I kicked a member of our community to the curb; here’s why… (Part I of II)

Last week, I had to ‘Bye, Felicia’ a Forge member, for the first time, for going against our community guidelines on multiple occasions and for showing no accountability, regard, or respect for the values upon which our ecosystem was founded. Furthermore, they had no intent of stopping and rejected my “accusations.”

So yeah, they got canceled--wait, that word is too triggering... they got annulled expeditiously. I have absolutely no tolerance for blatant disrespect and bullying from trolls in entrepreneurial clothing. But let me back up to give you some context…

A Forge member who felt harassed by this person reported a private exchange between the two of them that happened on our platform, instigated by the other person—along with a screenshot of what was said.

I reviewed all of this and concurred that this was unequivocal textbook harassment. I then contacted the aggressor, reminded them of what Forge is about (creative entrepreneurship), and expressed that this is not a place for imposing one’s personal belief system onto another and attacking members.

The aggressor dismissed my warning as laughable, ridiculed me for not being grown about all this, and called our harassed member a child who shouldn’t catch feelings over messages on a screen.

Sighs.

But hold up…

About an hour later, I got another report from a different member. Same aggressor, same texts.

That’s two strikes.

I then invite the aggressor onto a live, private call to discuss this so that nothing gets lost in translation.

They decline. Says they don’t want to talk unless I agree with them; otherwise, they don’t want to hear any petty victim talk.

More passive aggressiveness, but I’ll allow it like Doctor Strange allowed Peter Parker to call him Stephen in Spider-Man: No Way Home…

But their rampage just continues and escalates through more texts. I offer them an ultimatum:

“Follow our guidelines from here on out, and don’t DM those members anymore, or you’re out.”

Their (paraphrased) response:

“Sure, I’ll follow your guidelines… by talking to everyone here like they’re children. And actually, I’ll just go around your guidelines and email them directly because you can’t hide my truth. And also, if they had just told me to stop and blocked* me instead of reporting me, I would’ve stopped…”

On and on…

At this point, I’ve finally hit “f--k it” like Wade Wilson volunteering for that experimental procedure that awakened his dormant mutant gene and turned him into Deadpool.

I gave them 3 key examples that they’d crossed a line, told them they’d be happier elsewhere, and said their membership and account access would be deactivated effective immediately.

Poof, be gone!

I mean, for such a biased, lame community, that aggressor sure did want to remain a member anyway, sparring with me all day. ??

And that, my friend, is how you know someone has gone full-on troll.

When you’d rather complain endlessly about a space that no one’s forcing you to be a part of, rather than leave on your own terms because you’re truly hurting inside… you’re a troll.

When you’d rather impose your hypocritical philosophies onto others, uninvited, than converse about topics relevant to the themes of our ecosystem… you’re a troll.

When you’re always right, take no accountability for the harm you inflict onto others, and the whole world is the problem, it’s never you… well, you get the point now.

You know you’ve really pierced their eggshell armor when you expunge someone, and they go out of their way to contact you on other platforms, because nothing’s more important to them than trying to bring you down to their level, ha!

They DM you here on LinkedIn. And because the first few lines of the message already tell you everything you need to know, you block ‘em from contacting you there.

Then they email you, so you block their email address.

Then, they message you through your website’s contact form under a different email address (!!), so you block that address, too.

Guess you know you’ve hit a nerve when you’re playing whack-a-mole with a troll who’s found their newest obsession. Best I can do is starve ‘em by giving ‘em no airtime since attention is what they feed on.

With all that nonsense out of the way, in Part II, which you can read here, I share all the good that came from this, the lessons learned, and what I’m now doing to reduce the likelihood of this happening again.

In the meantime, do you think my reactions and actions were reasonable given the circumstances, or would you have handled this differently?