If I ignore/block them, it allows them to continue unchallenged. I hate getting into it with them, since they are a baseline idiot.
I guess that’s it. I saw a person with a 6 month account spouting garbage, was gonna block but thought perhaps that wasn’t morally responsible. Wondering what the options were.
Doxx them.
What, that isn’t allowed? Well neither is white supremacist hate speech. Fuck that trash.
Stop calling yourself leftist you hateful fuck.
Ignore them, then vote accordingly. Nothing you or I say will have any effect
I tend to not reply because that will just draw more attention to them. I will post a separate top level comment rebutting their statements without referring to them.
That’s a good strategy, thanks.
There’s a lot of other good suggestions here, so I’ll just ask, what outcome are you hoping to achieve?
My conscience. assuaged.
If that’s the case, I’d recommend treating them like spam: reply and you’ll get a lot more.
Mostly, it’s a huge emotional and time investment if you want to change someone’s behavior and from what I gather, it’s a one on one type of thing and really hard. If you want to stop them from interacting negatively with others, your best action would be to report them.
If you’re upset and want to vent, then engaging will be fun for a while, but mostly futile in terms of behaviour adjustments.
If I respond, it’s mostly for the ‘audience’. I used to argue on r/libertarian or r/conservative, not to change the other person’s mind, but to add a different opinion to the thread. I doubt I ever convinced the other person of anything, but hope I got other people to think a bit more about some of the policies being advocated for.
Generally, my tactic is to not engage directly, but address the rest of the audience, essentially pointing at the subject and mocking him (“Can you believe this MAGA Traitor?..”). When he tries to respond, again ignore him, and just point and laugh.
They get really frustrated being made fun of, without having the satisfaction of creating liberal outrage.
Report their commdents, most instances will ban them unless they comment on a Nazi instance in which case good riddance.
If its a nazi instance, ask your admin to defederate.
I’m here for entertainment, as I assume most people are. If seeing that sort of rhetoric is a negative to you, block it. Marie Kondo your online life and yeet anything out the window that doesn’t spark joy. Put your anti-MAGA efforts towards improving your IRL community where you don’t have to futilely battle pseudonymous trolls.
Well said!
But “all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing?” Or something?
That’s why I said this part
Put your anti-MAGA efforts towards improving your IRL community where you don’t have to futilely battle pseudonymous trolls.
Find some place… as an example, hexbear’s instance has c/slop… to drop a link to the offending user’s comment or post and whatever happens… happens.
You’ve got the option of Reporting the post/comment to the moderators. Which will require you knowing the moderation rules of the community in question to take advantage of.
Short bullet point/talking point responses. Replies with things like, “This is racist/sexist/genocide denial/etc”, then disengage. You don’t need to get into a long drawn out comment war/debat bro situation.
Make fun of them for being a goober.
blocking/not blocking doesnt ‘allow’ them anything cept maybe free rent in your brain… doesnt affect them at all.
i tend to ignore them. my blocklist is very small
We have different psychologies. Ignoring is less of an option for some of us. But “out of sight, out of mind.”
im not saying one is better than the other, just that your experience is not affecting other humans.
whether you block or ignore… no one else knows what youre doing, so youre not ‘influencing’ anyone else.
On the internet, you’re not likely to change their mind, like at all. But in person, if you can connect with someone and bring it back to family, and community, you can slowly change someone’s mind and show them that they’ve been lied too. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can be done.
On the interwebs, don’t even bother.
This topic always reminds me of this hero https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes
I want to see more people like him in this world. But I sure wouldn’t have the guts to follow his steps.
i find this very satisfying: gently disagreeing with them via a short single positive message like “gay people do deserve respect”, then letting them throw a very lengthy, time-invested tantrum before gently and completely disagreeing with their comment with another short sentence, over and over until they get tired.
i find that both very funny and I’m putting out positive messages that negate their bigotry without too much time or effort.
that’s just if you have the time and inclination to engage, you aren’t morally obligated to subject yourself to abusive behavior.
if it’s real bad, they’re probably violating a rule, and reporting them will get them banned
A good thing about this approach is you’re not wasting your time (much). It doesn’t matter if they’re trolling for attention or entertainment if you remain passive/neutral and give them so little to work with.
Imagine instead giving them an originally-written 200 word argument and then they just reply “didnt read” - wasted your time on a bad faith prank. (that said - perhaps your audience isn’t the troll, but rather, the lurkers. I would only consider putting in effort if the comment isn’t being downvoted to the bottom holding an anchor)
Ooo, that’s good.
I’m going to post this idea by agent_nycto, because it’s another good way to deal with them, especially if you run into them IRL:
I don’t think you should be quiet, it makes them feel like everyone is agreeing with them and makes everyone miserable. Time to introduce you to my favorite game to play with conservatives, Politics Judo!
So you hear them rant about a thing. Some dumbass talking point. Let’s use gun control. It’s pretty easy to know in advance what the talking points are since they never shut up and parrot the same problem and solution over and over. “Shouldn’t take guns, it’s a mental problem not a gun problem”.
Things are basically boiled down to a problem and a solution. A lot of people try to convince people that the problem isn’t what people think it is, and that’s hard to do. Even if they are just misinformed, it feels like trying to dismiss their fears.
So what you do is you agree with the problem, then use lefty talking points as the solution.
“Oh yeah, gun violence is pretty bad! And I love the Constitution, we shouldn’t mess with that!” (Use small words and also throw in some patriotism, makes them feel like you’re on their side. You want to sound like a right wing media con artist) “so instead of taking guns away, we should instead start having more, free, mental health care in this country. Since it’s a mental health problem and these people are crazy, that is the solution that makes the most sense!” (Don’t try to get them to agree to your solution, just state it as the obvious one)
It becomes weaponized cognitive dissonance. Their brains fry because you said the things you should to agree with them, flagged yourself as an ally, but then said the thing they were told is the bad and shouldn’t want.
If they try to argue with your solution, rinse and repeat to a different talking point. “Oh yeah it might cost more, and we shouldn’t have to pay more for it, so we should get the rich people who are screwing average hard working Americans over by not paying taxes to do that. We should shut down tax loopholes and increase funding to the IRS so they can go after them instead of the little guy”
Always sound like you’re agreeing with them, but giving solutions that they disagree with that seem to be off topic but are related.
Memes.
Realistically I think your options are to ignore/block, or confront them against your better judgement. Which, as you know will likely constitute going circles for hours before having to bow out because your brain is coming out of your ears. The problem with both these options is that they likely have the same outcome. However, the latter will also leave them resenting you and the rest of the “online leftists” even more than they already do. In fact, it will probably embolden them in their pursuit of radical centrism just to own the “tankies”.
That’s just my experience and observations tho…
You may feel that they go unapposed and therefore you should be a countering force, but really your efforts are moot. People have their beliefs that won’t be changed online, at least not from some internet stranger. You can make the best arguments in the world and the opposition will simply ignore your point, move the goalposts, and implement the next logical fallacy to keep proving you “wrong” or “an idiot”.
Wow, yeah I think this was playing in my mind. You hit the nail on the head. I’ll just block the idiot.
When Lemmy first got popular and all debates happened and such, I kept debating politely while they kept bashing, insulting and all that. I’m over that.
When I see such opinions now, I block them. They are seriously not worth my time, energy and effort. Let them wallow in their misery.
They won’t realize it but everything bad they hope happening to others will certainly bite them back sooner or later. The moment they do not fit their (own) ideology of fascism just a tiny bit, it’ll bite them back.
