If you want to navigate the world of Social Media with your sanity intact, you need to follow the advice of the Wu Tang Clan: protect ya neck. Or as a decent therapist would tell you, set some boundaries.
These boundaries are a figurative fence around you, designed to protect your emotional state from those who would revel in provoking you. It looks different for everyone. What works for you might not be good for me, and what I do might sound absurd to others. Wil Wheaton deleted his twitter account to preserve his happiness – that was his boundary. Despite thousands of disappointed fans, he’s maintained this boundary because his well being is worth more than appeasing people who have zero vested interest in his personal life. I don’t need to employ those extremes, but I still need boundaries to prevent the ugliness of the online world from discouraging or demoralizing me.
To maintain my boundaries, I follow two rules. 1: I report spam, 2: I block trolls. That’s it. Pretty simple. These two rules help keep me healthy and happy.
Strangers send me ads or post suspicious links? I report them. An Instagram user tags me in a post letting me know how to get free followers? I report them. I’m followed by a Twitter user who is scandalously dressed in their profile picture? I report them. I get a Facebook friend request from someone I don’t know and all of their public posts promote their multilevel marketing business? I report them. I don’t have the time, patience, or energy to tolerate unsolicited shameless self-promotion.
Reporting people takes a little effort. Just a few mouse clicks and I feel like I’ve done my part to make social media a happier, healthier, and safer. Even if those goals are not achieved on the macro scale of society, it is accomplished in the micro scale of my soul. For my own personal sanity, all spam is reported.
As for trolls, it gets a little more complicated. I define trolling as a stranger making remarks or comments to someone they don’t know with the specific intention to provoke. It’s important to specify (for me) this is an act committed by strangers. Within the context of friendship, a little mutual teasing is expected and acceptable. I don’t object to friends or family making a harsh joke at my expense. A shared laugh is a great way to bond. However, if I don’t know you or understand your sense of humor, the space to joke around is more restrictive. The threshold between having fun and trolling is too easily crossed. When people abuse that line, I block. No questions asked. I do not have the time or energy to engage. If you’re the kind of person to make personal attacks against me without knowing me, then I don’t have any interest in what you have to say. Nor do I want you to have access to see what I post on social media.
When a friend recently posted praise of Kanye’s newest album, I replied to share my perspective – that the album really isn’t that good. Rhyming patterns, lyrical complexity, production values, all of it in my opinion is a lower quality that what Kanye is capable of creating. The only reason anyone is excited about it is because of Kanye’s professed conversion to Christianity. If it wasn’t a gospel album, none of these people would compliment it. One of the claims I made in that long thread was how I don’t believe Christians should have to tolerate bad art just because the art was made by other Christians. Apparently, my statement was unpopular. About a half hour later, a stranger to me (but a friend of my friend) replied back to me with an accusation and a link. He doubted my claim to dislike bad music and linked to one of my public Facebook posts which contained a video of John Mayer performance. In essence, he was saying I didn’t have the right to call Kanye’s album trash if I liked a song from Mayer.
Consider this. Some random dude on the internet was so offended by my opinion about Kanye West that he dug through eight months of my public posts searching for anything I might have said to use against me in some sort of gotcha-styled straw man argument. This is a perfect match for the definition of trolling as described by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: “creating discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community. … someone who purposely says something controversial in order to get a rise out of other users.” He didn’t like what said so he sought to create discord. Start a fight. Get a rise out of me. Why should I reward him by defending myself or retaliating? It’s far more responsible to bock the troll.
These are the boundaries I’ve set for myself to protect my mental health. I don’t expect anyone else to follow the same rules, but I would hope everyone has their own boundaries. It’s good for us. As my friend Jen frequently says, “I have healthy boundaries for my benefit and yours.”
Be prepared though, once you create guidelines for how you maintain your boundaries, not everyone will understand or appreciate them. In fact, some people will be offended. I could return to the kerfuffle over Kanye as an example. I had a private chat with the trolling stranger’s mutual friend later that evening when he asked about our interaction.
I have a different opinion. If you’re so angry at someone else’s opinion is that you have to dig through nearly a full years worth of random post to find something that you think contradicts their claim? That’s childish. You don't have to agree, but I'm gonna protect my neck.
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