September 2, 2025 • 12 mins
What do you do when trolls show up in your comments? After sharing a clip about inclusive marketing, I was hit with racist remarks and negativity.
Instead of letting it derail me, I’m breaking down how I handle comments like these, what boundaries I put in place, and why protecting your energy online matters more than ever.
If you’re creating content online and feeling the sting from a hateful comment or just need a reminder that you’re not alone, this one’s for you.
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about:
- Why negative comments sting (and why it’s not personal)
- How to set boundaries and spot when they’re crossed
- Practical steps I take when hate shows up
- Why your “energy budget” matters as much as your content calendar
- How to keep creating without letting trolls win
This Episode Was Made Possible By:
Riverside All-in-One Podcast & Video Platform
Visit Riverside and use the code DREA to get 15% off any Riverside individual plan. We use it to record all our podcast interviews: https://onlinedrea.com/riverside
Go to the show notes for all the resources mentioned in this episode: https://onlinedrea.com/373
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So two episodes ago, I said something about inclusive marketing and surprise,
surprise, the Internet did what the Internet does, which is the
trolls came out. And so in this right here podcast episode, I'm going
to talk about what happened and kind of talk
you through what to do if this happens to you, because this ain't my first
rodeo. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside
(00:23):
is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use
for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the
audio and the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the
entire process so, so easy. Plus,
I love their Magic AI clips.
Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most
(00:45):
impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do
it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical
videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic
AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out
10 clips and I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so
much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today,
(01:07):
the links in the show notes, and make sure to use my code DREA D
R E A at checkout to get 15% off your
membership. Welcome back to the Mindful Marketing
Podcast. Fran, so excited that you're here. I am
feeling all the feelings today because today is the day my
youngest daughter goes to daycare and I'm headed into this next chapter, next
(01:29):
phase of my life. And I'm very excited and
also destroyed. Like distraught, like
desperado, like, someone please come save me. What do I do with all this
time? And also I may nap a little bit this week
as I transition into being a working mom.
Hello, I'm here. I'm excited about this episode because this feels
(01:51):
like a response episode to something that happened. I had a totally
different thing planned, same as last week, but life happens. And so I
want to talk about this because it threw me for a whole loop.
So a little bit of backstory. Two or three episodes
ago I talked about inclusive marketing, specifically why I personally don't use
gendered language in my marketing. And I pulled a little
(02:14):
clip from that show and posted on social media. I used
our amazing sponsor. Riverside picked the clip where
I was talking about how sometimes as a black woman, I
don't feel like people are marketing to me specifically. It was a short
example from a long episode about being inclusive in your marketing.
I posted it everywhere on YouTube is where I got
(02:37):
this comment. I'll read it for you. Why Would
brands want to market to a consumer base that is just going
to rob their stores, though? The absolute
racism, the audacity of this person.
I posted it everywhere because, honestly, this. This is not the
first time, but this is one of those times where I felt the need, I
(02:59):
felt called to use this as an example because this isn't something that
happens all the time to everyone else. And so if this is your first
time experiencing this, you may get the shock and awe and the.
The actual, like, devastation that we feel when
some rando on the Internet leaves a hurtful comment. And like
I said before, unfortunately, this isn't the first time that I've had to deal with
(03:21):
this. People come in on all sorts of things outside of my skin color,
which hel. I cannot change. That's besides
the point. People comment on my voice a lot. Some people hate
it, like, hate it so much that they'll stalk me and leave comments
from different accounts about how much they hate my voice. And I'm like, please, go
bother someone else. I come from a YouTube background, so when I used
(03:43):
to create YouTube videos, like, content about my life, people would literally comment
and say, go unalive yourself, if you know what I mean.
