Responding to criticism online can be tricky; especially if you feel it’s undeserved. It is natural to snap into self-defense mode and go on the offensive to defend yourself. You feel attacked, after all. But is that the best answer? Can we do better?

To discuss this topic I’m going to talk about something that happened to me recently: I was accused of stalking a woman online. Yeah, me! Weird, right? I spend all this time trying to teach guys how to avoid these mistakes and yet I still get accused of something awful.

Now obviously I’m not stalking anyone here so how did I respond? Let’s break it down over a few tweets.

The first sign of trouble was a complaint from this person about the types of content I was “liking” here on Twitter. Rather than being defensive or arguing that my innocent intentions invalidated their criticism, which will likely only escalate the situation, I offered a sincere

apology and chose how to change my behavior, even though what I had done “wrong” would generally be seen as utterly harmless and appropriate by pretty much anyone else. This isn’t about me/my feelings, or a consensus of people I know; it’s about the person I made uncomfortable.

After the apology I unfollowed the person to reduce the amount of their content I might see so I could easier avoid accidentally hurting them again. If your interactions are causing a problem you can step back after apologizing if that will reduce the chance for future harm.

Unfortunately this didn’t turn out to be enough & the person later escalated to stalking and even tagged the FBI. Here it’s even more natural to want to go on the defensive and loudly/vigorously defend myself however let’s look at why I chose to silently block this person instead

If I were to escalate the conflict I could feel better about myself and I’m sure many friends would leap to my defense; but will that help? This would only make the pain I’ve (accidentally) caused worse and further cause harm. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go and de-escalate

In walking away and blocking this person I’m demonstrating no intent to further interact and showing through my actions that I’m not stalking them and not going to in the future either. There’s nothing more I can do and by avoiding escalation I’ve avoided further harm.

But what about something a little less cut and dry? Let’s pretend that we have a friend who is a relatively recent North Korean defector. This person hasn’t been connected to the wider culture having grown up in an isolated situation. Now they’re here and they’re making a game.

As part of making the game they’ve picked a couple of animal sprites to represent the two sides. They pick a white dove for the “Hero” and a black Crow for the “bad guy.” OK; now to dress them up a bit.

The white dove gets some armor and cybernetics and the black crow gets a hat and a cool cigar and is named Tom. Might be cool if they're your evil uncle, too.

Uh oh; we have something resembling this named "Uncle Tom" by accident:

The question now becomes: how do we tell our friend that they, through ignorance and not malice, have accidentally created something reminiscent of some deeply racist images from our history? They truly didn’t know and weren’t seeking to cause offense but here we are.

When told; how do we handle their protestation that they didn’t mean anything by it and had no idea anyone would or even could find that symbol offensive? How do we teach them a couple of hundred years of racist iconography and symbolism? About how the term “Jim Crow” came about?

And importantly: how do they handle it? How can they learn to listen patiently and not react in the natural defensive way that escalates the argument and makes them look worse?

“You’ve been told it’s racist and now you’re doubling down? It’s not an accident anymore!” come some responses. People who still feel the wounds these images have left are angry. They're not in the mood to talk politely because of their pain.

This is where we, as allies, must be careful. Teaching someone who doesn’t realize what they’ve done can be tricky; we have to reach past their natural defensiveness.

Learning to let go of that defensiveness and listen to folks who are willing to educate you on how something is harmful to others is hard, too.

And yet this is the core of the lesson; we must learn to do this whenever possible. We all make mistakes. Me included.

If this were easy it wouldn’t be a problem so often and it wouldn’t result in as much drama; we must recognize this isn’t an easy conversation and everyone involved should start out in Good Faith and try to stay calm. Focus on de escalation and avoid inflammatory language.

Remember that those who are in the wounded group aren’t under any obligation to educate the world or handle their pain in ways we might think they should; that’s theirs and not ours. As allies, however, we should defend them as best we can. We should use our knowledge to help.

And when we find we've accidentally stepped out of line, even though we really didn't mean to, we must try to handle it better with an apology and avoiding the pitfall of defensiveness. That leads to escalation and not understanding.

It's super easy to fall into that pit; please have patience with one another. Please offer a rope, if you can, in a way that can help de escalate.

For me that meant recently helping teach some history to folks in DMs.

Remember that it's OK to not know things and to make mistakes; just try to respond to these mistakes in ways that reduce harm to everyone, not just yourself.