If you would like to chime in on how you'd suggest I deal with mean, hateful people, though, I wouldn't mind chewing on your suggestions for a while.
I’ll tell you some thoughts that come to me now, and possibly some later if I think of any others. My first thought is another idea that I practiced for a while, and then forgot. I’m grateful for you helping me remember these ideas! As I said, I don’t think of it as mean, hateful people. I think of it as mean, hateful behavior. Then I say to myself “I’ve done worse.” I can almost always think of some time when I’ve done worse, and if I can’t, I just presume that I have and I just don’t remember it. Even in those cases I can remember or at least imagine
wanting to be as mean and hateful as anyone is to me. That helps me get into a more friendly mood. I think that the more I can post with genuinely friendly feelings the better, no matter how mean or hateful anyone is to me.
Another thought that comes to me now is what I said before, to remember a verse from my scriptures about what I’m trying to do, and pray about it, every time I write a post, before I send it. I forgot all about that again, until just now when I wrote it!
I think that most mean and hateful behavior just needs to be ignored. I report it sometimes, if I think it might need to be reported, but I try not to overdo it.
Sometimes, if it looks to me like someone is trying to vilify me, while pretending not to, I say how it looks to me and ask if they intended it that way. If it continues after that, I ignore it. If someone openly says false vilifying things about me, I might say that they are false, but I don’t argue about it.
I have some ideas that I’ve been practicing and promoting, to help improve online behavior in general. I think it’s better to just ignore most hostile behavior, and not say anything about it. That won’t stop it, but responding to it in any way at all, or saying anything about it, will only encourage it. That does not mean that I never respond to mean and hateful posts. I just try to respond, with genuine friendliness, as if the same thing were being said without all the hatefulness, and even with friendliness. I’ve learned some ways to put myself into a spirit of genuine friendliness, if I feel antagonized by what someone says or does. If someone’s behavior starts to look like stalking and harassment to me, I stop responding altogether, and report it.
There have been a few times when I stopped responding to someone, not because of how they were treating me, but because I couldn’t find any way to say anything to them without them misunderstanding it and being offended by it. I’ve also stopped responding to a person sometimes when they didn’t seem be actually talking to me at all, but only to some stereotype that they were substituting in my place.
I think that some mean and hateful behavior is people performing for each other, for the approval they get for it. Some of it is like sticking pins in voodoo doll. You aren’t really the target. The real target of someone’s hatred is not available to be jabbed and stabbed, and you’re the best substitute that they can find.
One of my spiritual teachers says to think of ranting and railing against divine authority as being like the cries of a child being weaned from mothers milk.