July 12, 2024

"While studies show that posts on social media that evoke negative emotions, like fear, revulsion or anger, elicit more engagement..."

"... some creators have found that negative comments have also become the most visible ones in recent years. Posts about the most lighthearted topics — whether it’s enjoying coffee with a spouse, pesto recipes or even power washing a home — can be overwhelmed by angry comments that seem to escalate rapidly.... Ms. Afualo has become known for videos that speak out against hateful or mean comments. The videos typically show one such comment, which Ms. Afualo then breaks down, highlighting systemic issues at play and sometimes mocking the poster, topped off with her signature high-pitched cackle. 'My typical response, depending on the severity, is to farm content out of it,' she said. One of her recent videos focused on a user’s comment asking why she had 'no ring' after having been in a relationship for years, to which she responded: 'You’re worried about me having a ring? How about you worry about your suffering — alone.'..."

From "How Creators Are Facing Hateful Comments Head-On/Ignore vitriol, or turn it into content? Creators like Kacie Rose and Drew Afualo share their tips for dealing with a harsh comments section" (NYT).

You have to chose which negative comments to respond to. You'll get more of what you reward, and any response to your haters will encourage them, especially if you look as though you've been angered or saddened. They like the action, but maybe action is what you want to. Afualo's phrase "farm content out of it" is telling. Even if your on-line creation is a content farm, you care about what you are farming. You can decide to grow back-and-forth negativity — trash talking. That may be the tendency of the internet. But don't encourage the weeds to take over your farm. Or is weed farming the most lucrative enterprise?

25 comments:

Ice Nine said...

Oh no, someone on the internet doesn't like her! First World problem.

john said...

My wife got a t-shirt that said "Erase Hate". I suggested something more emphatic, like "Kill hate - beat it to fucking death with a baseball bat. Spit on it". Too many words for one shirt.

Kate said...

Taking one person's clickbait comment and turning it into your own clickbait is definitely "weed farming". Good term.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Jeez she sounds mean.

Michael said...

Some of the best Twitter accounts are those who know how to turn a hater into a punchline. Michael Malice excels at this

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

The farming analogy implies pruning and weeding. My hunch is people now compete to see which of their negative comments she highlights in a video. She is weed farming. I think pruning them back or ignoring them (not all weeds ruin a crop) are better options and neither is exclusive of the other. A farmer has an array of options dealing with wheat and chaff and tares.

n.n said...

You have to separate the baby from the fetus.

Wa St Blogger said...

You have to chose... Choose?

rhhardin said...

It's called clickbait.

Wa St Blogger said...

You have to choose which negative comments to respond to. You'll get more of what you reward, and any response to your haters will encourage them, especially if you look as though you've been angered or saddened.

Sounds like a nice mild rebuke for all of us to consider how we comport ourselves on this blog. Message received.


While I hunger for actual discussion over particular points I will have to accept that I won't find engagement here, just snark.

Comments that generate engagement here are usually the negative ones.

doctrev said...

I don't mind people trying to keep their comments on track or require registration. But the less you promote engagement, the less engagement you get. There are some samizdat sites I visit exclusively for comments. Conversely, if you're not Taylor Swift the value of entertainment drops dramatically if no one is giving genuine comment feedback.

The US Army leaving up comments on recent ads is greatly amusing. The young are NOT volunteering for another Middle East war, that is for certain.

gilbar said...

Or is weed farming the most lucrative enterprise?

ask the illegal gangs in California.. Or, ask Mitch McConnell

Quaestor said...

Some weeds have pretty blossoms. And some trash talk has verve and elegance of style.

rhhardin said...

With seed the sowers scatter
The furrows as they go;
Poor lads, 'tis little matter
How many sorts they sow,
For only one will grow.

The charlock on the fallow
Will take the traveller's eyes,
And gild the ploughland sallow
With flowers before it dies,
But twice 'twill not arise.

The stinging nettle only
Will still be found to stand:
The numberless, the lonely,
The thronger of the land,
The leaf that hurts the hand.

It thrives, come sun, come showers,
Blow east, blow west, it springs;
It peoples towns, and towers
About the courts of Kings,
And touch it and it stings.

