how to deal with negative comments online
Some people get into this position and disconnect from their brain completely.
The unfortunate fact is that if you are going to make stuff and share it online, some people are going to be assholes about it.
Given this truth, I spoke to content creators to find out what they do to roll on and keep making stuff despite the negativity of some folks with nothing better to do.
I’ve also included some of my own ideas that have helped me when people get really mad that a woman has opinions.
Take a look at these suggestions and try them out. Experiment to find the right fit so you have a game-plan when the haters hate!
Don’t assume it’s negative if you can help it.
People are probably enjoying your content but don’t know how to say it!
Let’s start by not assuming everything is negative. This is difficult because communication is difficult.
I tend to be sarcastic and hard on myself, so sometimes I read genuinely positive comments as if they are sarcastic. For example, someone commented on one of my videos recently, “You’re hilarious.”
To me, this reads sarcastic at first glance, but honestly that’s probably my own insecurity and addiction to exclamation points.
I responded as if the person was 100% sincere, and it turns out they were! Yay! If I had responded defensively that would have made it weird, when they were only trying to compliment me.
So try to give people the benefit of the doubt. They’re probably being genuine or making a joke of their own that doesn’t translate well in the comments section, not trying to be mean.
How to deal with negative comments online
Let’s say that you have established two things:
This person in the comments is, in fact, being an asshole.
You care about that (after all, if you are the type of person who doesn’t give a rip, then you probably don’t need this advice. Please give me advice, actually).
Here are the top strategies for dealing with trolls and haters.
The delete button is your friend.
It’s here for a reason, people!
You control what type of conversation happens in your section of the internet. You can make a practice of simply deleting the mean comments.
I have a threshold for this. If someone is just like “dumb” then I tend not to delete it, because it’s still engagement. But if it’s really nasty and makes me feel sad when I see it, I delete it.
It’s up to you to decide where your line is, but remember, that line can totally be that you get bad vibes from what they said.
Life is short, it’s your channel or page, it’s your space, don’t let people spray hateful graffiti on it and leave it there if you don’t want!
Some platforms don’t let you do this (I’m looking at you, “X”, you piece of crap) but in that case, you can hide the comment so at least you don’t have to look at it. Simple hide it, let it vanish from your world, and roll on.
Block ‘em.
BLOCKED.
This goes well with deleting and hiding comments. If someone makes you uncomfortable, block them!
You don’t owe anything to strangers on the internet. Most of the mean ones are probably bots (or behave like bots) anyway.
Blocking people you don’t like leaves more room for people you do like. Your true fans will follow the vibes you set, so use this strategy freely!
Redirect your focus to the kind people.
Denny Glasser (@featuringdennyglasser) is a stand-up comedian with an active TikTok and Instagram presence. He’s a positive guy with wholesome comedy. He loves to talk about fantasy football, his lovely wife, and their absolutely incredible goldendoodle.
Unsurprisingly enough, he has a wholesome, positive way of dealing with negative comments:
“Typically I’ll delete the comment and won’t pay attention to it as I focus on positive or engaging comments… Too often we focus on only negative comments and take the good ones for granted. I try to remedy that. And sometimes you just gotta chalk it up to bots.”
This strategy is great, because it doesn’t reward any trolls with negative attention, while also giving you a boost of joy from interacting with the kind people.
So, delete or ignore the bad comments, and immediately refocus your attention to engaging with the people who are treating you like a human being.
Ask friends to leave nice comments.
Sometimes simply ignoring isn’t enough. I still feel gross after a mean comment, or it annoys me that a video is only getting hate.
In that case, I’ll send the content around to my friends and ask them to leave positive comments. I don’t ask them to engage with the hate (although my partner will straight up argue someone INTO THE GROUND on the internet, and I support his hobbies), but I ask them to inject some positivity into the vibe.
It gives the content a better look when it shows up for new people, and encourages more positive interactions.
Go leave nice comments for others.
Accept my love you beautiful content creator.
If a negative comment has me down, I will refocus my attention outward and try to be the change I want to see in the world.
I’ll scroll through other creators I love and leave them a nice comment. This makes me immediately feel better.
I’m not expecting some “karmic payoff” later, it just feels nice to go be nice, instead of dwelling on someone else being a jerk.
Make a joke.
Often, you can disarm haters and remind them you are a human being by making a joke. This lightens the situation and is a great way to keep engagement for the algorithm’s sake without getting caught up in nastiness yourself.
Jack Lawrence (@jack.lawro) is a philosophy TikToker who often shares vulnerable content to a wide audience. He’s no stranger to harsh comments by this point in his content creation career!
“I do deal with it repeatedly lol, I have had many mean things said about me now.”
But Jack has a strategy for when the haters come out that generally lets the air out of the negativity: “The times I do engage I generally like agreeing? I think it's very disarming.”
“So, for instance, if I see a comment like, ‘This guy isn't that smart,’ I might reply ‘yeah fuck this guy.’ Or they might go ‘This guy's vocal fry is unbearable,’ and I might reply, ‘Imagine living with it!’”
Jack says that mirroring their comment back to them in a joking way often reminds them of his humanity. “It's surprising how often I'll get a reply from them which is somewhat meekly apologetic, saying they didn't mean to be harsh or whatever. If not, then it still defuses it.”
