If you are going to using the internet for any reasonable amount of time you will eventually encounter some trolls. There are people all over the internet who have nothing better to do than incite reactions from other people.
The most important thing to understand about trolls is their mentality. They desperately want attention. If they were comfortable in their own skin they would have no need to bother others.
Trolls often have deficiencies of their own. That is why they love to pick on other people. They want to feel better about their own deficiencies or weaknesses. A troll will never admit that. In fact the tougher a troll acts is always a surety that they are an extremely fragile person.
There are really only two good ways to deal with trolls: Killing them with kindness or ignoring completely. There should be no in between because that is where trolls thrive. They love it when they have your attention and you are thrown off from your awesomeness.
You may think its a bad idea to kill them with kindness but don't forget what we said earlier – trolls often dislike themselves so they need to bring others down to their level.
Trolling is always an egoistic act. A human soul would never troll another. It is the EGO created within the human mind that begins the process of bringing others down.
So killing them with kindness is a way to pierce the ego and reach their soul. This can be extremely difficult and not recommended for everyone.
If you have not begun to understand your own ego then this will be difficult. Because trolls try to get your ego all riled up. They want you to feel angry or insecure or nervous. But if you are supremely confident in your own skin then you can easily battle a troll with kindness because the words they use are meaningless to you.
They could be so mean and rude and it wouldn't even bother you because you understand how a troll works. They are nothing to be feared. They are just words on a screen that have no bearing on your true self.
Of course, if you aren't comfortable with your own self, and you also have a big ego to defend, then their words will hurt. You will wonder if they are true? Are you really ugly? Are you really pathetic? Of course not, but the words will hurt because you start to believe them.
This is the very high-level way of dealing with trolls. It's a skill to be learned.
To recap, you must be comfortable in your own skin before you can battle a troll head on.
If you prefer the less confrontational method then lets talk about how to just ignore trolls and move on quickly. I do recommend this method for the majority.
Trolls feed on the attention of others and more so their increasing emotional energy if that makes sense.
The most simple way to deal with trolls is 100% ignoring them. Even 1% can make them grow stronger.
The faster you can ignore and leave it behind the better.
Here's a few tips for dealing with troll harassment on Twitch:
- Require a registered email to chat (option is found in settings)
- Get some moderators you trust
- Ban people in your chat who are being disruptive; don't even acknowledge them beyond banning them
- Re-ban and report them if they use a new account to harass you
- Set up filters for words you'd like to be automatically removed from your chat (which should include your real life name, IP, etc)
- Never click links in your chat from people you do not know, and consider possibly disabling them altogether
- If you use Skype, make sure you have enabled all functions to hide your ip address.
- Disable the Twitch chat Whisper function
- In your info panel section create a chart rules section that (briefly) goes over what isn't allowed in your chat
- As a last resort you can make your chat sub-only (if you aren't partnered only mods will be able to talk)
These tips are via Brawli55 on Reddit. Check out his stream!
Thanks for reading!
Stay live,