And none of that feels good. I,
however, fortunately or unfortunately, have built up a little bit of tough
skin around this. So I want to talk to you about, like, the
mental process I go through when I get these kinds of comments and how
(04:05):
you can mentally prepare yourself to get these comments. And then if anyone ever dms
me and says, andrea, I got a mean comment, I can just send you this
podcast episode, okay. Because it's part of a bigger
conversation about being an individual online,
showing up and putting yourself out there, saying, some people take that
to mean they can also comment however they want on you and your life,
(04:28):
and it drains your energy. So I want to talk about, like, protecting your energy
and not getting derailed by these messages. Okay? So first, I want
to normalize that this happens. This is not a personal thing to you. Even
though it does feel like a personal attack on you, I promise you, it's
not personal. This is like the underbelly, the seedy
underbelly of the Internet, which there are some very lonely, desperate people out
(04:50):
there seeking attention, and the Internet makes it very easy for them
to access people. This person before
would have been like, the loner on the outskirts of town that nobody talked to,
but now they can post comments and get a reaction,
which is what they want. So this happens to everyone, too, whether you have a
hundred followers a Hundred thousand followers. Everyone is opening
(05:12):
themselves up to these potential comments that come from people
who are hurt. Okay, so it's not about you, it's about them. But I
also want to say that when you get these comments, it really does sting
because you're coming in from a very vulnerable place, sharing something
online, no matter what it is you're sharing, it takes a
lot of effort to put yourself out there in this way. So
(05:34):
everyone who does this, you are opening yourself up for this. And it's a vulnerable
place. It can feel like, what am I even doing here? Because
I feel. It feels tainted now. The experience feels tainted because someone else
decided to say something silly. Okay.
Also find that comments like these make me second guess living my life
online. And I go back and forth on this all the time. And this is
(05:56):
where boundaries show up for me. Because boundaries,
to me, I only know where a boundary is when it's crossed. Okay, there are
some that, like, I know right off the bat, but a lot of
boundaries, I don't know it's a boundary till it's crossed. For
example, when I have notifications on my phone, I
go, I had them all turned on the apps automatically, like, do you want
(06:18):
notifications? Yes. And they send you everything. It took me a couple years of that
to realize, not for me. I close down everything, and then I slowly
add back in the ones where I'm like, yeah, this app, I would love notifications.
This one, not so much. Okay, that's an example of a boundary being
crossed. Same happens with these comments. To me, it's like, oh, this is
a boundary that someone crossed. I need to have a solution in place
(06:40):
because I don't want to have this boundary crossed again. So
check in with yourself first. For me, personally, I
know that these people, they're not talking about me. It's not personal about me.
This is them going off on whatever's happening in their lives. So, generally
speaking, I delete the comments, I block the person, and then I take a mental
health break. Okay, I'm not saying this doesn't affect me. It sure does. The
(07:03):
day that I got this comment, I was actually supposed to record this very podcast,
and I said, whoop, no podcast recording happening today. Because
I don't feel good about any of this. This feel. I feel
vulnerable and naked. Like I'm standing out in front of a giant auditorium of people
with ain't a thing on it. Doesn't feel good. Right? And so I
personally step away, shut it down, turn my. Put my phone, and do not disturb.
(07:24):
I Read some books. I touched grass, literally went outside, took my dog for a
little bit of longer walk. Gibson loved it. It was great. Okay. It takes a
lot of energy to do that. So the more that you grow as a business
owner, the more that you're opening yourself up to that. So the more you need
to build in these mental health breaks. Okay? Mental health checks.
A great example of another one for me is I don't generally work on the
(07:44):
weekends. It case by case basis. Okay?
Sometimes work sneaks in there. Sometimes I'm really excited about something and I work.
But for me, it's an optional work weekend. Okay? So that is a mental
health break for me. Even when I do work on the weekends, I'm not checking
social media. I may post, but I post and goes like I
don't do during the week. Okay? So that's another way that I build in my
(08:05):
mental health checks. My phone goes automatically on do not disturb after
a certain time at night. So there's other little things that I
build into my life because I've noticed over time, hey, I'm putting
a lot of energy into this. And then I get this comment and it totally
drains me. So I'd rather protect myself from
even seeing a comment like that all the time so that I can really,
(08:28):
like, live my life. And this is a concept that I'm building into our new
framework in the mindful marketing lab called energy budgeting.
Okay. Energy budgeting. And I think it's something that as business owners who manage their
own social media accounts, or even if you're a social media manager for other people,
we have to notice this about ourselves because this is where
we can really get ourselves into trouble, into burnout. If we're looking
(08:50):
at comments like these all of the time. Okay? And I think
energy budgeting is something that goes up and down.
