How do you deal with mean people online?

Some background - I am diagnosed with autism and it can be hard for me to just “ignore” the awful things people can say to me when I’m online.

The latest thing someone said to me really got me feeling down and depressed. Honestly having darker thoughts because of it.

I have IBS-D, which means there is an insane amount of food I cannot eat - if I do eat the things I cannot, my intestines get shredded and I bleed like crazy. Honestly the list is massive and my diet has basically been chicken green beans and potatoes every night for the past 3 years. I have lost over 60 lbs, and currently weigh 130lbs as a 5.11 male. Doctors have been trying to figure it out but they haven’t been able to and say I may just have to live with it.

This person was calling me a monster because I eat meat, even though I have a medical condition that makes my diet extremely limited. Unfortunately meat is one of the only things that agrees with my stomach across the board. I’d like to be vegetarian but I literally will die from malnutrition and weight loss if I did try. I explained this to the user but they didn’t care.

I explained my autism to them, and that what they were saying was making me depressed and they just continued with saying how I was a monster and killing myself wouldn’t be as bad as killing all the animals I have to “enjoy” meat. They said my condition wasn’t an excuse and compared me to the “sexual cycle of violence” of dracula.

This user made me feel really sad and crappy. Afterwards I cried for a while but I don’t feel better.

The problem I have is that there are many people online who seem to get pleasure from being awful to others, and it gets to me every time.

Does anyone have any advice for handling these situations online? Often I hear people say you should just ignore these people and move on, but I end up ruminating on what they’ve said and it can make me feel bad for weeks on end. Sometimes I feel like I should just give up using the internet because of these people.

PotentiallyAnApricot,

Nina Jankowicz has a book called How To Be A Woman Online, about surviving harassment and disinformation campaigns. While it’s pretty focused on the experiences of women with semi-public profiles, it has a lot of useful things in it that helped me feel a bit better about myself and manage the small-scale, generic bullying that I sometimes worry about. Blocking people, being a bit harder to find, and ending communication with anyone the slightest bit rude or abusive has helped. The Verbally Abusive relationship also has some great tips for spotting people’s crappy behavior sooner. That book deals mostly with romantic relationships, but you can recognize the same kinds of excuses and similar conversation patterns the online bullies use.

Also- just in case you need to hear this- it is so freaking normal to eat meat. I eat meat. Your diet is absolutely nobody’s business, ever. When somebody gets focused overly on a minor detail of your life to be mean to you about it, even if they say it’s for a “moral” or political reason, you can be sure they’re not truly sincere about that issue - because why would they be focused on one stranger’s habits instead of working for system changes if they really felt strongly about it? Eat your food, live your life, and protect yourself from these people. They don’t mean what they say.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@beehaw.org avatar

Personally, I like to think of how I can withhold the pleasure of an emotional response when encountering trolls are people who are generally unreasonable.

If someone is clearly communicating in bad faith, I remind myself that no response will bother them immensely. Makes it easier to ignore them.

When someone’s rude to me to my face, most of the time, I use the Tim Tebow method and reply with: “I appreciate that.” It really pisses people off when their intention is to anger me.

WintraFrostbite,

I wish this was limited to just people on the internet…The one I always have trouble with is when I go to a restaurant and the server asks if my dietary restrictions are for an allergy or preference. My brain always ends up freezing because neither answer is really true. It’s not an allergy, I’m not going to die if I eat the foods (just feel really awful for multiple days), and it is certainly not a preference (food is awesome!). I feel like no matter which way I respond I’d be lying to the person, and my brain struggles with that and I just end up staring up at the person in confusion.

From discussing it with other people, I think a lot of the fad diets over the years have made it harder for people to realize that there are non-allergy reasons for your doctor to tell you you can’t eat things. People just assume that you are doing it on purpose, to lose weight, to fit in, etc. Because the default is Insert Fad Diet Here, people think we are stubborn and feel it is ok to make us feel bad about it. It’s not right either way, more power to someone who can willing give up all the foods I gave up kicking and screaming but still.

