Camgirls: How To Deal With Trolls

The internet is amazing because you can connect with people from all over the world, you can be whoever you want to be, and you can send instant messages to people with no time wasted. but what happens when someone online wants to be rude or troublesome? In a seemingly “instant” world, it can be very stressful to be caught off guard by rude comments. This could be someone who comes into your cam room, comments on your website or on social media in a rude manner.

What Is An Internet Troll?

The internet generally refers to these rude troublemakers as “trolls.” Trolls used to be people who started upsets and fights in online forums or chats with the intention of provoking an emotional response, usually it would be off-topic from what was happening in the chat or forum itself. As of recent years, the media has picked up the term and used it as a branding for any form of online harassment.

Incels Trolling Sex Workers

In the adult community, especially since we are broadcasting live, we get a lot of troll activity. A lot of the trolling comes from what is often referred to as “incels”. This is a community of men online that define themselves as people unable to find romantic or sexual partners even though they desire one, due to this lone wolf mentality. They also loathe the fact that a majority of online adult services require pay, and it causes “incels” to lash out at the adult community with insults, harassment, and sometimes more severe cases where stalking is involved.

Other Trolling In the Adult Industry

Adult community trolling isn’t only limited to incels. It can also come from scorned lovers, fellow industry “professionals” that are jealous or spiteful, companies that are unhappy that models won’t work with them, and sometimes it just seems to be people who are bored and looking for something to do. Since the adult industry is an online industry, camgirls become perfect targets for all of these people because models are unable to privatize social media, cams, and clips. Doing so would directly impact income, as models use all of these tools for marketing products and services. What can we do, to not effect our income, and handle the trolls better?

How To Handle Trolls

Do Not Feed The Trolls

Don’t feed into their game. The root of trolling comes from getting an emotional response from you. Replying to them clearly enraged or upset feeds the game their playing, and gives them the satisfaction they were looking for. Don’t feed their ego.

Block Buttons Are Your Friend

The hands-down best way to handle a one-off troll (someone who is just being a jerk and doesn’t actually come back repeatedly) is to hit them with the block button. Without a reaction, and with an instant block, they get no satisfaction for their trolling. Usually these one-off kind of people will move on.

Report Frequent Offenders

A majority of sites do not allow trolling behavior. If someone frequently comes back to your cam room or clip site to troll you, especially if they do so after you’ve blocked them and they continue creating new accounts, try reaching out to the site to see if they can IP ban them. Some sites will even IP ban them from the entire site so they can’t harass other models!

Recognize When A Troll Becomes A Threat

A lot of trolling has no real threat behind it, but you will occasionally come across a troll that is scary. They will find your information and threaten to release it, they will try to hack your accounts and will basically do anything they can to inconvenience or scare you. Some will even go as far as to try to steal money from you or blackmail you.

This is all illegal, and as soon as something of this nature starts, get the police involved before it goes too far. Having legal records of everything happening will help you build a stronger case if they continue.

Confidence Is Your Best Friend

Trolls usually want to break your spirit, and they’ll do so by insulting you physically or insulting your interests. Remain confident in who you are and what you do, and don’t let them phase you. If you show you are hurt, they take that as a win.

Get A Trustworthy Support Group

Having people you can talk to about these trolls, whether it be other cam models or clip producers, or a trusted regular, can really help to keep you calm during troll attacks. Complete your show, log off, and vent it out to someone who you know you can trust.

Limit Places Where Trolls Can Get You

Limiting your online presence in spaces with anonymous messaging, or free messaging, can help you limit your troll interaction. If you are on a cam site, you can try to weed them out by muting guest users/users without an account. If you’re trying to limit their social media reach, you can turn commenting off on certain social medias (like Instagram for example.) Don’t create accounts on sites like CuriousCat or AskFM, as they give too much power to trolls by giving them the ability to message you anonymously.

In our industry, there is pretty much no reason to give someone the ability to anonymously message you.

Don’t Let A Troll Control You

A lot of people hear of cases where models say that a troll had so much power over them that they forced them to do something. This should never be the case. Do not ever disclose information to someone that would put you at risk to be blackmailed, even if they are a trusted regular. Some of the worst trolls in the adult community start out as the best regulars to a model who ended up being jealous or upset.