When the trolls come knocking

I listened to an interview recently, where Grammy Award winner Toni Tennille, talked about the nasty things some people say about her online. She went on to say that she didn’t pay attention to them.

The thing about trolls

One of the challenges with the Internet, is that people can hide behind a keyboard and write semi-anonymous abuse about others. As soon as you become visible, you become a potential target. If your visibility is related to being successful, you may as well paint a big target on you and wait for the trolls to arrive.

There are a few ways to deal with it.

• You can try and hide from it like Seth Godin. He refuses to connect with people on social networks. He can now write fearlessly, knowing no one can question him in front of his audience.
• If you are not scared of it, but find it demotivating, you can do like Toni Tennille and not read it.

Or you can learn to see it for what it is and give it the attention it deserves… which is very, very little!