How to Avoid Flamers on Gaia Online and/or Other Web Communities

All of you may have heard of or know about Gaia Online, or the other online communities such as myspace, facebook, etc. But what do you do when someone starts fighting with you for no reason? Here are a few simple steps which I use to "get away"

1. The Beginning

~ Do not instigate the fight yourself. If you see someone being mean or harassing another person, of course make the effort to stop them, but not by means of fighting them as well or cursing at them. Make your mature presence known by first asking why the person is doing this. If they respond with an immature response and instigate a fight with you, proceed to step 2.

2. Yo Momma!

~ Now a fight has begun which you weren't even aware could happen, the key is to stay mature, most people act like 3 year olds when they are online to impress their friends or buddies, and sometimes their buddies jump in as well. When they say something out of line don't even reply to it, you will have the urge to bash their heads in trust me, but don't do anything to further the situation. Now on a lot of these sites, there are ignore and report options. Of course if he/she is violating the terms of service or rules, you can report him/her. If it is not that serious proceed to ignoring the person and your problems are gone!

3. What if I ignoring the person doesn't work?

~ Ah yes, the dreadful realization that when you report/ignore them, they proceed to making another account to harass you all the time. The answer is simple, make another account yourself. Unless you want to keep reporting and reporting every little thing they do, you can change your account. For gaia users, I know you have a lot of gold and items, well you can make a new account and use the trading option to set up a trade with yourself, as long as your new account has a trading pass as well. For facebook, myspace, and others, it may not be so easy as trading your items, because of your friends, and they are not items lol.

First of all, make sure that your profile has been put on private or viewable by friends only, that way the attacker cannot see your blogs or anything. Next post a blog or notify all of your friends of the change. It may take a while to get the message out to all of your friends, but it's worth some peace and quiet. Now make a new profile, and make sure you change your name and information so that the attacker cannot find you. Chances are, if he knows your email he's going to keep harassing you. So make sure to hide everything.

4. What about me?

~ So you are an online business owner eh? Suffering a bit of harassment? The best thing to do is ignore the person and block them from your emails or mark all of the sender's emails as junk therefore you won't have to deal with them and their petty nonsense. While running a business, online, please be careful as to what you reply to, because some of those emails could contain nasty viruses and the like. So as tempting as some of those harassing emails may be, do not open them.

And no I'm not talking about the complaints service on your website, those people are alright to deal with. I am talking about the rude ones who decide that it's their time to shine and harass people to death.

5. Breathe!

~ Most of the time when you are angry you forget to breathe properly. Take a deep breath, count to ten, and then deal with the problem. If this doesn't work, try telling a close friend or family member, chances are they can shed some light on the subject as well.

6. Harassment because of Religion/Gender/Race/Sexuality

~ This is indeed a growing problem in online communities. People are discriminated everyday because of the "deadly four" that's what I like to call them. I often see people harassing each other because of religion, and political beliefs associated with that. I cannot believe that we get so caught up in our own belief system that we lose sight of who we are talking to sometimes. This includes everyone, not just a certain group, I have seen it happen from all ends of the spectrum including mine. Gender is a big issue in some online communities, especially the gaming community. Girls are looked down on, and some guys are made fun of as well. So a girl likes video games, so some guys suck at certain games, that doesn't make them less human than the rest of us. Guys are not better than Girls and vice versa. We have different traits and different weaknesses we all posess. Race is a HUGE issue everywhere. I see words like "nicca" and "Nigga" all over the internet as well as "cracker" "pigeon" "wet-back" the list goes on and on, not to offend anyone here by saying those. I am apalled that there are still people out there FOR horrible things like slavery and "big 10 ft electrical walls at the border". It isn't funny, and most people who live in the united states were born here. They are no less american than you are. Next the big sexuality debate. Let me just say that they are people no matter what their sexual preferences are. I am stricken with grief to know that some families actually cast other family members out, even their own CHILDREN, whom they loved up to that moment that they told them and what, the feelings are suddenly gone because they are different? No that doesn't even make sense. That's like loving someone for 20 plus years and one day changes ALL of that? It makes no sense. I think that we all need to grow up in a sense.

7. The End

~ I hope this article helps most of you out there. There will always be trolls, spammers, and harassers out there, but at least you can say that you can get over it now =^^=