Last week at the first annual Seattle Interactive Conference I attended a session moderated by Hillary Miller of Wunderman titled “Would Mad Men Work in Today’s World?”. As much as I enjoyed the session I walked away with one nugget that continues to amuse me. Maggie Boyer Finch from King of the Web commented (and I’m paraphrasing) that each time her organization posts content online there is always a group of people waiting to comment negatively. She referred to them as the Hater Nation or the Hater Plague.
I’m still unsure of what the business model (how are they making money?) is for King of the Web, but I grabbed a quick description from the website:
Our first site is called “King of the Web“, which launched to the public in early April. King of the Web is an online monthly competition to reward internet awesome. Anyone can compete and the web can vote for who and what they think is awesome online. Winners get cash and prizes, plus the illustrious crown. Check out one of our competition blogs on our YouTube channel.
People are encouraged to vote for their favorite internet star so they become King of the Web. Much like Yelp or other websites where there is an opportunity to review or provide feedback, many web managers or community managers are out patrolling the comments. The comments tend to be positive, but negativity still abounds and without trying too hard I found lots of negative comments that had little or nothing to do with the subject matter of someone’s video.
I sincerely believe that because the Internet allows anonymity in spades; it also allows a direct channel for people to be jerks. Oftentimes, a comment or statement that one person wouldn’t disclose verbally to another person finds acceptance in the digital ecosystem. And Maggie’s reference to those people as the Hater Plague works.
In a quick online search I found several articles and blog posts dedicated to dealing with negative reviewers–in the travel industry negative reviews can significantly impact a hotel or restaurant’s bottom line. And many companies in that industry spend time answering those negative comments–think of it as digital customer service. And those negative comments can actually be incorporated into a property’s scorecard–weighed equally as much as an in-person interaction or comment card.
Here is one video I found from SpinSucks, a PR blog–the first part includes drinking wine and talking about her haircut (the bangs are cute)…skip ahead a bit and she gets to answering the question of how to handle negative comments.
I agree and disagree with her–on one hand I don’t think I would drink red wine for a video series (purple teeth, anyone?) but I also don’t think that human nature is a reason why people leave negative comments. Instead I’m more apt to believe that people leave negative comments because they believe that there is a cloak of anonymity around them when they’re online. And without seeing any repercussions (a person’s physical reaction perhaps) it only confirms the behavior. So the Hater Plague continues without being held in check.
How would you deal with negative comments on your blog/website? Have you left a negative comment on TripAdvisor or Yelp? And if so, why didn’t you speak directly to the management of the restaurant or hotel?
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I (luckily) haven’t really had to deal with negative comments on my blog at this point. I guess I’m not a big enough deal.
I think both SpinSucks and you are right. I think the ability to be anonymous is a big part of negative comments, but there are many negative comments that come from people using their real names. I think there are just some people in the world who are very negative/critical, and don’t think before they type. Not that all criticism is bad, but there are a lot of crappy negative comments out there.
Anonymity + ease of response = “disinhibition effects” as we call them. People just become less inhibited. So more snarkiness, but also more positive, helpful, honest, too. Is this a two-edged sword?
Mac–I think that there is wonderful value in transparency and honesty, however, I do think it’s a two-edged sword as the suggestion to review and comment on everything. Sometimes restaurants have bad service, sometimes hotel rooms have lingering smoke odors–that’s just life. I don’t think everything needs a comment from the peanut gallery.
[...] to the stupid shit that we do–in a comment on a previous post a commenter used the term “disinhibation effects”. I’m paraphrasing here, but [...]