From an external perspective, I think it is about explaining the WHY to people. That way it expands their internal list of reasons, and they might go into their next encounter with more thoughtfulness. With that said, some people are who they are. You can ignore them or you can avoid them, but definitely don’t let them get you down. As you said, you tried that in this case and the person didn’t listen.

Which brings me to the internal perspective, you CAN eat chicken, green beans, and potatoes. Instead of focusing on all the things you can’t eat, celebrate the things you can eat. There are a million and a half ways you can cook a potato. Chicken? Just about every cuisine has a solid chicken recipe, and its good any way you cook it (grilled, baked, poached, slow cooker).

It is like playing a video game on a different difficulty setting, the rules don’t end up being quite the same. What is fine for someone on Easy, doesn’t work for you on Hard mode. Your body tells you to eat chicken? Eat chicken. Feel the desire to give back to the planet? There are lots of options, you don’t have to pick the same one as others. What can you do instead? Can you volunteer at an animal shelter, can you compost?

AnalogyAddict,

Next time, try “what difference does it make?” or if you don’t want to be confrontational, “It’s medically necessary.”

You shouldn’t have to feel anxious just for getting a meal.

JackOverlord,
@JackOverlord@beehaw.org avatar

Next time, try “what difference does it make?”

In case you and others want the answer to that: If it’s an allergy the restaurant will (or has to, depending on the jurisdiction) use separate pots, knives, pans, etc. for your meal to avoid cross contamination.

If it’s just a preference they don’t need to do that, because you won’t die if any small pieces of the things you don’t like end up in your food.

nihilx7E3,
@nihilx7E3@beehaw.org avatar

sorry that happened, people suck :( don’t let it make you quit the internet, that person was most definitely in the wrong & just being an overzealous bully. you just have to remember with those people, they’re almost surely being abusive on the internet because they know they’d be absolutely ostracized in real life, that is if they haven’t already.

anyway, to answer the question, i don’t. in the old days i used to argue back & forth with them but now i simply stay away from them entirely. i don’t even use sites filled with jerks anymore (or, if i do, i stay away from every user post or comments section in sight). in fact, the internet being filled with jerks is a primary reason i mostly stay on the beehaw bubble or just don’t come online these days

Vuipes,
Vuipes avatar

I laugh at them, or reply with nonsense, but it is fun for me.

averyminya,

Something that isn’t entirely productive but can feel good is set a timer for 15 minutes, respond to the comment do not send it then close the page.

Part of it is sheer respect of other people - you feel the need to engage and that’s valid. Your thoughts are worth more than the effort they will put into reading it, so the middleground is to respect your thoughts and your way to live while also getting familiar with, sometimes, just disengaging. Set a short timer, type out your response, don’t send it, and close the page.

It’s very freeing.

kglitch,

Don't engage with them. Report and block.

russjr08,

Hi OP, just to start - I have Crohn’s Disease which shares a lot of parallels to what you have, including the fact that I have a very small list of things that I can reasonably eat (and not regret it at the end of the day). I also eat a lot of chicken since its one of the few “safe” foods that I know works for me, so I can certainly relate and sympathize with what you’re going through.

I unfortunately don’t have much useful advise on the handling obnoxious people online (or offline) portion directly, however I will say in regards to this situation - most people who try to take a “hollier than thou” stance are just as bad at some other thing. I’ve yet to find someone who goes “Oh, you do X? You’re a bad person for doing so!” while also not being just as bad in regards to something like how they do their part in taking care of the environment (as an example). No one is perfect.

I guarantee you if they were in our shoes they’d do the exact same thing, and there is not a single soul on this planet that could convince me otherwise. These conditions are brutal, and all we can do is try our best to endure and do what we can to minimize the effects from it. So do what works best for you, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it.

Sami,
@Sami@lemmy.zip avatar

It’s important to remember that there are children on the internet that comment like every other user making it difficult to tell whether the person replying to you has a fully developed brain or not. There are also a lot of stupid, unreasonable or unpleasant adults (or any combination of these things) who do not understand or care to understand your specific situation or take back the unfair things they said to you.

