Just recently, a blogger I respect a lot has posted quite the controversial piece and consequently, the trolls came in to flame. Natural. That’s always the way it is in cyberspace. Anonymity is a power abused in the Internet. There are many who’d act like they would not in real life. Hiding behind the keyboard gives people a sense of daring and unfortunately, it doesn’t always amount to good. Sometime in a blogger’s life, one might have to face similar situations. What can you do during those times?

1. Provoke a Response

If you’re looking for more controversy, more traffic to your blog and more attention, then by all means, provoke more responses. And actually, there are those who would, not for the sake of the responses, but as a promotional tactic.

2. Delete or Moderate Comments

Trolls, more often than not, get out of line. Intelligent rebuttals aren’t exactly in their line of thinking. When they get abusive, call you names or curse you, delete comments. Or better yet, when you see abuse start coming in, start moderating comments so you won’t have to delete them later.

3. Ignore Them

Unfortunately, you can’t reason with everyone. If you want trolls to just get over it, the best thing you could do is ignore them. When they see that you’re not biting the bait, they’ll forget about it soon enough and find another blogger to troll. That’s just how it is.

When faced with similar situations, keep your cool and don’t lose your head. Trolls are random anonymous people which would be effaced in memory within a day or two. But as for you, whatever you say will be etched in the memory of the blogosphere. So think about your reputation and your readers first, before anything else.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under blogging. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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