How to Deal with Angry People on the Internet

 

 

 

We all have been on the receiving end. However innocuous our posts on Facebook may be, they triggers angry responses. Sometimes, we respond heatedly to other’s comments on social media. There is a name to this type of behavior: Internet Rage. Like its namesake, Road Rage, it is triggered by similar impulses.

The emotional distance between the aggressor and the target is key. Emotional distance allows for exaggerated emotional responses when threatened or slighted. Anonymity allows for dehumanization of the ‘other’ and, thus, moral consequences of such behavior becomes dismissed. Internet Rage brings another element into the equation: physical distance, which permits behavior that would never be considered, by minimizing real-world consequences.

While Internet Rage has been around since the beginning of social media, it seems that it has increased dramatically over the past few years. It is a reflection of the growing intolerance, especially political fanaticism, in real life. After all, social media reflects (and amplifies) current social trends.

 

    1. Don’t feed the Trolls. It is well-known that irate replies to angry comments only encourages more of the same. Best not to reply to such posts. If you want to answer, keep a neutral tone. If this doesn’t work, block or unfriend the offender.

 

    2. Avoid problematic topics.  Before posting, consider the following: will your contribution to divisive topics enlighten or enrage others. If you think it will provoke angry responses instead of helpful ones, perhaps it’s not worth posting.

 

    3. Report the Crazies. Some posts cross the line from mere anger to vulgarity, hate or personal slander. Such unacceptable behavior should be reported to social media monitors (after blocking the individuals.)

 

    4. Maintain your Integrity. If your friends see a consistent pattern of measured, considerate on-line behavior on your part, they will support you in case of attack. After all, as in real-life, your behavior will attract support (or opposition) from others, as the case may be.

 

    5. Take a Break. It is absolutely reasonable to close Facebook or Twitter for some time. Nothing relaxes a restless or anxious mind more than a long walk, a yoga class or a dinner with friends. It is also useful to ration social media times to healthy amounts.

 

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of "Karma Nation" a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

 

 

 

 

 

Knights Loaf, Cheat Bread, Maslin: what's in a name?...by Sheila Claydon

 

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So let me introduce you to one of the main characters in my next book. Old Mill!

Hidden away in woodland on the edge of a golf course, it has stood four-square for more than 600 years. Its roof fell in long ago. Its water wheel has disappeared, and so, more bizarrely, has the tumbling river that turned it. If it wasn't for the blue placque beside what was once a door, you wouldn't know it had ever been a mill. A best guess would have been a tumbledown shack a couple of hundred years old. 

Because I wanted to use it as the basis for my next book, the third one in my Mapleby Mysteries trilogy, I needed to find out more about it, however, and goodness me I've been amazed. Not about the old mill itself but about medieval mills in general and medieval life in particular.

For example, I learned that the same as a church, there was a mill in every medieval village, usually owned by the lord of the manor but operated by a miller. The miller was always better off than most of the peasant farmers who used the mill. This was because everyone needed their corn, rye, oats and barley milled, ground into flour and made into bread, so he (it was always a he) was never out of work. Many millers also made bread from the peasants own flour and then charged them for it. The peasants also had to pay the feudal lord banalities (small fees) for the use of the mill, so no wonder they were always poor.

The miller, who often had a baking house next to the mill, made as many as 20 different types of bread, most of which had names unusual to today's ears. There was the Knights loaf, the Popes loaf, Maslin, which was a mix of wheat and rye, and Manchets and Pandemain. Manchets were large rolls and loaves of white bread, while Pandemain  was the loaf preferred by the lord of the manor and his wealthy friends and relatives. Both of these were made from finely ground and sifted wheat flour, while their poorer cousin was Wastel,  a white bread made from flour that had been less carefully sieved. 

There was also Cheat bread, made from wheat flour that had the worst of the bran removed, and horse bread, which was made from a mix of cereals, pulses, bran and acorns.This was originally made for horses but many of the poorest people had no choice but to eat it to keep themselves alive, especially in times of famine. And that was another thing I learned. There was often famine, or flooding, and living in medieval times was very, very hard. 

There was no such thing as rest either . Millers and peasants alike toiled from dawn to dusk, working to the seasons. Everything from planting to ploughing, sowing and harvesting, scaring the birds (done mostly by children) pruning and weeding, and even fertilising the fields, had to be done in the correct season, the same as shearing and butchering. And all this was done  alongside basket making, weaving, animal husbandry, collecting  eggs and nuts and berries, preserving food by salting and smoking, digging ditches to protect the fields from flooding, and of course collecting wood to repair their own houses and tools and keep them warm in the winter. No electricity, no glass in the windows of their one roomed huts or cruck houses, where everyone, including the animals, slept together around a central fire in the winter both for warmth and as protection from the wild animals that roamed the fields at night. No wonder life was short and brutish. No wonder more babies died than lived. 

Of course I won't put all of this into my book because there is nothing more boring than reading too much detail about a particular activity, so the skill of the writer is to give just enough to inform and not a single word more.However, for realism, I'm going to have to convey the poverty and dirt of those times while somehow making the medieval protagonists attractive enough to intrigue the modern day reader. I've also got to come up with a title. The first two books in the trilogy are Remembering Rose and Loving Ellen, so to go with the flow I need to find something short that goes with Sophie, the heroine. I'm still working on that but when I've found it, I'll let you know.

Happy Birthday, Ursula's Inheritance!

Buy Ursula's Inheritance here 

I'm celebrating the publication of Book 3 in my American Civil War Brides series, Ursula's Inheritance. This one was born of readers' request to know if Ursula's young marriage to soldier and sometimes spy Rowan Buckley will survive the war that brought them together in Mercies of the Fallen (Book 2). At the end of that novel, they had decided to wait until the war was over to decide if they would continue their lives together. 

I thought finding each other after the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 and Rowan assisting at the birth of his (surprise!) son, would be enough of an answer. Reader's disagreed! And they were worried!!

They will get their answer, and their links to both Book 1 (Seven Aprils) and Book 2 (Mercies of the Fallen) in this one! They will learn some little known facts about the Civil War too. Did you know that: New York City was full of spies and "Copperheads" (Southern sympathizers)? That African American troops once trained on the now infamous Rikers Island? That there was a prosperous and accomplished community of African Americans called Weeksville in Brooklyn? That Southern arsonists tried to burn the city down in 1864? 

I had to dig hard in Ursula's past for this one. What did I find? that she is the woman that Hannah Gadsby describes in her wonderful quote from Nanette : "There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself."

I hope, dear readers, you will agree, as you discover who is hiding behind that fan on the cover of Ursula's Inheritance!