Trolling - How to deal with negative comments

How to deal with negative comments. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. Garvoy, he wrote in to say, Evan, how do you deal with negative comments, meaning those that are on the trolling side? This is a great question and one that, you know, the bigger the project you're working on, the more of an impact that you're having, the more people that you're touching, the more you're trying to change the world, the more you're also going to get haters. You're going to get the little man. You're going to get the people who don't believe in you. You're going to get the people who troll and leave terrible comments. You know, most of the people are going to be great, right? They're going to love what you do. They're going to energize you. They're going to give you great feedback. And that's the best part of my day, is seeing all your comments in the morning because it energizes me. It's like, wow, this is awesome. But then you're also going to get that small percentage of people who, you know, give you a hard time and make fun of you and point out flaws. And some of them are just stupid comments. And so what do you do with them? So I have, I have 3 strategies that I use, or hopefully you can learn from. Number 1 is ignore most negative comments. I ignore most of the negative comments. I don't get that many negative comments, which is good, but most of them I ignore. And you can, I don't know, you kind of get used to it as you get, as you get bigger and as you get more comments, you're going to get that certain percentage of people who They just want attention, right? They want it. They're putting out a negative comment because they want some attention. And so if you respond to it, then you're giving them what they want. You know, I leave them up on the channel so people can see how ignorant that person is, right? Usually, you know, either nobody responds to it or my audience might jump in and say, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. Some of the comments can get personal and hurtful. You know, I've had comments on my channel where people make fun of my accent. You know, I guess I have a Canadian accent that they can't understand. I don't know. I've had people who talk about my— I have a mild Tourette's syndrome. I have twitching that happens when I get— when I'm deep in thought or tired or stressed out. I'll have my ears— can you see that? My ears move, my kind of head moves. I might blink a lot. When I was younger, it used to be way worse, way more embarrassing, way more visible. And so people might make fun of that. You know, people will call me Crazy names, stupid names. I just ignore it. You know, you get used to it and just remember that it's their ignorance and they're, you know, they're not creating anything meaningful in their life, and so they have to attack somebody who is. And so I just leave it up. I ignore it. Let it run off your back. Number 2 is fight if there's a lesson to be learned. And so You know, I will very rarely comment on somebody who left a negative comment, but if I do, if I'm gonna fight, then there has to be a teachable lesson in there. And not for that person. I don't expect the person who left the comment to learn anything. It's more for the people who are watching and following along. If I see that there's an opportunity for them to learn, then I'll leave a comment. So for example, there was a video I made about David Ogilvy. And he's a successful entrepreneur, one of the kings of advertising. You want to learn anything about advertising, go look up David Ogilvy. I shared this video and lessons from his success, and in the video at the very start I said he started with only, I think I said $5,000 or whatever it was, and somebody, you know, took offense to that and said in the comments, you know, only $5,000 is equivalent to $50,000 in today's money, it's a lot of money. You know, I took offense to that comment because you totally missed the point of the video, right? The point of the video wasn't that he started with little money, it was that he accomplished all these great things and I gave specifics on how to model his success. And, you know, he turned it into something that, you know, pulling out one word that I said and trying to make a big deal about it. Anyway, so I responded and then my audience jumped in And it was crazy kind of back and forth, and it was a bit of a drain on the energy, but also a little bit fun too, seeing the audience kind of jump in on it. And he wrote to me and he said, "You know what? I don't want to create animosity. Let's be peaceful." And so he removed the comment down, which usually doesn't happen. But the point there is, if you're going to respond and you're going to fight, then make sure there's a teachable lesson in it. Not for that person, because you can't expect them to change their mind, but for the people who are watching. Looking at the comments for them to learn something important. And number 3 is remove the offensive ones. If something is really over-the-top offensive, that's the only time when I'll remove it. And honestly, it's not when somebody says something about me. I don't care if somebody swears at me or calls me a name, you know, I usually leave it up. But if it's something that's really offensive to somebody else who may be on my channel, then I remove it. And so here's an example. I recently posted a video for my programmer. His name is Adil, and it was his birthday. And so I made a video and I said, "Hey, happy birthday, Adil!" And I had a guy come on and sing this crazy song. And in it you see Adil's picture, and somebody wrote in the comments, "Fuck you, you're a terrorist." Because his name was Adil, because he sees his picture, now he assumes that he's a terrorist. And I removed it because it's a stupid comment, right? It's a trolling, stupid comment. But also, Adil didn't sign up for that. Like, this was a surprise video for him to say, hey, you know, thank you so much for all the great work you're doing, happy birthday, hope you have a great year. And most of the comments again on it were great, but this one idiot decides to, you know, put his prejudices out there, and Adil did not sign up for that. So I removed the comment. But again, those happen kind of far and few between. So if it's really, really offensive, then just remove it. Delete the comment from the page. So in summary, how to deal with negative comments: Number 1, ignore most negative comments. Number 2, fight if there's a lesson to be learned. And number 3, remove the offensive ones. Believe. For those of you watching and you like the video, you can subscribe to the channel, see more videos just like this. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you soon.