It's not a sort of budget where you're like, I have $100
a week and this is it. It doesn't matter if I make
$10,000 a month or $1,000 a month. I have a hundred dollars a week as
my budget. We know that's not how budget works. Like, when we have more money,
(09:12):
our budgets increase. When we have less money, our budgets decrease. So the same goes
for your energy. When you have more energy, your energy budget can increase,
you can create more, you can be more present. When you don't have the energy,
your energy budget needs to decrease. And I think where burnout happens is we
don't have more energy, we're overspending our Energy. Our energy accounts
overdrafted, okay? And so then we feel burnt out. We get a comment like
(09:34):
this, we delete all of our social media and go, I'm done. I'm never doing
this again. So I want you to be practiced in
noticing your energy budget so that when the comments like these come in,
you can respond appropriately. So for me, right now, I have a lot of energy
budget. I'm excited about work. My daughter is going to daycare, Both the girls
will be in school. Now I have a lot of energy for this, hence I
(09:56):
talk about it a lot. I didn't just block and delete this comment like I
usually do. I said, you know what? I've got tough skin. We're going to keep
talking about it for a week after because I want the people to hear and
know this because I got the time, okay? Any other time,
like, if you asked me this a year ago, I probably would have cried for
three days, okay? I was like six months postpartum, right? I probably would have cried
(10:17):
for three days and then never spoken of it again and erased it from my
memory. So again, energy budgets different. So
I want you to think about what this could look like for you, and
you get to decide what this looks like for you. Some of you are on
the block and delete, step away, train. Some of you actually want to call out
this person like I have. Use them as an example.
(10:39):
Some of you want to do something in between where you maybe don't block
delete, but you don't respond. Or maybe you just delete
the comment and you don't block or whatever the case may be, maybe
you leave a little response comment and you move on with your day. Like, you
get to decide what this looks like for you. I want to remind
you though, that these comments, again, are not about you and I
(11:01):
don't want them to derail you from the work that you're doing in the world.
Like the reason that we're business owners and we don't, like, go get
a traditional job. A lot of us are doing this because we found something that
we're excited about and we want to do this work. So I don't want you
to have this random ass comment stop you from doing the work that you
set out to do, okay? I think that
(11:24):
building in consistency in your business, which again, it's the
frequency that you go out after, it's not any frequency that anyone else
sets, is something that can be a really good strategy for you. And I
don't want the comments like these to shake that consistency
up, okay? I want you to have built in, like, clarity
and confidence in what you're doing. So much so that comments like these, you kind
(11:46):
of laugh it up like I do, where I'm like, this is silliness. And now
I'm going to talk about you even more. You wanted attention, you got the attention.
Okay? It takes a lot of work to get to this space
and I want you to be able to acknowledge that as well. So
this is your permission slip. When you get belligerent,
nasty, silly, over the top comments on your social
(12:08):
media block and delete and move on. Protect
your energy. You're allowed to still keep going. Don't let one
bad apple ruin the bunch. I'm not stopping and
neither should you. And hey, if you want more conversations like these,
we talk about this all the time in my program in the Mindful Marketing Lab.
Come on in and join us. We have community.
(12:30):
You don't have to do this alone. I'll be back at you next week with
a new episode. That's all for this week. Bye for now.
So two episodes ago, I said something about inclusive marketing and surprise,
surprise, the Internet did what the Internet does, which is the
trolls came out. And so in this right here podcast episode, I'm going
to talk about what happened and kind of talk
you through what to do if this happens to you, because this ain't my first
rodeo. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside
(00:23):
is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use
for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the
audio and the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the
entire process so, so easy. Plus,
I love their Magic AI clips.
Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most
(00:45):
impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do
it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical
videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic
AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out
10 clips and I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so
much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today,
(01:07):
the links in the show notes, and make sure to use my code DREA D
R E A at checkout to get 15% off your
membership. Welcome back to the Mindful Marketing
Podcast. Fran, so excited that you're here. I am
feeling all the feelings today because today is the day my
youngest daughter goes to daycare and I'm headed into this next chapter, next
(01:29):
phase of my life. And I'm very excited and
also destroyed. Like distraught, like
desperado, like, someone please come save me. What do I do with all this
time? And also I may nap a little bit this week
as I transition into being a working mom.
Hello, I'm here. I'm excited about this episode because this feels
(01:51):
like a response episode to something that happened. I had a totally
different thing planned, same as last week, but life happens. And so I
want to talk about this because it threw me for a whole loop.
So a little bit of backstory. Two or three episodes
ago I talked about inclusive marketing, specifically why I personally don't use
gendered language in my marketing. And I pulled a little
(02:14):
clip from that show and posted on social media. I used
our amazing sponsor. Riverside picked the clip where
I was talking about how sometimes as a black woman, I
don't feel like people are marketing to me specifically. It was a short
example from a long episode about being inclusive in your marketing.
I posted it everywhere on YouTube is where I got
(02:37):
this comment. I'll read it for you. Why Would
brands want to market to a consumer base that is just going
to rob their stores, though? The absolute
racism, the audacity of this person.
