Keep Your Goals Away From The Trolls

Sometimes  trolls can inadvertently provide you with good feedback. That’s rarely their intention, but if you approach everything as a potential learning experience you can mine something positive from these encounters.

For a start, you’ve done something to attract their attention and prompt them to leave feedback. This is actually better than getting no responses at all, because you’re either doing something wildly right or wildly wrong. If it’s the former, figure out what it is and learn to replicate it. If it’s the latter, seek out the problem and fix it. Learn to think of trolls as harsh editors who help you make your work better. Think of them as the hackers and thieves that businesses hire to locate the holes in their security so they can improve it. Except the trolls, bless ‘em, do it for free.

The current round of pointless hate has helped me accomplish one thing: I’ve got my mission statement. My “aha” moment came out of one rude comment and one nasty email, from two different sources. One told me that I was doing it wrong, trying to assimilate the various things that I do into a sort of unified whole. They seemed to have missed the point that I was looking at what I currently do, and what I want to do, and using those as the basis for a mission statement that will direct how I move forward. The mission statement was no more than an editing process and a focal point for me. As with most trolls, it was easier to thrash me about being “wrong” than to engagement in a discussion about what I was working to accomplish.

The second troll bashed me for over-thinking it. Okay, the actual comment was more about how mission and vision statements are stupid and my trying to complete one was a huge, self-indulgent waste of time, but my take-away was that I was trying too hard. The total troll contribution was that the words “mission statement” were a barrier to communication. I’m writing for real people, not business droids. What I was trying to answer, and declare to the readers, was who I am, what I care about, and what they can expect from this blog. You can find that on the updated “About Berin” page here on the site. Mission accomplished.

Verbiage, I came to realize, was also the problem with the other focus of the troll attacks. I’ve been trying to talk about helping the homeless. I’m involved with organizations that try to help the poor here in Albuquerque. No one has any problem with that. When I mention that I work with faith-based organizations to do that, and call what I do “ministry”, people come out of the woodwork to debate theology and call me all sorts of names, completely losing the point that I’ve been discussing ways to aid single mothers with children, people with mental and physical illnesses, people with substance abuse problems, and people who in this tanked economy cannot find jobs. Am I a Christian? Yes, but the point is that there are people in need.

The word “ministry” has been changed, for now, to “charitable work”, not to be politically correct or to avoid offending anyone and certainly not to hide my faith, but to clarify what I want to put my emphasis on. I may change it again, to “homelessness” or “advocacy” to better conveys my meaning.

The changes that I’ve been making to the site in the past few weeks have been working. Unique visits have as much as tripled. I’ve picked up two new freelance writing jobs for the beginning of the year, as a result of people reading this site. I’m am absolutely confident that, no matter what the trolls think, I know what I’m doing.

But thanks for the feedback.