Dealing With Haters

Imagine this: you worked on your video for weeks, months, maybe years. You're incredibly proud of your work, and you want as many people as possible to see it. You post it to YouTube, maybe it gets featured, and the comments start flowing in. And in. You get some genuine praise and possibly some constructive criticism. And then you get some comments of another kind – we'll just call them unconstructive criticism. The haters descend, making you wonder (hopefully just for a nanosecond) if you'll ever post to YouTube again.

It's not easy dealing with pointless negativity, but a user named Duke Rightious alerted me to an acronym YouTubers are using in the fight against haters and I thought it was worthwhile sharing with the larger community. It was originally outlined by Pipistrello in this video and it's called R.I.D.:

R - Recognize. Recognize that a "hate" comment is different from constructive criticism or a WTF total lack of comprehension.

I - Ignore. Do not dignify the hater with a reply making your case or pleading for understanding. And don't bother blasting them, either. Your energy is really best spent elsewhere, like on your next video.

D - Delete. Remember, you always have the option of deleting deliberately hateful and mean comments. After all, these are your videos.

R.I.D. activate!


Mia

The YouTube Team