HAVE you just spaffed an hour of your life up the wall reading bigoted comments from illiterate strangers online? Here’s how to cope.
Admit there is a problem
Once you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of deranged comments beneath an acquaintance’s post about whether Stalin may have had a point, it’s hard to wrest yourself away from the lunacy. Try to get enough of a grip on your outrage to admit you have a problem.
Step away from the device
If you don’t have access to social media, you can’t get involved in the toxic madness. Chuck your phone in the sea if you have to, but find a way to stop engaging with the kind of people who would have been banished to live alone on a windy hillside had they lived a couple of centuries ago.
Ask yourself what you learned
Were you in any way enriched by entering into a Twitter spat about whether lifeboats should rescue migrants with someone who mines outrage for likes? No, it just made you angry and miserable. The lesson to take from this is not to play into the hands of complete twats.
Do something pleasant for a change
There’s a whole world out there where you’re unlikely to have to engage with the bigoted opinions of bellends unless you spend several hours at a Wetherspoons on a Saturday night. Go out and do something nice, like drinking a beer in the garden, and marvel at the lack of wankers lurking in every corner.
Begin the whole miserable cycle again
The problem with taking time to relax is that your mind wanders and in no time you’ll be musing on whatever happened to Wayne Hayes, the slightly odd kid you were friends with at school. Before you know it you’ll be on his Facebook page and knee deep in comments about the government putting mind control drugs in the water supply. Begin the cycle again.
