How To Deal With Negative Comments And DMs?

How To Deal With Negative Comments And DMs?

By: Amisha Shetty

Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platform with over 1 billion users around the world. It is my favorite app and I am 100 percent sure that most of us are scrolling through Instagram instead of getting work done (Am I right? Me too…). With about 100 million photos and videos posted per day, it is the best place for entertainment, promoting your business, networking and following your favorite celebrities and influencers. You can find happy dog videos to the most controversial events all in one app. But as we all know, everything has two sides- good and bad. We can’t turn a blind eye towards the negative side; the most toxic being the negative comments and DMs (Direct Messages).

Identifying negative comments and DMs

Let us look at the two separately for clear understanding.

Negative comments:

I want you all to do this quick task:

Visit the profiles of any five celebrities or influencers and check the comments section.

1. What is the percentage of positive, uplifting comments?
2. What is the percentage of trolls and hate comments?
3. Did the haters comment from their original ID or a fake id?

I said celebrities because they have a very huge number of followers and you can clearly see the number of positive comments and hate comments. But that doesn’t mean people who don’t have millions of followers don’t receive hate. They absolutely do. Most of the times, it’s about how you look or how boring your content is or slut shaming. There is a vast difference between constructive criticism and hate.

Constructive criticisms are meant for our benefit so that we can improve ourselves. The user doesn’t have any hate towards us and always wishes the best for us. They just want us to add more value to our content so that it can perform better. Haters and the trolls on the other side have nothing else to do on earth and don’t care about you. They just want someone on whom they can shower their low mentality thoughts. They do it because they find pleasure in hurting other people.

Example of how they look like:

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM	NOTHING BUT HATE
Hi. Nice post. Maybe you can add a bit more color to it so that it looks more attractive.	You call this art??? LOL
A nude lipstick would go better with this dress than the pink one.	Attention seeking w****. You look ugly AF.

While constructive criticism uplifts us to perform better, unconstructive criticisms don’t provide any value but only try to pull us down.

Negative DMs:

Again, we receive both constructive criticisms and negative texts. Let’s focus on the negative texts. I define a negative DM as a message which can make you feel demotivated and uncomfortable. Some messages make you cringe. You cannot even imagine that people with such mentalities exist among us.

Types of negative DMs:

1. The ones that demotivate you: “You will never make it”, “You know that blogging is hard right? Why did you even choose it?”, “Kill yourself”. Can you see how these messages are harsh? Such words can kill your morale if you let it get to your heart.
2. Messages saying 2+2=5 and then arguing that it’s just their opinion: I have received so many opinions in my DMs mainly as replies to my stories. I agree everyone should and will have an opinion. But it is equally important to pause for a while and analyse whether those opinions are right. There is Google to check the facts for you to unlearn and learn.
3. Questions asked intentionally just to test our patience: Okay I have a personal story here. One day I posted a story on Instagram which went something like this: “Dear girls. When you wear shorts, skirts and crop tops, I just want to tell that you look absolutely gorgeous.” (I don’t remember the whole post word by word but this is what it conveyed). And this one guy replied to it asking “If women wear such clothes, is it wrong for men to stare?”. Shook your mind, isn’t it? Same.
4. Sexual advances and unsolicited “pics”: People of every gender receive such messages but most of the times it’s the women. Random men asking for nudes, sending the pictures of their private parts and calling them “names” if they won’t reply- these are common.

How to deal with the negative comments and DMs?

The easiest way is to ignore them. Most of the times, you won’t be having any energy to argue or reply to stupid people. But you cannot ignore the comments or the messages when they are crossing a certain line. So, it is important to know when it is the best practice to ignore or take any action against them.There are different ways to deal with negative comments and DMs.

Dealing with the comments:

Comments section is visible to the entire world. Moreover, trolls are doing it just for attention. So there are multiple ways to handle haters in your comments.

Give them a quirky reply: This applies to comments which are demotivating, specially authored to make you feel bad about yourself. For example, “Your articles are boring” or “You are an attention seeker” etc.

Examples for witty replies are: “Awww…are you having a bad day?”, “How is that supposed to make me feel?”. You can read the entire list of funny replies here.

Sometimes, your followers will do your work for you by replying to the person in their own ways. Again, if you are not interested in wasting your time replying to them, then ignore. You can even block them.

Report the comment: Sometimes the commenter may cross their limits and write an abusive comment. This includes unwanted sexual advances, slut shaming, spreading hate towards a particular community and so on. This is the best time to use that report button so that Instagram deletes the user’s account.

Dealing with the DMs:

DMs are personal and only you and the sender can see it. But that doesn’t mean that you accept every shit thrown at you. Earlier, I used to argue with people who said “2+2=5”. Also, I used to respond to questions that were asked intentionally to trigger me. But not anymore. I either leave them on read or sometimes block them (I have no regrets).

But sometimes there will be times where we can’t ignore them or block them. We can easily do that but calculating the amount of danger that they are to the society makes us shiver. Messages asking for nudes, images of their “parts”, unwanted sexual advances, blackmailing are not to be ignored. The messages need to be reported immediately. These are criminal offenses. So you can report it to the police as well.

Bonus tip:

You can call out the person on your stories by posting the screenshots of their comments or messages. This will send chills down the spines of those who are doing it or are planning to do the same. You need not feel bad for ruining their reputation because they deserved it.

Conclusion

Stay strong and be brave to stand against the trolls. Don’t let the negative comments and messages dim your light. Your value is not defined by their negative comments. Never waste your time arguing with stupid people because it drains your energy. Just do whatever you love and keep posting your work.

Have you come across such negative people in your life? Let me know in the comments.

Also read: 5 Types Of People You Must Avoid At Any Cost