Log off and touch grass.

Not even trying to be a dick, but I’ll go water my gardens lol.

The first step for me was realizing that this stuff made me angry and unhappy. Rather than viewing this as something I need to exercise my anger on I view it as something I need to avoid so I don’t get angry. Using the block feature really helped a lot.

I think it’s important to remember that when you are interacting online, especially with an unknown person, there is no relational component. You are effectively just words or text to them, there isn’t a “person” behind what they are reading. It’s very easy to be obstinate or argumentative with just words because you can’t see the reaction or impact on the other person. So it’s nearly impossible to change someone’s mind in that format unless they are really being genuine and looking to have an exchange of ideas.

I’ve found the best way for myself to handle these types of situations is to realize nothing I say is going to impact them or change their mind. If I’m really wound up I might type a response out to get the frustration and energy out and then delete it. I usually feel better after that and can move on with my day but engaging further is just going to lead to further frustration because you can’t actually reach the person.

As soon as someone starts engaging with me in a rude way online, I respond with one single “hey let’s chill out” or “we can disagree peacefully” kind of comment. That gives them a chance to stop being confrontational.
If they burn that chance I either disengage or troll you into the abyss (depends by how much free time I have in that moment) because I know that arguing with angry people is useless.

Situational.

First, if it’s directed at me, I do not engage. Like, at all. If someone is trying to get my attention with shitty behavior, they’re not getting it. If it’s the guy on my discord meme channel who posts incel memes, I really have do have to remind myself not to engage. That one is harder, because I feel like they’re taking away from the quality of the space, I don’t want them in my orbit AT ALL, but they are part of the greater community, and this channel sort of quarantines their brain vomit. So again, I never engage with them, but I deliberately engage with other posters and community members who are productive and positive. In the short term, it’s not rewarding, but in the long term I do feel much better about myself. And finally, sometimes I really do need to step away–maybe it’s into another game, another community, etc. Sometimes I do need to take a break, seek other forms of entertainment and reinforcement. The main thing is not to continuously expose yourself to things that are aversive to you and just stress and stress. You have to break it somehow.

Ask yourself this. Will this matter to me a week from now? If not then walk away and move on.

Walk away and take a breath.

Also, will this really matter to me:

• Tomorrow?
• In a week?
• In a month?
• In a year?

That helps to put challenging situations into perspective.

I struggle with this too sometimes, from a couple angles. Primarily, I’m worried about how people perceive me. I’ve been practicing not giving a shit what other people think of me for about a decade now, and I’m pretty good, but it doesn’t always work. I have to remind myself that it just doesn’t matter if a stranger disagrees with me, or thinks I’m a fuckwad/idiot/etc, just like my opinion of them doesn’t change their life. We don’t know each other. Their negative opinion of me has no real impact on my life, and holding onto that helps me move past caring about their opinion.

Secondarily, I stress about misinformation/toxic ideas being spread. I pipe up in a lot of discussions about feminism and the patriarchy because I want to clarify misconceptions that a lot of people hold about these issues. But, as far as I know, I’ve never changed someone’s mind, and the effort just brings me down. I have to remind myself it’s not my responsibility to teach someone why they might be wrong. The odds that I would actually succeed are very low, unless the person is genuine and asking questions in good faith.

ETA: lastly, I ask myself how I want to feel today. Do I want this random asshole to ruin my day? I don’t want to give them that power over me. So I work to take back that power and make sure I have a good day in spite of their efforts.

Try to notice why I find it so upsetting, and see if I can unpack and defuse it.

Do you regert having involved in an argument itself or what

Dumbasses posting stupid shit don’t read sourced or reasoned comments. They just fling more poo. Walk away.

I write a long comment and then don’t send it.

Usually after typing everything out and reading it back, I have cooled enough to think it’s mediocre at best and the other person doesn’t deserve so much of my time wasted anyway (which already happened of course, but they don’t need to know that 😅).

Step away from it and avoid engaging. Let it fade into memory. Distract yourself with something you enjoy or find fun/entertaining. Don’t give them your attention or energy, and don’t go looking for more stuff that will make you mad. It’s hard but it does work if you stick with it and don’t let yourself get stuck thinking about it over and over. If absolutely necessary, vent about it to a friend, get the salt out of your system without inviting it into your life directly. Only engage with something that you think deserves your time and energy. Just because it’s a topic you give a shit about, that doesn’t mean that someone being a dickhead on the internet deserves any emotional investment or emotional labour from you. Not letting yourself engage with something that upsets you can feel frustrating at first, but after a while it will begin to feel very freeing. You will start to feel less obligated to devote too much mental real-estate to things that upset you and shitty people who don’t deserve the time of day from you. You will then feel less of that immediate urge to dive in and get involved in an argument, which will likely only upset you. Instead it gets easier to move on and let it fade to white noise in the backdrop of your thoughts, until it’s gone completely.

That was my experience at least when I started having this issue and decided to just stop getting into it with stupid online strangers.

The basic skill of mindful meditation is to be aware of thoughts as they arise and in doing so avoid the trap of being identified with them and captured by them. Without needing to obtain a saffron robe and head up a mountain for a few years, you can just accept that your mid is going to start its “This fool needs to be schooled!” routine and (almost) instantly understand that you don’t need to school the fool despite the strong inclination to do so.
Not only doe this free you from the rarely productive effort of schooling fools, but helps get you past the feelings so that you can better judge when you want to spend the effort to school a fool, then do so without the emotional baggage which will undermine your lesson.

Like all such things, the more you practice, the easier it gets. Given the overwhelming number of active fools and their endless reinforcements, you’re going to get plenty of practice.

As for trite advice concerning molesting vegetation, exposure to the elements, pursuing nominally rewarding activities, etc. the underlying wisdom of keeping a healthy grasp on the big picture such that judgements of how to spend the limited resource which is our attention can also be reinforced by your practice.

With that deep insight and wisdom out of the way, keep schooling the fools*. We are those fools and we need schooling from time time. Do it with kindness and as much skill as you have for the good of us all.

*[Some of those fools are, of course, trolls. Even then, your audience is larger than the troll.]

Beware my answer is extremely practical and “Vulcan” so to speak. With that said…

My rule for this and other things is “will I remember/care about this in a couple of days?” If the answer is no -and for most, if not all online interactions, the answer is absolutely not- then why let it occupy your mind now if it’s gonna leave it soon anyways. That’s why I don’t bother interacting with any response that is even mildly adversarial… why bother? Both you and the other person will have forgotten about it the day after tomorrow.

Like, try to remember an specific adversarial online interaction you had from like a month ago… it’s probably hard to come up with a particular one. It’s just a matter of looking at it from that future perspective in the present.

But maybe, even when trying to adopt that position, you are still overwhelmed with the feeling that you need to prove that you are right or the other person is wrong. In that case, remember two maxims for internet discussion:
1 - Everyone has already chosen their position, and is not changing it.
2 - There is no price for being right.
So, from a practical perspective, you will just be wasting your time trying to prove anything, since it won’t change anyone’s mind and you will not gain anything from it.

For me looking at it from these perspectives helps me to be “oh well, whatever”