People aren't always easy to deal with in life. Especially on a site like this you can run into people that don't seem to live up to any sort of standard of decency and decorum. It can be frustrating, tempers can grow short, and reading through comments, submissions, journals etc can become a source of fatigue and misery.

But great strides can be made not by trying to change people, to "fix" them so that they conform to your personal standards of communication and interaction, but instead by taking a few steps on your own to make sure you're approaching the situation in the right frame of mind.


First and foremost, it's important to ground yourself in reality. Look around and ask yourself if the expectations you have for other people are well aligned with the expectations everyone else in that particular community has. Like if you're going to church on Sunday expecting an informed and reasoned discussion on the merits of BDSM in a genderqueer relationship then either you're setting yourself up for disappointment or alternately I'd like more information on what church you attend because it sounds like it's pretty legit.

Certainly if there's some aspects of a community that you find distasteful you can try chipping away at the edges and gently guiding people closer to your ideal, but you need to recognize that it's a slow, uphill battle, and budget your energy accordingly. Chances are that if your expectations are too divergent from the status quo, you're probably better off finding a community that's better aligned with your ideals, or it could be a sign that you might need to re-evaluate those ideals and figure out if they're even realistic in the first place.


Secondly, even if your ideals are aligned well with the community, you're still going to run into people who act and communicate in ways you find off-putting or distasteful. When dealing with these people (obviously excepting folks who are being deliberately rude) it's important to start by giving them a bit of credit. They've made the effort to reach out and communicate with you, and try to connect on some personal, human level. If you snap at them and try to browbeat them into conforming to your ideals of interaction and then immediately add them to your block list then the truth is that you're the one being a jerk, not them.

It's important in this sort of situation to be gentle and polite. They're an individual and a human being; they're not the 12 dozen people that came before them and made the same gaffe, and they're not some cancerous sub-human deserving only your spite and vitriol. When you correct them, picture in your own mind what you'd want to hear someone say to correct you on something: You'd probably want to hear that they appreciated the interest you showed in contacting them in the first place, and what you could have done better with in your interaction. Think positive, not negative. You're unlikely to do any good by snarking or shaming.

Sometimes, though, things are beyond hope, and it's at that point where you have to invite the other person to move on. Again, keep things positive. Saying something like "I think things aren't going well and you'd probably be better off interacting with someone else" is much easier to swallow than "I hate you and I never want you to contact me again", or just shouting them down and putting them on your block list.


The fact of the matter is that there are people on this site, in this community, however you want to slice things up, who have a terrible time of things: constantly dealing with toxic people saying offensive things. I'm not one of those people drowning in negativity, yet every day I see people leaving comments, posting journals, etc, saying things that could lead me down the path of seeing them as reprehensible sub-human filth. But because of the things I've outlined here, I don't, and that's why this community continues to be a friendly and inviting place for me, and all it takes is giving people a little credit, and treating them with dignity and respect.