ForumsDealing with Online Hate & TrollsGetting weird racist comments on our vacation pics and it’s honestly messing with me
Getting weird racist comments on our vacation pics and it’s honestly messing with me
My boyfriend and I posted a few pics from our trip to Miami last weekend, nothing fancy, just beach stuff and dinner. I’m Black and he’s white, and I swear within like an hour we started getting the nastiest comments on Instagram from random accounts. Stuff like “he must be slumming it” and one guy kept commenting monkey emojis under my photo. I blocked a bunch of them but it still left me feeling gross for the rest of the day.
I know people are pathetic behind a screen, but I didn’t expect it to hit me this hard. My boyfriend wants to just ignore it and keep posting like normal, but I’m more annoyed than I expected. Has anyone dealt with this kind of thing on social media? Do you just delete comments, make your account private for a while, report everything, or what? I don’t really want trolls to feel like they won by making us hide.
Mar 27
120
2 repliesK
Keisha L.I’d say trust your gut here. If it’s messing with you, take a break from posting for a bit or limit who can comment. My partner and I are in Chicago and we had a similar run-in after a cute restaurant post on TikTok. The hateful comments were from accounts with like 3 followers, so it was obvious they were just there to stir stuff up.
What helped me was screenshotting everything before deleting it, just in case it got worse. A few friends also started replying with supportive comments, which weirdly drowned out the trolls a little. It made me feel less alone. You don’t have to pretend it’s no big deal if it is a big deal.
T
Tasha WilliamsYep, been there. My wife and I got hit with the same stuff when we posted engagement photos on Facebook. We’re in Atlanta, but the comments came from people we didn’t even know, mostly burner accounts with no profile pics. I went through and reported every single one, then turned on comment filters for slurs and a few other words. It helped a lot.
Honestly, the biggest thing for me was not feeding it. I wanted to argue back so bad, but that just gives them more energy. We ended up making our accounts a little more private for a couple weeks, then slowly opened things back up. Doesn’t mean you’re hiding, just protecting your peace.
Sign in to reply to this thread.