How to handle unhinged comments like a helpful grown-up (and why we must!)

in a world itching for a fight (but needs a hug); a guide written by a veteran who has "disappointed" many and not checked her privilege nearly enough

A quick note: I’m super worried about how we’re handling things. Or not handling things. Particularly online. Particularly when it pertains to Israel and Palestine. There are many things we don’t have agency over at the moment. But how we engage with each other as we grapple with the unfathomable injuries committed against humanity is a choice available to all of us. We must do better. We are doing really badly. I will be using this platform to continue to advocate for better. Thank you to everyone here for doing the same and engaging in this vital pursuit. Today’s post speaks to this….✌️🕊️

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I was a journalist before there was email or the internet.

In the first newsroom I worked in, we shared one computer between three reporters. And when reader feedback came in, it arrived by snail mail (mostly written in tiny, shaky handwriting on double-sided paper), via the Chief-of-Staff’s office.

Things were slow. But considered. And fathomable.

In my early twenties I was an op-ed columnist at Murdoch’s Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne. I shared Friday’s page with the inflammatory conservative writer Andrew Bolt. At the time, I was the youngest opinion columnist in the News Corp stable globally and I would joke that I was a convenient, catch-all antidote to Bolt (and the rest of the writers in the section). Where are all the left-leaning, young, feminist voices in your paper??!!! There she is!

Back then, I would get 2-3 angry letters a week. The outrage was detailed, but rarely personal. In the main, it came from male retirees deeply embedded in pre-Reddit conspiracy communities. They would staple or glue snippets from their weird-ass photostatted pamphlets they produced from some bunker in Frankston.

I would get quite flustered by the letters. However, I’d read them sitting alongside other journalists and we would discuss the merits of any sane points that were made amid the fury. We would digest the divergence and dissonance as a collective; we didn’t do it alone on our phones at 11pm. Sometimes I’d write a letter back.

I was the fourth of five editors of Cosmopolitan in 45 years; thats’s me, far-right.

I was in my late twenties and early thirties when I edited the largest young women’s magazine in Australia, Cosmopolitan. I was also doing radio and television panels by this time. Most criticism still came via mail or via the gossip pages in newspapers, which were not kind, but nor were they rabid¹.

I was 34 when Twitter took off in Australia. I was one of the first journalists on the platform because I’d travelled to the US to write a story on it and this new phenomenon called “snark” for Good Weekend magazine. I interviewed all the big players in the early vlogging and Twitter world. Some of you might remember names like Julia Allison, the first ever social influencer, Emily Gould and Choire Sicha, and sites such as Gawker.com. (Or just the horrible infighting that came to characterise these names - literally the first moments in cross-influencer trolling.) I was also blogging myself by then, and had more than 100,000 subscribers (and 50,000 Twitter followers).

At first, these platforms attracted considered debate and genuine questions in the comments and replies. However, as I started writing about sugar and publishing books that sold well, the trolling started in earnest. It was partly because the world got the taste for the particular dopamine hit delivered by online snipering around the same time. And it was partly my success, gender and age. For me, the trolling came from two distinct camps:

1. Mummy bloggers who had caught on to click-baiting. I was targeted by one particular site relentlessly for years.

2. Scientific-al men (often vegan, or Brompton-riding vigilantes from the north of England) who targeted women in the spotlight and came armed with reams of ISBNs, DOIs and ISSNs. At least two were paid for by a large multinational sugary beverage company; they’d set up fake Twitter profiles and hammer me with abuse, mostly personal. Another dedicated three years to bludgeoning my Wikipedia page with false claims I was an anti-vaxxer. And hundreds, perhaps thousands, would reference my inability to have kids as proof I was unwanted on the planet.

All of which is to say, by the time contemporary polarised and algorithmically manipulated social media spatting took hold, I was hardened.

Over two decades, and from developing a following of up to 2.2 million across multiple platforms², I developed resilience, but in a staged roll-out, with plenty of time to adjust as new technologies and depths of depravity emerged. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be dumped onto Instagram or TikTok today with the thin skin of a 16-year-old.

I also developed techniques and wisdoms for managing all kinds of trolls and snark, pile-ons and cancelling. And for steering conversation back from binary, dangerous, humanity-collapsing, genocide-stoking, anti-semitic, crazy-making precipices. In fact, it became a mission to find these techniques.

Here are a few that you might find useful yourself, as a commenter, as a content creator, activist, online lurker or as a caring human in a world behaving like it’s itching for a fight (but needs a hug).

