Dear Dorothy,
How do you deal with hatred directed at you on the internet – and has the online hate ever spilled over into your real life? What would you advise a person who was experiencing cruelty/threats/bullying online to do?
Yours Sincerely,
Rick
Dear Rick,
There is something very powerful about taking the hate knives that are thrown at you, catching them and waving them in the air, like an internet Kungfu master. The internet is a strange place in which we haven’t yet sorted out the etiquette of social action, it’s a wild-west free-for-all with a lot of yelling and hiding and ego display and knife-throwing. But you can humanise it by never taking the bait from the angriest people, and talking to everyone as if they were in the room with you. It disarms everybody. Don’t do it with the crazy trolls. The crazy trolls are just crazy. Ignore them.
All that said, sometimes you need to just shut the computer and stop fiddling with your phone. The voices on the internet can be like the voices in your head – relentless and impossible to ignore, and nonproductive. So as tempting as it may be to stay connected to the battle and drama online, talking with your actual friends and hanging out in the real-life spaces of the world is the best antidote.
Yours Truly,
Dorothy