5 Ways to Deal with Online Trolls

The internet has its limitations despite all its advantages, one of which are the presence of online trolls whose responsibility is to target others by posting abusive, threatening, rude and hateful messages. They are simply out to ridicule others  and they can be very frustrating.

It’s therefore, becomes ever more important to deal with because they will not go away. Here are some tips on how to deal with them.

1) Ignore them  

This is perhaps the smartest way to deal with online trolls; ignore them. If you ignore them, they will not have the opportunity of achieving their desires which is to make you feel bad. So, do not give them that satisfaction.

2) Expose or block them

Online trolls thrive on bullying others. You will think they have got nothing else doing but to close-mark other people like a defender does to a striker. You tweet or post pictures on Instagram, they respond with rude remarks. At this point, you do not need to ignore them, you can expose them to your followers. If you like, you can block them!

3) Fight back with facts

Online trolls are good at one thing, they rarely make mistakes. They can go to any length to embarrass you especially when you do not get your facts right. But if you do, they can only do as much.

4) You may stop  show-off online

The trend online is for Nigerian celebrities to show off their latest cars, house, shoe closet, money and designer bag. You have a right to show off these things but there are people online that question why you are displaying your wealth online.  If you do not want pesky trolls on your case, maybe you should stop the online extravagance.  For example, online trolls took popular blogger, Linda Ikeji to the cleaners for posting a look-alike Hermes bag. The online troll went as far to proof that the bag is counterfeit. Ikeji had to pull the picture off Instagram.

5) Employ humor

There have been circumstances whereby some people deleted their social media account because of excessive taunting by online trolls. The trolls will be happy kicking you off social media. However, if you take it lightly and respond with humor, the troll may move on to others. But if you respond the same, you have opened the floodgate to trolling!

Sent in by Ogunfowoke Adeniyi…from Lagos

 

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