1. My tennis ball analogy

When an unhinged, dangerous comment comes flying (online or otherwise) I picture a tennis ball being lobbed at me. I could put effort into running after the ball and drawing on all my core strength to lob it back righteously (only to be served another shot, and so on).

Or…I can just let the ball land flaccidly behind me… before it dribbles off the court, forgotten about.

My point is, you don’t have to play the game, not when it’s against an unhinged player. Unhinged players often don’t even notice you’ve not hit back; they're too busy lobbing serves at others. Which works to a similar idea that I wrote about a few weeks back: let narcissists have the last word.

Image: Karsten Winegeart

2. Kill their hurt with kindness

I truly believe in this technique for when the other player on the court is seemingly a caring person open to better ideas, but whose hurt, fear and confusion has got the better of them:

When they go ALL-CAPS-abusive, you go “calm the farm”.

When I’m hit with polarised, myopic rants in my feeds, I will often respond with, “Can I gently ask….” or “I hear what you’re saying. What I’m trying to say is not so different…” or “Are you trying to ask me if I…”.

In approximately nine times out of 10, the hurt and confused person will respond many richter points lower, often grateful or apologetic. When I notice them back in the comments a few days later, posting a sane, calm point, I’ll be sure to acknowledge them with a like, or “good point”.

They are then in the best position to open themselves up to better, or at least other, ideas.

Further to this….

3. Find the point of agreement…

…and acknowledge that.

And leave the rest (the insult part, the wrong evidence part) alone. There is always a point of agreement, or common ground. It might simply be that you’re both hurting or scared. I might reply in such cases with, “I agree, humanity is hurting so much right now.”

I try to use “let’s” and “we” language. And I remind myself, I don’t have to understand or empathise or sympathise with the other person. I only have to feel compassion for our shared humanity.

Warning: This approach only works if you’re genuinely feeling the compassion and you’re genuinely motivated by a desire to steer the tone of things to a softer, more reasonable place. If you’re not, you will come across as passive aggressive or patronising. Which will make things worse.

Caveat: This approach, again, only applies to folk who seem caring and open to better ideas.

Bonus: Most hurt, scared, confused people are wanting to find belonging. If you can make them feel heard and safe, they might just join you and your kind, calm crew in your good cause. (Actually, this is kind of the whole point of doing any of the things detailed in this post.)

4. Beware the chaos merchants! Don’t feed them!

As above, some commenters are really only in the game, or on the court so to speak, to lob balls and create chaos. I referred to this last week: One-third of people have a “need for chaos” and will stir it up wherever they can.

Some themes in chaos machine-ing

I fear this number will grow as the Middle East crisis worsens. As people feel more powerless and despairing I think they could give in to this approach. And so it’s more critical than ever that we do our best to discourage it wherever and whenever we can.

Before firing up a sharp, caustic and so-very-very-right response:

Check the commenter’s profile and confirm they are not a chaos-making bot or professional troll. Telltale signs: No posts; a handful of followers; nondescript handle and image; private account.

Look out for private accounts in general. I have a policy of not engaging with - and mostly blocking - people who lob chaos into my feed and hide behind a private account. Everyone has a right to not open their profile to the public, but if you want to be in the arena, you have to be available.

See it for the chaos. And don’t lob back. Don’t feed it. This is a grown-up person’s RESPONSIBILITY at this juncture in history. If you’re the host of the feed or site, step in when others are getting getting riled by a chaos merchant’s inflammatory comments (by firing back evidence and exclamation marks), and gently invite them to not play into the nihilist, chaotic, world-destroying game.

I’ll write something like, “Hey, I think this guy you’re replying to is trying to create chaos. The best thing we can all do is not play into it…let’s ignore him and put our energy in the right places!” I do the same on other people’s feeds, too. As I say, it’s a responsibility.

5. Do you want to be right or love (and peace)?

I ask myself this before I hit send on anything. Apart from keeping me out of trouble and dialling down chaos, it is a sanity-saver and perspective-giver when even having to digest a post like this is bewildering.

6. Know this: The world hasn’t gone as mad as it seems

To do most of the things in this list requires not losing all hope in humanity. It can seem like the place has turned mad. But I remind myself that there have always been people with “a need for chaos” and who have said crazy-making stuff. The difference is, they largely only got to say these things over the back fence or down at the pub (or via photostatted pamphlets) to about seven-and-a-half people. Human dynamics (when not stoked by algorithms) are such that these kind of people didn’t get traction; their ideas were mostly deemed dangerous and compromising to “the group” and so landed flaccidly on the tennis court of community interactions and dribbled out of the Zeitgeist. Thus, most of us never had to hear them or contend with them.

