Cyber-Bullying: How to Fool the Angry Mob

Creepy looking man wearing a mask and dressed in the American stars and stripes flag. He also holds a baseball bat.

Have you been dealing with cyber-bullying? I have had my fair share of fights online already. Why? After all I’m white male Christian and privileged. It’s my line of work.

Search engine optimizers are the new Jews or “Negroes”. People just love to hate them.

When they appear in an environment where the angry mob resides they will be insulted as if the respective practitioner is the devil her or himself.

 

Why do people who don’t even know me dislike me?

It’s more than the “reputation problem“. The lynch mob is just looking for a scape goat and fighting anyone who does not fit in.

In my case it was a mistake not to hide how I help people to enhance the findability, usability and overall quality of a website.

The mob does not distinguish between shaded of grey. Either you are with us or against us.

Everybody who attempts to explain the difference will be gratefully chosen as the favorite scape goat, insulted and even stalked.

The haters just know two colors: black and white, you are black and they are white.

I made the mistake to repeatedly explain that I am white, which is a no-no. It just does not fit in their heads.

They will hate you even more for not admitting to be the devil who destroys the Internet. These are actual epithets by bullies.

People assume that Google is a God like entity which decides objectively which sites are good and which are bad so it’s a sin to try to push sites in the rankings.

As the angry mob is not willing or able to understand what you do, you have to use it’s inherent weakness of distinguishing shades of grey to fool it.

In case you optimize websites for search engines or write about it on a blog use some or most of the following tactics to become invisible for the angry mob.

 

Straightforward ways to prevent cyber-bullying by staying low-key

Of course most of these tactics also apply to being bullied online for any other reason. It’s a very common issue these days. You can even become president as a bully. I’d use my profession as an example.

  1. Never admit who you are, use euphemisms like “website optimization” when you have to say what you do
  2. Write a blog about how to succeed online or with blogs and call it “Problogger” instead of giving away your identity in your name
  3. Tell the people you’re a Science Fiction writer or something else equally agreeable instead of your minority status
  4. Do not write about search engine optimization at all, just use it on your art, science or activism blog or website instead
  5. Install WordPress and do not care for Google anymore, as it’s already optimized and Google loves WordPress blogs

When you have to deal with the minority hating angry mob already do not try to convince them.

  • Go away.
  • Fight back.
  • Build alliances.

Most haters are eager to get the attention that comes from bashing people. Do not feed the troll! Do not reply to their attacks!

 

How not to feed the trolls

Ignore trolls completely on the conversational level. Respond without adding more publicity for the culprits! Most haters out of the angry mob are also hypocrites.

When it comes to search engine optimization they do not block Google from spidering their sites. They even use WordPress also for getting indexed better in Google.

Also trolls use many keywords they want to rank for. Indeed many even manipulate Google to get more publicity!

Check their sites and then submit them to the Google Spam report if they violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

When they still annoy you, create a website from scratch that targets their topic and outrank ’em with better quality content. It’s easy as negative people are not very good at creating value.

I’ve seen bloggers who mainly bash others personally in their blogs as they have nothing of value to contribute.

 

Hate speech is a crime

When they use actual hate speech based on your occupation of for whatever other “reason” on a regular basis you can of course report it

  • to their Internet provider
  • web hosting company
  • or simply the police

The people who offend me and others do not look at who you are or what you do. They just attack without a reason on the assumption that all [insert minority status here] people are evil.

Last updated: June 20th, 2017.