One of the reasons it took me so long to decide whether to write my book on kids’ healthy habits was that I wasn’t sure I was ready to put myself in the line of fire in a debate as easily inflamed as the debate about our children, food and health.
My Danish blog is very popular. It has between 250.000-300.000 unique visitors every month and more than 85.000 fans on Facebook. Most of my readers are pleasant people but whenever I write about kids or the choices we’ve made in our family, I always get negative comments too. It’s fully understandable. Our children are the most precious thing in our lives and we all wear our emotions on the outside. And so do I. That’s also the reasons why comments that are directed at my kids or my choices as a mother, hurt the most.
In this post I’d like to share with you my thought about getting negative or even mean comments and what I do when that happens to me.
THE WRITTEN WORD WORKS BADLY WITH IRONY AND HUMOUR
The first thing I do when I detect a negative comment is I make sure that it’s actually negative. Tone of voice can be difficult to decipher in writing. Comments written with CAPS LOCK on or with an extensive use of question marks or exclamation marks give me a feeling of being yelled at. But maybe that’s not the case but just the writer’s style. I always try to give the writer the benefit of the doubt. I do that by asking for an elaboration. Either the person never responds or he or she gets back and apologizes that the first comment could be interpreted as being rude. It’s like people forget that there’s actually a real person at the other end of the conversation!
If the comment is really negative, I investigate if it’s constructive and fair. If so, I start a dialogue. My blog is a place that allows all opinions, also the ones I disagree on and it’s also a place that helps me broaden my horizon and learn new things.
Sometimes I get comments that make me insecure and make me question the things I do. In those cases, I carry that comment around with me for days. Those are often the comments calling me a fanatic and saying that I harm my children by not giving them sugar and that I’m setting them up for a lifetime of disordered eating. I don’t think that is the case (if I did, I would definitely choose otherwise). But I don’t know for sure but what I do know is, that there are no guarantees here. And that goes for the ones that allow unlimited sweets to their children. No guarantees for them either.
THE REALLY MEAN AND ABSURD COMMENTS
If the comment is really rude and goes after me as a person instead of the topic I brought to the table, I have a much easier time letting it go. The more rude, the easier it is to let it go. That has to do with the fact that I have very little respect for people who act that way and who chooses that way of debating. That also goes if the arguments are completely absurd.
A while back I got an angry comment on a post I wrote back in 2012 about healthier alternatives to sweets for children. The comment was rude and went straight at me and my readers (ad hominem) and it took the argument into the absurd (reductio ad absurdum). That made it easy for me to just shrug my shoulder and leave it at that. It went something like this:
You’re all a bunch of sugar fearing health nuts. I’m sure you’re all afraid of gluten too! You would probably rather shoot up with heroin than eat a slice of white bread…
And the ramblings went on… In that case, I’m just like… whatever!
Generally, I try to keep my own tone polite. That serves the purpose of making the angry comment look even more out of place. I mean, who wants to fight with someone who keeps their tone nice and polite? Another reason is I think that hatred should be drowned in love. Kill them with kindness! I really like that idea.
ANY BLOOD…?
The hardest part about getting negative comments is that they often come together. That my Danish blog has so many readers does not mean that they all find me freakin’ fantastic. I’m sure some people follow it for morbid fascination and other reasons I know nothing about. But that means that when one person opens up for negative comments, it’s usually followed up by many others who feel that that can finally get all their anger out of their system. A little bit like when people are drawn to stop up and look at a traffic accident. Any blood? Anyone got hurt? Show me! And that’s really unpleasant when that happens. Especially on Facebook.
Getting a bunch of negative comments on Facebook feels like being stoned in public while all your friends are watching.
On the blog I have to manually submit all comments so here, I’m in control of what is being said and when. I could chose to just dismiss negative comments but I choose not to do that. The only time I did that was one time I woke up in the morning to a bunch of threatening and sexually insulting comments. There are no place for comments like than on any of my blogs.
Some people think that getting negative comments is the price one has to pay to have a popular blog. I disagree very strongly. Nobody deserves to be spoken to like that. No matter how popular they are and no matter where they choose to express their opinions. That goes for politicians too. We can disagree with their standpoint and we can dislike them all we like but that does not justify throwing garbage at them in public. If you think it does, I really think you need to adjust the kind of behaviour you tolerate!
One thing I’ve noticed is that the meanest comments I get are form men. Isn’t that strange? Every body knows that women can be so mean but maybe they just whisper to their neighbour about what an idiot I am, where as men are more confronting? I don’t know, it’s just an observation.
What do you think? Have you experienced getting bad comments on your blog or Facebook and what did you do?
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