I posted it everywhere because, honestly, this. This is not the
first time, but this is one of those times where I felt the need, I
(02:59):
felt called to use this as an example because this isn't something that
happens all the time to everyone else. And so if this is your first
time experiencing this, you may get the shock and awe and the.
The actual, like, devastation that we feel when
some rando on the Internet leaves a hurtful comment. And like
I said before, unfortunately, this isn't the first time that I've had to deal with
(03:21):
this. People come in on all sorts of things outside of my skin color,
which hel. I cannot change. That's besides
the point. People comment on my voice a lot. Some people hate
it, like, hate it so much that they'll stalk me and leave comments
from different accounts about how much they hate my voice. And I'm like, please, go
bother someone else. I come from a YouTube background, so when I used
(03:43):
to create YouTube videos, like, content about my life, people would literally comment
and say, go unalive yourself, if you know what I mean.
And none of that feels good. I,
however, fortunately or unfortunately, have built up a little bit of tough
skin around this. So I want to talk to you about, like, the
mental process I go through when I get these kinds of comments and how
(04:05):
you can mentally prepare yourself to get these comments. And then if anyone ever dms
me and says, andrea, I got a mean comment, I can just send you this
podcast episode, okay. Because it's part of a bigger
conversation about being an individual online,
showing up and putting yourself out there, saying, some people take that
to mean they can also comment however they want on you and your life,
(04:28):
and it drains your energy. So I want to talk about, like, protecting your energy
and not getting derailed by these messages. Okay? So first, I want
to normalize that this happens. This is not a personal thing to you. Even
though it does feel like a personal attack on you, I promise you, it's
not personal. This is like the underbelly, the seedy
underbelly of the Internet, which there are some very lonely, desperate people out
(04:50):
there seeking attention, and the Internet makes it very easy for them
to access people. This person before
would have been like, the loner on the outskirts of town that nobody talked to,
but now they can post comments and get a reaction,
which is what they want. So this happens to everyone, too, whether you have a
hundred followers a Hundred thousand followers. Everyone is opening
(05:12):
themselves up to these potential comments that come from people
who are hurt. Okay, so it's not about you, it's about them. But I
also want to say that when you get these comments, it really does sting
because you're coming in from a very vulnerable place, sharing something
online, no matter what it is you're sharing, it takes a
lot of effort to put yourself out there in this way. So
(05:34):
everyone who does this, you are opening yourself up for this. And it's a vulnerable
place. It can feel like, what am I even doing here? Because
I feel. It feels tainted now. The experience feels tainted because someone else
decided to say something silly. Okay.
Also find that comments like these make me second guess living my life
online. And I go back and forth on this all the time. And this is
(05:56):
where boundaries show up for me. Because boundaries,
to me, I only know where a boundary is when it's crossed. Okay, there are
some that, like, I know right off the bat, but a lot of
boundaries, I don't know it's a boundary till it's crossed. For
example, when I have notifications on my phone, I
go, I had them all turned on the apps automatically, like, do you want
(06:18):
notifications? Yes. And they send you everything. It took me a couple years of that
to realize, not for me. I close down everything, and then I slowly
add back in the ones where I'm like, yeah, this app, I would love notifications.
This one, not so much. Okay, that's an example of a boundary being
crossed. Same happens with these comments. To me, it's like, oh, this is
a boundary that someone crossed. I need to have a solution in place
(06:40):
because I don't want to have this boundary crossed again. So
check in with yourself first. For me, personally, I
know that these people, they're not talking about me. It's not personal about me.
This is them going off on whatever's happening in their lives. So, generally
speaking, I delete the comments, I block the person, and then I take a mental
health break. Okay, I'm not saying this doesn't affect me. It sure does. The
(07:03):
day that I got this comment, I was actually supposed to record this very podcast,
and I said, whoop, no podcast recording happening today. Because
I don't feel good about any of this. This feel. I feel
vulnerable and naked. Like I'm standing out in front of a giant auditorium of people
with ain't a thing on it. Doesn't feel good. Right? And so I
personally step away, shut it down, turn my. Put my phone, and do not disturb.
(07:24):
I Read some books. I touched grass, literally went outside, took my dog for a
little bit of longer walk. Gibson loved it. It was great. Okay. It takes a
lot of energy to do that. So the more that you grow as a business
owner, the more that you're opening yourself up to that. So the more you need
to build in these mental health breaks. Okay? Mental health checks.