While it may not be easy for you to outright ignore them, it may be easier to ignore the feelings that may arise from those hurtful words when you put things into context. That is not to say that you should ignore the opinions of others online completely but that you should give less weight to any one individual comment. The anonymity of the internet makes otherwise polite people say things in ways they would never think of saying in person.

luciole,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

Chronic health problems are a psychological challenge at least as much as a physical one. I wish you all the best fellow beeple.

Everyone was dropping Reddit because of the CEO’s shenanigans but honestly I quit mainly because I couldn’t take the constant antagonism anymore. So my advice is to choose your communities carefully. In my opinion participating in a community is already supporting it and if bullying is accepted there then it’s not worth supporting.

Another advice: when the Internet started to be mainstream, common sense was to never reveal personal information in public forums. I don’t care what social media says, I think it’s still sound to maintain an air of mystery and be careful what you say about yourself.

Last piece of advice: Beehaw’s nice, so chill here for a while :)

storksforlegs,
@storksforlegs@beehaw.org avatar

I have ASD, and I’ve found a lot of relief from CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) techniques when it comes to online rumination and other similar situations where you end up focussing on an injust interaction you can’t do anything about. (This has happened to me many times too)

The internet tends to distort the way people think and react without them even realizing. EVERYONE falls victim to cognitive fallacies, so doing some CBT exercises is a great way to help pull you out of a negative feedback loop caused by a bad internet interaction. (Not just internet interactions, but any anxiety-inducing situation.)

This website is a long read, but it’s very worthwhile. It offers both an intro to CBT and some introductory worksheets, as well as further reading.

Even becomming aware of the ways your brain reacts to certain situations can be helpful. The site includes some worksheets and suggestions for easy CBT based exercises to help manage these feelings. After a while you can check yourself with what you’ve learned. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it does help significantly.

After a while if you get into the habit of working through and analyzing these reactions, it can really help, honestly!! It’s worth the read. I really think it could help you with this and future online infuriating situations. (I keep encountering these too, haha, I think everyone does. You are not alone!)

There are many other CBT books you can order that offer a similar therapeutic effect. Many CBT books are also workbooks where you physically write things out on paper, something I find helpful as well.

I really hope this helps, as it’s really helped me more than I thought it would. Good luck! :)

Aloomineum,

Thank you for this, I am on a waiting list for CBT so this might be something that can help me a lot. I am going to try going to sleep soon, but I have that link bookmarked and open in a new window, I will be sure to read it tomorrow.

I am working on mindfulness with my current therapist but we have not done any CBT, I am sure that it will be helpful.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and thank you for your advice.

CherryClan,
@CherryClan@beehaw.org avatar

I have similar trouble with taking mean interactions personally. As a result, I really limit my commenting and mostly read stuff. Sometimes when I do comment I won’t read the responses for a while. For some reason putting some time between me and the conversation makes it less scary to read mean stuff. And I don’t respond to mean comments, even if they’re misrepresenting what I said.

Anyway what that person said to you was seriously messed up. I hope it doesn’t stick with you for too long.

Aloomineum,

I am sorry you have to deal with this too. I think I comment less and less because of those types of interactions, I appreciate you reading my post and responding.

I like your idea of putting some time between myself and the conversations, I have never directly noticed before but I think your right it can make it less scary. Thank you for your advice and kindness.

CatBusBand,

That’s rough, OP. Often people forget that they’re talking to actual humans on the other side. I just dealt with something like that last night. Since it was a multiplayer game, what I did was become cheerleader of the team. If someone replies a mean comment to me, I use this. Just because you’re losing, doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

Don’t explain anything personal to a troll. That’s just giving them ammo. Relax and decompress for now until you’re feeling better. Do something that makes you feel nice right now. You deserve it.

fades,

The marching cats 😭😭😭😭

Aloomineum,

Thank you for the marching cats, I needed to see something like that. I’m sorry you had to deal with something similar last night. I just wish we could use the internet without the abuse. I will try to remember your advice the next time it happens. I will try to go relax but it is hard to find enjoyment in the things I love when I am feeling down. Thank you for taking the time to read my post and respond.

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