UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, Revised and Updated

22

Don’t Feed the Trolls

THERE ARE NEGATIVE things that can happen when you become active on social media sites. I am not going to lie to you. I have made myself visible on these sites and I know what can happen—the good and the bad. When you jump into the social media world for your company, you invite the world to come. And all the world does.

Back in my über-geek days, I used to hang out in IRC chat rooms. These rooms were places where fellow geeks could hang out in different topic-based rooms, swap stories, MP3s,⁶⁴ and generally connect with others. Every time, bar none, he would appear. The troll:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.⁶⁵

Usually, this sorry excuse for a human being would type something like “Your mom is hot” or “That’s what your mom said.”⁶⁶

Nowadays, trolls have moved into the social media stream, leaving nasty blog comments, sending meathead tweets, or insulting Facebook comments.

Witness a recent tweet from someone:

“Am I the only one to find @unmarketing⁶⁷ an annoying, blabber mouthed, self prophetic ass?”

 

 

I had to look-up “self prophetic.”

How do you deal with them? How do I deal with them?⁶⁸

Here are four tips to get you out of the troll spiral:

1. DFTT (Don’t Feed the ...