Housman, More Poems, XXXII

rhhardin said...

Wm. Empson offers Housman as a great poem offering bad advice, against I.A.Richards's theory of value.

Joe Smith said...

12 Pesto recipes cooked with my spouse in our clean home.

You won't believe number 8!

Paddy O said...

"While studies show that posts on social media that evoke negative emotions, like fear, revulsion or anger, elicit more engagement... some creators have found that negative comments have also become the most visible ones in recent years."

So... evoking negative emotions garners negativity? Whoa.

Reap what you sow. And what others so. When people are trying to gain attention they likewise emphasize the negative wherever they can have a platform, even other people's platforms.

And some people are just very unpleasant people who no one in their life wants to listen to, but they don't have barriers online.

We're in a very negative era where hope has been replaced by anger and fear and attack. Depersonalizing the poster and depersonalizing the commenter. Cogs in a communication machine that only exists to replicate itself.

n.n said...

Diversity breeds adversity. Conversely, adversity engenders diversity. Then, publishing garners reception. h/t NYT

mikee said...

I, for one, like comments that disparage with a positive tone. Let the person receiving it know that you are positive they deserve to be disparaged.

Wa St Blogger said...

Sometimes I wish we had a thumbs up/Thumbs down rating system.
One advantage is that it could encourage good posts and discourage bad ones without feeding the trolls. It is difficult to not tell someone who posts lies and dumb crap that they did just that. Often, when one posts, it is unknown whether it was useful or not when there is no response to it. On rare occasions someone will give it a plus 1 response, but mostly good posts are not remarked on. The only way to get a response is to be over the top, exceptionally witty, an idiot, or disparaging.

Negative attention is pretty much all that is rewarded in this format.

I think posts that get heavily downvoted and become invisible will discourage some people and upvoted posts will encourage those people to continue to contribute, and the level of upvote will encourage them to contribute more of the same.

I know I sometimes wonder if what I say is of any value given that much of what I post never gets a response. But I also know that I rarely give credit to others either, so I am not very motivating for others who labor unrecognized.

RideSpaceMountain said...

What you say is who you are is the dishonest platitude. Who you are is what you say, is the honest reality. We are all creatures of our various life experiences, some (or many) of which are out of our control.

As Rutger Hauer said in Blade Runner, "...All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain", we experience things throughout our lives which are almost impossible to relate to people who aren't you. And everyone feels strongly about them.

I try to psychologize comments I see from around the web from time to time and try crawling into the skull of the person that says them. There's a lot of negativity because there are a lot of damaged and hurt people out there, but the things people say that come from those places are 99% of the time genuine. It's that 1% of people saying things that don't come from them at all, that are not who they actually are, that really piss me off.

Static Ping said...

Such are things in the era of the blessed victim.

The fun of this sort of thing is often the negative remarks are minor, but the victim insists it is a huge deal. We get sob stories about how some celebrity was set upon by racists in 2024 - in 2024! - and then either provide no evidence or it is a couple of X users with no followers that opened their accounts a day earlier and could literally be anyone.

The Godfather said...

I don't remember what first led me to this blog, or when, but it was years ago and when Althouse (I then usually wrote "Prof. Althouse" in my few comments) was still working as a law prof -- I spent my career as a lawyer and still consider it a (potentially) honorable profession -- But anyway, Comments have kept me coming back, except when they drove me away.

I like the current balance here. Althouse raises interesting issues, and mostly intelligent commenters (some pro, some con, many other) respond to them, and the non-intelligent responders are pretty easy to skip.

So, thanks, Prof. Althouse, keep up the good work!

Narr said...

One person's benign witticism is another person's malevolent snark.

I'm not a fan of the up/down vote idea. It would probably degenerate pretty quickly given that writing out a comment of praise, critique or correction takes so much more effort than just checking a box ; up/down is lazy, and neither the original commenter or the rest of us have any way of knowing exactly what the problem or issue might be.

For myself, I have to ruthlessly limit the threads I follow or all the interesting and knowledgeable posters would keep me here all day every day. If I tried to follow everything, I suppose up/down ratings might help in a first sort.

(I see a nightmare blogscape of emojis.)


walter said...

Or just delete them....