Rage Bait, Trolls, and Social Media

This blog post... admittedly... is for me. I hope it will be thereapeudic.

I'm tired. I'm tired of the rage-bait by people who are on a rampage against others in my industry. (Yes, Primerica, I'm looking squarely at you. As a company, they foster a culture of creating professional trolls.) It's narcissistic behavior. Well, at least the more I tend to hear about other people's impressions of what narcissism means.

How do you deal with a narcissist? You stop. You don't feed into it.

I'm usually not connected with such people on social media, but they tend to pop up when I'm commenting on another peer-professional's post. I usually label anyone who has letters after their name as a peer-professional: CFP, ChFC, CLU, CFA, CPA/PFS, and more. Still, many of them don't undertand some of the nuances of life insurance that I've written about so much in this blog.

I like bringing clarity where there is chaos and confusion. There is a lot of chaos in the understanding of cash value life insurance. I like teaching and sharing. But then the trolls show up with their 'chest-thumping' trying to get a rise out of me... and it often works to an extent.

They say things like "Show me a policy!" or "Prove it", despite the fact that I gave them my well-researched and well-cited blog articles (that they don't bother to read) or other terms to search the internet for. That's why I call them trolls. They want me to answer their questions on their terms... without being a client or someone who should really be paying me for advice or coaching.

It often looks something like this:

In fact, I had created an entire YouTube channel just for rebuttals:

In the past, I used to think that people who didn't or wouldn't engage was because they couldn't substantiate what they were saying. They couldn't prove it.

I know better now.

I can prove everything I assert, but I don't have to. I'm not in the business of teaching people who don't have professional respect to even look at the information I share. If you see me on social media and I bow out (and usually block someone in the process) of a conversation, it's because I don't have to prove my knowledge and ethics to that person. It's because I've already done the homework and I can share my thoughts and "show my work" to any prospect or client who engages with me, but I have nothing to prove to someone who is intent on trying to be a troll.

I'm still working on me. Van Mueller teaches that "Professionals never get offended." The good news, is that I was never offended... but I did (and do) get frustrated. Jim Rohn teaches to turn frustration into fascination. That's pretty good! To do that, you have to separate yourself from the outcome and perhaps the interaction. Hard to be fascinated when you're in the middle of it.

When the 'debate' turns from intellectual curiosity to feeding the troll... I need to bow out. It's just a battle of egos... and while I'd win on facts, they would fall on deaf ears. The solution is to put the ego aside and move on. They may think they "won." I don't care. It's not worth the aggravation. I'm not paid to train and teach my competition.

I often relate it as a PhD arguing with a toddler. No matter how right the PhD is, the toddler will never understand.