Hi all,
I've read the book "Feeling Good" by David A. Burns (
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/dp/0380810336 ),
which is a self-help Cognitive therapy book, and it was a huge eye opener on
many levels. One of my favourite chapters is nicknamed "Verbal Judo" and is
meant to instruct how to effectively deal with people who are criticing you
(usually face to face - this book predates the prevalence of the Internet).
In my proposed talk (a short one - about 15-30 minutes), which I'd like to
give in a distant Tel Aviv Perl Mongers meeting, I will try to adapt this
technique on how to deal with Internet trolls and people who pass criticism on
you online. I'm not a qualified psychologist, of course, and I don't always
remember to implement this, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I also can
be a big troll sometimes myself (though I try to avoid it) and am reportedly a
"passive-aggressive" (not entirely sure I know what it is, but I think I do)
bastard.
The very executive summary is: "On the Internet, don't be right - be smart.",
but I'll give some longer summary and notes below as I write them, if you
don't mind ruining the effect of the surprise. Scroll down.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
----- Summary of the Lecture start ----
Title: How to deal with Internet Trolls and Flamers - The Cognitive Therapy
Approach.
Subtitle: "On the Internet, don't be right - be smart."
About myself. (boring).
The Feelign Good Book by David A. Burns.
- how to deal with and prevent clinical depressions using self-help
Congitive-Behavioural Therapy techniques (CBT)
- lots of good advice of why we behave the way we do.
- generally more effective than taking psychoactive medication, or
most other forms of therapy (e.g: Freudian therapy).
How to deal with Internet trolls and flamers.
Case study: someone joins a Python IRC channel and says "Perl rocks my socks
and Python sucks balls, LOL. Python programmers are incompetent imbecile
losers, ROTFL..."
(I'm giving it about Python to avoid Perl-elitism on my part. I'm also using
"him", "he" consistenly, though the troll might be female. )
What not to do:
---------------
1. Criticise his judgement: "Python does not suck, and you are being rude.",
"WTF are you saying? Everybody knows that Perl sucks."
2. "Don't feel the troll" - someone will feed him eventually and the troll may
continue trolling and feeling like he's right and superior or alternatively
that the Python people on the channels are being "jerks" for not responding.
3. Ban him / call for banning him - a great way to get another enemy, and can
also possible start some "was it right to ban him" conversations. Will also
negatively contribute to the channel's perception and atmosphere among the
channel members.
The troll may also prove to be a useful resources or can be taught to love
Python eventually.
4. Tell him not to troll. You're labeling him and insulting him and he's
feeling like he's alienated. Some people may still respond harshly.
What to do instead:
-------------------
1. Agree with him (but use more exact words): "Yes, Perl is a nice language,
and I agree that Python has its downsides and/or tradeoffs in comparison to
Perl.", "It's OK to prefer Perl, we'll still accept you here."
2. Ask him what he means: "Why do you feel that Python is so bad? What do you
find wrong with it?"
and eventually:
3. Negotiate a common ground: "Would you agree that some people like Perl
better and some like Python better? (And some may like both equally.). Maybe
you can still write Python code and be productive in it while still not in
love with it. Who knows, maybe you'll even grow to like it. Feel free to stick
around and ask questions."
4. Repeat a few times.
5. Success! The troll has been tamed and is now a friendly hobbit.
-----------------
Some more advice:
-----------------
1. Write in the best spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalisation, idiomatic
speech, etc. that you can, no matter how bad the troll's message were.
2. Don't criticise what he says directly or the way he says it (Style over
substance etc.).
3. Avoid logical fallacies:
- Ad hominem: "you're under age and much younger than me and not a
lawyer, so you're not qualified to give your opinion about open-source
licences."
4. Be polite, and friendly.
5. Don't be too terse. Write coherently, and explain what you want.
- Proper human communication has a lot of redundancy, but people
prefer it this way.
- Even in Information Theory, you cannot compress an arbitrary amount
of data to too short a message.
- http://www.socialsignal.com/image/short-and-sweet
6. Don't be too verbose, as people won't bother reading you. It may be better
to put a claim and reiterate.
7. If using E-mail, always do bottom-inline posting and don't top-post (unless
you know better than that, which you probably don't).
- Quote a selected message.
- Disarm the troll using the methods above.
- Repeat.
8. Don't selectively "trim" the message without leaving too much context.
9. Don't mis-interpret or jump to conclusions - ask the troll what he means if
he doesn't know.
10. Try to avoid aphorisms, proverbs, "famous" quotes, rhymes or verse etc.
Use freeform, coherent speech and say what you want in your own words.
- Aphorisms, etc. tend to project authority, and usually backfire
because a person intuitively knows that.
- Sometimes they may lead to an aphorism war or for "correcting" the
aphorism or discussing its larger context and origins.
- All of these can sometimes spice up a friendly conversation and add
humour to it, though, but your kilometrage may vary.
11. Avoid too many obscure acronyms and abbreviations, as this can distract
from the discussion. Spell them out (possibly using your chat/E-mail/etc.
client's shortcuts).
12. Don't make fun of the troll. Respect him and try to avoid unnecessary
humour. Be pleasant - not funny.
13. Don't be rude and use soft words such as "I think", "I believe", "In my
opinion", "I find that", etc.
------------
------------ End of discussion -----------
Please let me know what you think and sorry for the long summary.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
"Star Trek: We, the Living Dead" - http://shlom.in/st-wtld
Chuck Norris can make the statement "This statement is false" a true one.
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
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