One sign that you're making a difference as a creator is that you get negative comments.
My YouTube channel on cool and fancy serial numbers gets some hate because I encourage people to collect what they like, and not necessarily what is valuable.
I've gotten some more “these bills are face value” and “these bills aren't a thing” comments on this video. They're nothing that I haven't heard dozens of times in my now-22,000-member Facebook Group. Old-guard dealers wanting to instill the purity of the habit in the rest of the collecting world.
One user I wish I hadn't hidden
I hid the comments from a user that was a particularly vocal axe-grinder.
I hid it because it was the only comment on the video at the time, posted only hours after the video hit YouTube, and because this particular user really was getting in my face to pick a fight:
True trinaries have no value. All of the big sales were for other aspects. As for the lower sales, there is a sucker born every minute. You are highlighting people who got scammed. NO dealer would ever list a value, buy these, or tell people that they are collectible. A dealer is in the business of making money. If there was any actual value, they would sell them. A trinary is almost 700,000 per 100 million. A trinary with 012 is just as rare as any other 3 digits. Please don’t contribute to these hustlers scamming people. If you want to insist on claiming they have value, tell me what you will pay for them.
~ Disgruntled Old-Guard Axe-Grinder
Fighting words, huh?
When I responded with a link to my blog and told him that I wasn't going to engage him in the comments like I did the previous time — this wasn't the first time he did this — this was the immediate response I got:
I don’t click links. I do enjoy communicating with people, especially those who contribute to the destruction of the hobby.
~ Disgruntled Old-Guard Axe-Grinder
At that point I added his user ID to the hidden list, which means his comments go away and he can't comment further.
In retrospect, I wish I had let it sit for a bit more. Yeah, he's an axe-grinder coming onto my channel and leaving a lot of crappy, dirty, oily metal shavings on my comment section with his canned rhetoric.
Because when I got the next comments, I found a much more appropriate response.
I'm going to handle axe-grinding comments like I deal with a narcissist
In one of my real-life circles lies a narcissist.
I played their game until this fact was pointed out to me. Then, I actively began to minimize their impact on me since for other reasons I really couldn't completely avoid them.
Narcissists crave attention, good or bad, from those around them to reinforce an inflated sense of self-worth. They manipulate the small world around them to get this attention.
One technique for encouraging a narcissist to look elsewhere for attention is to be uninteresting. This is called gray-rocking. A gray rock is uninteresting to most (except maybe Bert from Sesame Street, or a geologist who specializes in these kinds of rocks).
The hallmark of the gray-rock technique is short, uninteresting answers to questions posed by the narcissist. Ignoring isn't the answer because that will just make the narcissist try harder. Snarky responses aren't the answer either, because they will try to out-do your snarkiness or encourage more of it.
But a response of “this and that” or “stuff” to “What do you have planned for the weekend?” acknowledges that the question was heard, but are mostly unfulfilling.
It's a weak hit of attention. They feel like KGB in Rounders: “I feel so unsatisfied.”
It only took a few times doing this and I found that this person wasn't bothering me. Which is what I want.
My response to axe-grinding comments is quick and uninteresting
It's a quick way of responding “meh” without writing out “meh.” It's gray-rocking the commenter.
It's not quite an effort to not feed the trolls, because I don't think these comments are really trolling.
They're just comments that I've already decided that I'll agree to disagree with people who hold them. They're not going to change my mind, because this kind of thing is what I've deemed to be a pillar of how I approach the hobby. And, I'm not likely to change theirs. Best we not waste each others' time.
If I say even “let's agree to disagree,” though, I'm just going to keep the conversation going, which is what I don't have any interest in doing.
I figure that I can condition some of the axe-grinders to stop wasting their breath with me by doing this.
This will let me hide only the worst comments.
I did feel a bit resigned hiding the one commenter who was very vocal with his axe-grinding. It wasn't a good precedent. I don't want to become one of those creators who can't deal with criticism.
Especially because in most of my videos I encourage people to leave comments. It's a bit hypocritical of me to censor comments when I ask for them.
Strategically responding to comments based on rhetoric seems to be a good way to go. Let's do that. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
I love helping people achieve financial peace of mind by offering ways to spend less money and make more money, both online and offline!
header photo by C D-X