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What would be a good alternative to blocking or fighting with negative people on social media?

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Darko Savic
Darko Savic May 09, 2022
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Blocking, fighting, or ignoring negative people on social media are the 3 choices that intuitively come to mind when people find themselves targeted.
There are a number of common reasons why people are mean to others on social media.
Can we come up with an alternative way of dealing with negative people that could become a new standard?
Could this new option be built as a tool into social media software?
trollingsocial mediaonline platformsociology
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Creative contributions

loving them

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Mikhail Korsanov
Mikhail Korsanov May 09, 2022
In fact negative people just lack love. They need it very much. So, giving them love. They may continue being negative, and still, giving them love. One day they will run out of negative... and get more satisfied and positive :)
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Darko Savic
Darko Savic2 years ago
Yes. They also lack attention and social status. It's this that makes them social pirates - attacking others to gain status.
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Mikhail Korsanov
Mikhail Korsanov2 years ago
Darko Savic That is for sure. However social status is subject to lack of love, usually. When people are confident in being loved, people need less of social status. Darko, another issue: you seem to be a strong serial ideas generator. Can you please contact me by Telegram @mikeai686 to discuss cooperation on creating a system of mass implementation of ideas in reality.
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Removing negative form, while discussing the essence

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Mikhail Korsanov
Mikhail Korsanov May 09, 2022
We can separate negative form and the essence what they say. We can discuss the essence while ignoring the form.
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Verbose opt-out

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Darko Savic
Darko Savic May 09, 2022
For example, an option to say "I saw what you said, I'm opting not to respond and don't want you to bother me about this again. But I'm not blocking or ignoring your future comments. I'm not angry at you. I just don't want to spend any energy on this. Engaging in this goes against my personal brainpower allocation policies."
Let's invent a new word that stands for the above sentences. Then the option could become one of the 3 content rating functions (like, dislike, and this).
What would be a good word or an icon that describes the feature?
How about just: "No."

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Miloš Stanković
Miloš Stanković2 years ago
A foreign word equivalent like "schadenfreude" would be ideal. It became known in the English language and the internet culture quite fast.
  • As in English, "peace-out" first came to my mind. It can also be used as a button with an icon of the two-finger peace sign. Very on-brand with the like and dislike button. It's not aggressive.
"No" is still antagonistic, the bluntness can be perceived as provoking. Basically, it's the more regular version of "TLDR" which is used to annoy people and end the communication.
  • Internet culture also uses the phrase "don't @ me" (don't at me) for signalling an unwillingness to continue dwelling on the argument. So a new symbol can be just " ̶@̶" - that is a strikethrough "@". Yet even "don't @ me" has some antagonism in its background.
  • Other options can be something like "truce", "armistice", or "cease-fire" where you don't acknowledge the other side as to having won or that you like them, but are still signalling an unwillingness to fight on. So symbol or buttons can be a dove, or peace sign.
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Darko Savic
Darko Savic2 years ago
Miloš Stanković great insight and suggestions👌
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Mikhail Korsanov
Mikhail Korsanov2 years ago
smart
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Nonviolent Communication

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John Otoko
John Otoko Jun 08, 2022
Studying Nonviolent Communication (NVC) can give some tool to help toxic people to distance from emotionnal reaction by acknoledging them...
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John Otoko
John Otoko2 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
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Invite them to meet and talk in reality or through a video chat

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Povilas S
Povilas S Sep 26, 2022
Many negative people are only brave to bully others online through text comments. They would act differently if they met that person in reality. If the one who's targeted by the bully is brave enough they could offer (politely) to meet and talk about whatever the irritating person wants in reality (if they both happen to be in geographically close locations) or through a video chat (the closest digital option after VR).
Just writing that might sometimes be enough to deter the bully. They wouldn't have many options - they can't say no, cause that makes them a coward, and there's not much they can write after this for the same reason - it would be obvious that they are not brave enough to accept the offer if they simply continued rambling. So they'd have to either accept it (which I think very few of such people would do) or retreat.
If they, however, did accept it, then just go for it (as I said this is for those who are brave enough to actually do it). If you meet in reality, meet somewhere in public. Video chat, is perhaps, the best option - you could look into the eyes of the person without wasting too much of your time and their rambling on social media related to you would end since you already took the whole thing off public.
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Darko Savic
Darko Savic2 years ago
Elon Musk recently liked a suggestion about how (now his) Twitter should solve this problem:
Basically, let people verbally battle out their differences as long as they are behind fully identified/verified personal accounts
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General comments

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Subash Chapagain
Subash Chapagain2 years ago
I don't know if it counts as an alternative, but practising sheer animosity would be one way to go. For this, some online tool that assists people in gauging their overtly hyperbolic reactions to social media posts and suggests ways to remain calm while using social media would help. Mostly we tend to react either very positively or very negatively depending on whether we are in agreement or disagreement with the post/content. If we could use some assistance that warns us beforehand that the post/content is likely to elicit extreme attachment or aversion, it could possibly help mitigate the confirmation bias as well as animosity.
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Goran Radanovic
Goran Radanovic2 years ago
How about not responding to them? People are going to say what they want, but each person decides how to react. Whenever a discussion about bullying, targeting etc comes up, it's almost always about, how do we censor a person whose views we don't agree with?
If you ignore someone targeting you, eventually they'll back off. If they don't, you'll find their attacks amusing after some time. Their weakness will be exposed, and you'll pity them, not fear them.
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Darko Savic
Darko Savic2 years ago
Goran Radanovic it's not always that simple. By targeting you, they are coming after your social status - probably to increase their own, or they might hate something you represent. They can come for it in creative ways that make you lose status if you don't respond.
If there was a generally acceptable option that makes everyone know which defense the defendant is choosing it would make the option easier to go for.
Also, it depends on what you have to lose. For example, on Twitter, someone with 5K followers might feel obliged to defend themselves when someone with 50 followers challenges their view. They have to watch their words. On the other hand, the person with 50 followers can say pretty much whatever they want - nobody cares. Still, another person with 500K followers doesn't need to respond at all, they are not expected to even notice small accounts challenging their views (status really).
This has arguably become even more pronounced lately with cancel culture - where unrelated challengers spontaneously gang up to destroy a visible individual's social status and credibility.
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