Be a weirdo.
This is very similar to making a joke, but it’s more confusing. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
I take the comment and respond with something totally off-beat and not at all where they were looking to take the conversation. What I love about this is that it takes a potentially negative interaction and turns it playful, or at least confuses and disorients the hater.
Haters be hatin’, but I just be vibin’ with my trash.
For example, someone commented on one of my YouTube shorts that I have a “hyper meta zoomer mentality.”
I responded, “That would be an EPIC name for a rock band. Do you mind if I use it?”
They called me passive aggressive, but instead of arguing about that, I asked if I had to pay them royalties to use Hyper Meta Zoomer Mentality on my band’s merch.
They agreed that I could use it, no-cost.
This strategy works great for me, because I am a silly goose, and very few people can maintain their hate in the face of Chaos Incarnate. But like I said, if someone is truly nasty, I just delete it. They don’t deserve my weirdness.
how to get hateful comments out of your life completely
Maybe the negative comments are overwhelming you, or aggressive people are making you want to stop making stuff completely.
There’s no way to 100% protect yourself from negativity (because this is life, after all), but you can protect yourself even more from the crappy comments using these strategies.
Get a mod.
Bobbie Oliver is a successful comedian and theater owner, and an outspoken feminist, which unfairly puts her on the internet’s hit list.
To protect her own piece of mind, Bobbie’s husband is her internet filter.
“My YouTube is set so that comments have to be approved. Those emails go to my hubby Chris and I never see negative comments.”
As a woman in comedy, Bobbie already deals with enough hate just doing what she loves, and doesn’t need more from randos online. Her mod-husband helps her see the real comments and delete the trolls!
You decide whether your mod engages with people for you or just acts as a filter. Like I mentioned before, my partner has had some pretty hilarious exchanges with trolls in my comments section, so I like when he responds so I don’t have to, but it’s up to you.
Restrict comment access.
You can create content without letting any stranger on the internet say their piece. If negative comments are messing with your head, change who can comment.
Bobbie Oliver uses this to keep the conversations on her profiles within her community, which she works hard to make open and welcoming.
“I have Facebook set so only friends can comment and I block at the first offense. Instagram is set to followers only can comment. I block on the first offense.”
If you don’t want to deal with rando’s being mean to you (an utterly reasonable thing to decide), check your profile settings and change it to followers or friends only.
Use mute functions.
Become one with your mute button. FEEL ITS POWER.
When apps don’t allow you to change who can comment, they will often have some kind of “mute” function instead.
Bobbie Oliver uses this function on Twitter. She also avoids hashtags she knows are followed by haters.
“On Twitter I no longer use hashtags that attract people who don’t follow me. I have it set so that I mute anyone who doesn’t follow me. I have certain words muted. I block on the first offense.”
This means Bobbie doesn’t see responses from anyone who isn’t a follower, so again, she’s only interacting with her community, who are generally decent people. If they’re not, they get blocked and aren’t in the community anymore!
Muting certain words that routinely come up in hate comments is helpful, as well. If you know there are words that trigger you or you’d just prefer not to see, use that mute function and never have to deal with it again!
Haters are paradoxically a good sign.
Jack Lawrence feels like haters mean you’re gaining traction.
“I feel like haters are a badge of honour in their own way. A sign you're getting somewhere. Polarising is good!”
If people are disagreeing with you or you’re making them angry, this often means you’re finding your own voice.
Remember, the internet is accessible to literally the entire world. That means you are certainly going to be shown to a jerk, or someone who disagrees with you, at some point.
The upside of this is it means you are getting shown to more people, and you’ll find more of the people you vibe with.
Smiling as the haters make you famous.
Keep focusing on your people, the ones who you like interacting with and making content for, and move forward.
Hate comments help your algorithm.
App algorithms like engagement and many consider comments to be the best sign of it. They don’t care if the comment is “nice” or not.
Jack Lawrence keeps this in mind when seeing comments from haters. They are, oddly enough, helping him!
“I comfort myself knowing that their comment actually is telling Tiktok to: a) show them more of my content, and b) show other people my content, so in a way they are helping me by nature of their complaint, which always adds an amusing spin.”
It’s a simple equation: The more comments you get, regardless of their intent, the more the app will push your content.
Remind yourself that haters are literally helping your rise to fame. In the words of the inimitable Megan Thee Stallion:
Last Note: There’s more positive than negative out there.
This article is about dealing with one particular problem, but the majority of comments and interactions I get online are positive.
You and your audience staring into the future together.
Of course, this will vary from person to person and even from video topic to video topic. Some audiences are just more toxic than others.
For instance, my standup content gets a lot more negativity than my videos about books. I think people are more critical of women stand-ups than they are of women book reviewers.
This doesn’t mean you should stop, because there will be an audience waiting for you that gives you positive feedback, loves your work, and supports you.
The overwhelming majority of interactions I have are people asking genuine questions or giving me compliments.
And when they’re not, I have all these awesome strategies to help!
The most important thing is to figure out how to deal with social media and your audience in a way that doesn’t make you stop making stuff. Because you continuing to create is the priority.
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