A great example of another one for me is I don't generally work on the
(07:44):
weekends. It case by case basis. Okay?
Sometimes work sneaks in there. Sometimes I'm really excited about something and I work.
But for me, it's an optional work weekend. Okay? So that is a mental
health break for me. Even when I do work on the weekends, I'm not checking
social media. I may post, but I post and goes like I
don't do during the week. Okay? So that's another way that I build in my
(08:05):
mental health checks. My phone goes automatically on do not disturb after
a certain time at night. So there's other little things that I
build into my life because I've noticed over time, hey, I'm putting
a lot of energy into this. And then I get this comment and it totally
drains me. So I'd rather protect myself from
even seeing a comment like that all the time so that I can really,
(08:28):
like, live my life. And this is a concept that I'm building into our new
framework in the mindful marketing lab called energy budgeting.
Okay. Energy budgeting. And I think it's something that as business owners who manage their
own social media accounts, or even if you're a social media manager for other people,
we have to notice this about ourselves because this is where
we can really get ourselves into trouble, into burnout. If we're looking
(08:50):
at comments like these all of the time. Okay? And I think
energy budgeting is something that goes up and down.
It's not a sort of budget where you're like, I have $100
a week and this is it. It doesn't matter if I make
$10,000 a month or $1,000 a month. I have a hundred dollars a week as
my budget. We know that's not how budget works. Like, when we have more money,
(09:12):
our budgets increase. When we have less money, our budgets decrease. So the same goes
for your energy. When you have more energy, your energy budget can increase,
you can create more, you can be more present. When you don't have the energy,
your energy budget needs to decrease. And I think where burnout happens is we
don't have more energy, we're overspending our Energy. Our energy accounts
overdrafted, okay? And so then we feel burnt out. We get a comment like
(09:34):
this, we delete all of our social media and go, I'm done. I'm never doing
this again. So I want you to be practiced in
noticing your energy budget so that when the comments like these come in,
you can respond appropriately. So for me, right now, I have a lot of energy
budget. I'm excited about work. My daughter is going to daycare, Both the girls
will be in school. Now I have a lot of energy for this, hence I
(09:56):
talk about it a lot. I didn't just block and delete this comment like I
usually do. I said, you know what? I've got tough skin. We're going to keep
talking about it for a week after because I want the people to hear and
know this because I got the time, okay? Any other time,
like, if you asked me this a year ago, I probably would have cried for
three days, okay? I was like six months postpartum, right? I probably would have cried
(10:17):
for three days and then never spoken of it again and erased it from my
memory. So again, energy budgets different. So
I want you to think about what this could look like for you, and
you get to decide what this looks like for you. Some of you are on
the block and delete, step away, train. Some of you actually want to call out
this person like I have. Use them as an example.
(10:39):
Some of you want to do something in between where you maybe don't block
delete, but you don't respond. Or maybe you just delete
the comment and you don't block or whatever the case may be, maybe
you leave a little response comment and you move on with your day. Like, you
get to decide what this looks like for you. I want to remind
you though, that these comments, again, are not about you and I
(11:01):
don't want them to derail you from the work that you're doing in the world.
Like the reason that we're business owners and we don't, like, go get
a traditional job. A lot of us are doing this because we found something that
we're excited about and we want to do this work. So I don't want you
to have this random ass comment stop you from doing the work that you
set out to do, okay? I think that
(11:24):
building in consistency in your business, which again, it's the
frequency that you go out after, it's not any frequency that anyone else
sets, is something that can be a really good strategy for you. And I
don't want the comments like these to shake that consistency
up, okay? I want you to have built in, like, clarity
and confidence in what you're doing. So much so that comments like these, you kind
(11:46):
of laugh it up like I do, where I'm like, this is silliness. And now
I'm going to talk about you even more. You wanted attention, you got the attention.
Okay? It takes a lot of work to get to this space
and I want you to be able to acknowledge that as well. So
this is your permission slip. When you get belligerent,
nasty, silly, over the top comments on your social
(12:08):
media block and delete and move on. Protect
your energy. You're allowed to still keep going. Don't let one
bad apple ruin the bunch. I'm not stopping and
neither should you. And hey, if you want more conversations like these,
we talk about this all the time in my program in the Mindful Marketing Lab.
Come on in and join us. We have community.
(12:30):
You don't have to do this alone. I'll be back at you next week with
a new episode. That's all for this week. Bye for now.
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