I wanted to expand on one of the subject we chatted about in a recent dog park chat on Insta Stories:
How do you deal with negative social media comments?
I learned very early on in my career, that you have to take negative comments with a grain of salt. The first time I learned this was when I was working as a fashion editor at Style Network. We did a campaign where I had to model a skin tight sweater dress, which was posted on the network’s Facebook page. Two of the comments were in direct contradiction. One person said I looked anorexic. Another commented that my ass was fat.
At first, I was offended. I didn’t understand why strangers could be so mean! But the more I sat with the negative comments, the more I realized how ridiculous they were. Should I be eating a burger? Or should I be on a juice cleanse? I did neither, and went about my day on my regular diet
Over the years, I’ve become more confident with my body and try not to let other people’s opinions get me down. But it’s not just body shaming that goes on. I get weekly comments that I’m ugly, I look old, my outfits are dumb, etc, etc, etc.
In order to not get depressed about negative social media comments, I’ve developed two plans of reaction: 1) Kill it with kindness. And 2) Delete and ignore.
kill it with kindness
Killing it with kindness works when a comment is more of a criticism that is simply written in a way that could have been nicer. For example, someone complaining about the way a video is edited or saying that they only like one of the outfits you feature in a slideshow.
With these comments, I generally respond with something short and sweet. I thank them for their suggestions or tell them I’ve noted their ideas. I would say 9 times out of 10, the person responds kindly. I even had one commenter apologize for her initial brash comment, explaining she was having a bad day.
You just have to remember, not everyone is good at communicating. Maybe the comment came from a positive place but was executed in a not so kind manner. Generally, adding a positive spin, aka killing it with kindness, brings positive back to your comment chain.
delete and ignore
Sometimes comments are downright nasty. In these cases, I find there is no point of responding. I simply delete them and move on. I’ve learned that there are people in the world who are unhappy with themselves, and in return try to bring their pessimism upon others. Their negative comments usually aren’t a reflection of you, they’re more about how they feel about themselves.ย It doesn’t benefit me to engage in a negative back and forth so I simply take myself, and my feelings, out of the equation.
let’s spread the kindness
As an experiment, I asked my #ssInstaFam to leave a positive comment on a stranger’s Instagram post. Just like a negative comment can put a damper on your day (if you let it!), a positive comment can bring happiness. It’s such a simple exercise and I find brings me a lot of joy.
And with that, I leave you with this cute quote I found on Pinterest. I’m not sure who said it but it’s a great reminder anytime a pesky comment enters your feed:
“Ignore negative people and negative comments.
They are like mosquito bites:
awkward but irrelevant.”
Love, love, love that dress on you! it really brings out your green eyes.
It’s so easy to leave a nasty comment and people don’t even realize what they’re saying because behind a computer it’s easy to hide and in most cases, those people would never say anything like that to someone’s face. I definitely think ignoring and deleting is the best thing to do. And as for those mildly negative comments, I’ve gotten a few and I do the same thing you do and reply with kindness even though sometimes I’d love to give them a snarky reply. And as a commenter, I always try to be nice, since English isn’t my first language I don’t like to use fancy words as I might be misinterpreted although since having Grammarly installed, it’s gotten easier to write.
Great read. Thank you for this. As a person learning how to be on social media this is very helpful
Hello beautiful..Happy New Year! I’ve been following you for awhile.. I’d love more makeup and fashion ..and more one on one to get to know more about you.. My Instagram name is @godsgift1196
Thanks for the cool tips. Recently, I have a lot of problems with Facebook, especially because of their Facebook jail, which can randomly block your account. I read that there are many such situations, one of them is described in the article https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facebook-jail-what-is-it-how-fight-back/E77Y6SPS55EBLLKNEQGXAXBEIE/