There’s not a whole lot that’s controversial or eye-opening in this story about how talent agencies have dedicated teams monitoring and managing social media accounts of talent. There’s talk about how they keep track of the comments that are left, deleting the bad ones or banning offenders. But the bit at the end about how you should just ignore the offenders and they’ll go away is terrible, terrible advice. We’re well beyond the “don’t feed the trolls” phase of social media and should acknowledge that they need to be dealt with in a more active, substantive manner. I’m not saying Twitter or other networks need to ban them completely (I don’t agree with that approach) but better tools need to be in place to punish them and keep their vitriol out of what should be safe places for fandom and conversation to thrive.

cave troll

One thought on “Ignoring Trolls is Bad Advice

  1. But then what is the solution, if it’s not something along the lines of “Block and Report” (the ‘Report’ being the most important bit)? Starving these people of attention, of interaction and of the opportunity to cause trouble has to be the most effective solution, no?

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