How to Spot, Deal With, and Benefit from Trignoramuses (updated 8/16)
Dealing with trolls and ignoramuses is one of the costs of participating in social media. These are the folks who combine a strong opinion with a lack of knowledge and whose main goal is attention. A handful of inflammatory and negative comments can neutralize dozens of useful and positive ones. Here are the top twelve signs that you're dealing with a troll or ignoramus--for brevity's sake, a "trignoramus."
1. Male. My experience is that almost every trignoramus is male. Even when an avatar is a female person, I often suspect the person used a false picture and is male. I don't know why this is true--my best guess is that women as both smarter and have better things to do.
2. Lousy profiles. There are three very easy visual clues that you're dealing with a trignoramus. First, his avatar contains a picture of him with his spouse or family. It's as if the message is, "I can't be a racist, sexist, or clueless, I must be a good person because a woman married me/I have a family/dog/cat." Second, his timeline is mostly updates to his cover photo and avatar. There's seldom any curation or creation of content. Third, his profile is blank--there's little or nothing about his work, education, places lived, etc. In fact, it's hard to discern if the person truly exists.
3. Bad Grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Trignoramuses don't capitalize the first word of sentences, use periods, or commas. They have a tough time with homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings). This has nothing to do with gay rights though trignoramuses have strong feelings about this issue too. They use the first-person pronoun ("I") and exclamation marks (!!!!) a lot. They type in ALL CAPS. They write long comments using short, simplistic, and goofy words. Example: "PUHLEZE, your completely WRONG about global warming everyone nose that al gore is just trying to cell books"
4. Entitlement. Trignoramuses exhibit an exorbitant level of entitlement manifested in the belief that their time is valuable, and they should get everything for free. Trignoramuses must have missed school the day that science class covered Copernicus's heliocentric model of the universe. Thus, they think they are the center of the universe. Example: "Why does she post stuff on her page that doesn't interest me and wastes my time???" "Dropbox should be honored that I store my files on its free service." "If Google+ ever runs ads, I'm out of there."
5. Lack of first-hand knowledge. It's ironic that people with the strongest opinions often have the least first-hand knowledge. When you encounter the certain and vociferous opinion of trignoramuses, ask them if they have first-hand knowledge or experience. You'll find that trignoramuses just "know" that something is true. Example, they know that Barack Obama isn't American and was the founder of ISIS.
6. Intolerance. Trignoramuses do not embrace diversity. Alternate thoughts, lifestyles, sexual orientations, and operating systems are both wrong and unacceptable. Example: "Macs are too espensive and there're just something Steve Jobes ripped off from Xerox Park. i am much productive than any Mac owner."
7. Perfect information. Trignoramuses expect everyone in the world to know what they did immediately after they did it. (Pre-Copernicus and perfect information is a deadly combination!) Example: "i explained why he's wrong in my blog, but he hasn't responded yet."
8. Wimpy. Trignoramuses are wimps and want to attack and pontificate but not constructively discuss. They do not have the courage to say to your face what they say online. They are bullies who are brave in a pack but shrink away from confrontation when they don't have a computer to hide behind. That said, trignoramuses are often perfectly reasonable people in person--which is difficult to grok, but so true.
9. Legal scholars. Many trignoramuses are legal scholars but every legal scholar isn't a troll. In particular, trolls are experts in selective portions of U.S. constitutional law, U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and Sharia law. They are certain that the founding fathers anticipated the state of technology two hundred years hence. Example: "The Constitutions guarantees that I can protect myself in case a Muslim president sends Seal Team Six after me...im going to grab the AR-15 I bought at Walmart and kick their asses."
10. Arithmetically challenged. Trignoramuses are not good at arithmetic, and they oversimplify the facts. When they say "every," they should say "some" or even "I." However, their goal is to exaggerate and aggravate. Example: "Everyone knows that vaccination is a big pharma plot that causes autism." "Every post is a promotion for her company." "He never responds to anyone." "United flights are always delayed."
11. Holier-than-thou. No matter what you do, it's never enough. No matter what a trignoramus does, it's exemplary. This often happens in times of tragedy. You post, "An terrbile attack occurred today in London." Trignoramus responds, "That's all you can say? I offered my PRAYERS." Really? Only God needs to hear your prayers--do you need to tell the Internet too?
12. American. It pains me to say this, but I've noticed that most trignoramuses are American. We're hung up on manifest destiny and the belief that we should tell everyone how to live, what to think, and what to do--including, of course, other Americans. Example: when a tragedy happens in the U. S., trignoramuses here expect the whole world to come to a halt. It's as if an American life is worth more than any other country's.
How to Handle Trignoramuses
You could respond to a comment and see what the person does. I've learned to assume that people are good until proven bad. A trignoramuses will respond with anger, negativism, and hostility, but people who had a temporary trignoramish moment will make a reasonable and intelligent response.
If this doesn't work, you have three more choices:
1. Ignore them. You can let trignoramuses post their comments and simply ignore the comments. You don't have an obligation to respond to anything. If you don't read a comment, did it really happen? Nope.
2. Delete their comments. Think of this as skimming the detritus off the surface of your swimming pool. If you keep deleting, eventually trignoramuses may tire of posting.
3. Get rid of them permanently. You can block people from seeing your posts and from commenting again.
However, all things considered, I recommend that you only hide their comments. This means (on Facebook where most of my interaction occurs) that their comments are still technically there but only the people who can see them are the trignoramus and the trignoramus's followers. This is better than the three choices above for these reasons:
1. Versus ignoring. If you ignore their comments, your posts could be surrounded by a cesspool of hate and malice. People might rise and support you, or they might be so turned off that they stop following you.
2. Versus deleting. I seldom delete comments for two reasons. First, I don't want trignoramuses to have the satisfaction of thinking they pissed me off so much that I had to delete their comment. Second, if deleting comments means that the post has less engagement, and it is presented to fewer people, I've shot myself in the foot.
3. Versus blocking. I used to block several hundred people, but I removed the block on almost all of them because I decided that any comment counts as engagement, and my theory is that the more engagement Facebook sees, the more Facebook will present the post to other people.
Trignoramus the Trignoramus
I call this my "trignoramus the trignoramus" strategy. It means that trignoramuses increase my engagement which increases how many people read my posts which increases how many people follow me. If trignoramuses post comments, it helps me get more exposure. If trignoramuses don't post comments, it means there's less crap to deal with. I win either way.
I've got to go now because I need to find more stories about climate change, gun control, vaccinations, women's rights, immigration reform, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump.
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a brand ambassador for Mercedes Benz USA, and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was also the chief evangelist of Apple. He is also the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
Illustration by John Bauer
Branch Manager at Bamenda Police Cooperative Credit Union Ltd
2y💪💪💪 I'm from your book "The arts of social media"
Owner, McAlister Photoworks
7yDon't know why I didn't follow you a long time ago. I guess I'm just social media impaired. I don't care how much we disagree on politics, you seem to be a pretty decent guy (pun intended) and are willing to politely engage those who see things differently than you do. Thanks for that!
Heart-Centred Leadership / Communications Specialist @ ERS | Risk Management, Cert NLP Master Pract
7yExcellent post @Guy Kawasaki - spot on.
Higher Education / Consultant / Medical Writer
8yThis represents the intelligent thoughts of an academic superstar.???? Perhaps you were unable to find an intern to write your blog this week.