Today, however, what may be the same number (proportionally) of chaos makers can broadcast their ideas wide and far. And the more unhinged they are, the more traction they get as sane, confused, befuddled people try to reason with them in millions of comments threads around the world.

Again, this is where we have agency. Dialling down this reach.

7. Set a tone on your feeds

Over the years, as I’ve tried to implement all of the above, I’ve noticed it’s changed the way comments tend to play out in my feeds. It’s often commented that I don’t tend to attract the really horrible trolling or crazy-making threads that appear on others sites. I think it’s because others in my community have started to use the same language, the same techniques; it’s become the vibe of the place to not get riled up. Which has attracted people who want to be around this vibe, and starved out the chaos merchants and narcissists. You might want to do the same on your platforms.

8. Use non-chaos words

In any kind of online engagement, avoid: most adjectives, most adverbs, labels, anything dehumanising, ragey words and ragey punctuation marks.

Feel free to feel and think them. Feel free to be forthright and firm. But stay a responsible adult dedicated to keeping the farm calm.

I find it helps to remind myself I’m allowed to have my opinion. I think a lot of us (particularly women) feel we’ve been denied permission to feel and think certain ways and so our rage comes out distorted and convoluted with a need to blame everyone for our felt repression.

9. Own your guilt, your shadow, your unresolved shit

I think the Middle East crisis is surfacing a lot of stuff in us all.

I think our unhinged responses and the fury we are feeling at others’ responses is very often about offloading uncomfortable realities about ourselves onto an “other”.

Can I recommend this podcast episode, which speaks to this? Author Naomi Klein explains Israelis’ colonial denialism as “doppelgänger politics” - Israel has created its own “double” of the European nationalism that suppressed Jews, which “allows it to project everything it cannot bear see about itself onto the Palestinian Other.”

10. Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.

When do you ignore the inflammed and often “wrong” comment, and when do you bother replying in a way that might steer things (the world) to better?

That’s for you to work out for yourself. But it’s important that you do.

Me, I try to only do the latter when I’m genuinely feeling the compassion. That said, my tendency is to step into the fray (rather than ignore, delete, block or hide the offending comment or commenter). It’s for this reason…

11. We can change the world with this shit. And must.

I have been writing and speaking about this a lot lately: There are two “conflicts” going on with many of the issues playing out today. There’s the original conflict - the war, the occupation, the genocide, the climate calamity or the political issue. And then there’s the horrible conflict playing out among us witnessing the first conflict from our screens as we deal with our fear, loneliness and despair by lobbing balls at each other and becoming obsessed with being right at the expense of peace.

This second conflict feeds the first. We need to see this very very clearly and get adult about it.

We are all in a powerful position to dial down the second conflict. We can play a part in dampening the chaos and moloch with these better techniques. This can have exponential impact. We can also push back on the real “force” at play in most pockets of the world in 2024: Unguided and unsupported fear, loneliness and despair.

When we don’t, we are taking the oxygen away from what needs full attention and care.

When we don’t, we are putting our energy into fighting each other and not the real “enemy”. Which plays into the enemy’s hands. And feeds the problem.

There are many ways to call out the “banality of evil”, to argue against silence, to rally others to a cause, to get attention for issues that suffer from bias in legacy media. We need to find the best ways, the ways that model what we are fighting for.

12. Don’t let them change you

During the Vietnam War, a man stood outside the White House every night, for years, holding a candle in solitary protest. A reporter asked, "Sir, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone every night with a candle?"

""Oh," the man is said to have replied, “I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me."

More to say on this…

I wanted this to be a straight up list of hacks. I didn’t turn out that way. I’m happy to provide more hack-like examples or detail in the comments if you’d like to direct me.

Sarah xx

PS This week’s Wild episode discusses why settling on Mars is a really dumb idea. It’s super fun and detailed, covering how sex would work, how Elon et al are already assuming we’d give up all freedoms etc.

1. I think I was also spared the worst of the gossip writers’ ire because I was a former news journalist, “one of them”.

2. This was my total following when I owned I Quit Sugar. Since I sold the company and gave the lot to charity my “following” sits at 550,000 humans.