or pan. I’m barely exaggerating when I say that half the comments were negative. I avoid Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter because I know the ratio is often much higher.
Don’t get me wrong: people should express themselves and there are issues that people should be genuinely upset about. However, what I see, as someone who has been working on the web for 30 years (and “online” for over 40 years) is that the culture has changed in a very unattractive (to me) way.
Plenty has been said about this already. But, I’ve written a book about Mastodon (which happens to be, on the whole, quite positive), and I have some tips that have worked for me to reduce my stress levels while still being able to watch my beloved egg-cracking videos.
Know that many negative comments on social media are NOT REAL. Pumping up certain things or injecting negative comments into posts (or product reviews) from competitors is big business. It’s inexpensive, effective, and not illegal to hire a team of professionals in a country with no minimum wage to pursue your interests on social media. Better yet, you can build an AI chatbot to do the job for free. Many companies, countries, and politicians do just that.
Never read the comments. If you watch a YouTube video, read a news article, or see something you like on Instagram, just stop with that. Form your own opinion, and don’t even look at the comments. There’s nothing else you need to see there.
Focus on learning. Learning about something new is the best thing about the internet. Did you know that you can take entire MIT courses for free on the web? Watching every TED Talk available would take you a lifetime and provide thousands of (really fun) “ah-ha!” moments.
Don’t engage with “stuck” people. Sadly, many of the negative comments on the Internet come from people (and bots created by people) who are highly resistant to change. If they’ve always cracked an egg one way, even hearing about a different way to do it upsets them. Nothing can be done here. Don’t respond, and think seriously about my tip #2 (never read the comments).
Many of you are probably thinking “but, nearly all of my friends post positive and friendly things on the internet.” This is likely true for everyone. The problem is professional trolls, a small number of obnoxious people, and the normal people who feed them (either through hiring them or engaging with them). Most real people are good and reasonable.
What do you think? Have you felt this negativity, too? What are your strategies for dealing with it?