If you blog, post comments on blogs, Twitter, or post on Facebook, inevitably you will face criticism for something you post online.

The easiest route is just to ignore all criticism, but in doing so, you will give the impression that you are above reproach, which is a fast way to lose respect. Besides, by listening to your critics, you could actually learn something.

I don’t think you should listen to all criticism, especially in these cases:

• The criticism consists mainly of attacks against your intelligence and/or character. That’s not really criticism, that’s an insult. Determine if they are criticizing the information, or the person posting the information. Attacks leveled at the person should always be ignored.
• The critic makes no effort to explain their position. A good critic should use established facts and/or relevant experience to validate their claims. If they can’t do that, it’s not worth it to listen.
• The criticism is an obvious emotional reaction, obviously because these rarely contain any intellectual value.

How should you respond to valid criticism?

• Read carefully. Be sure that you have not misread or inferred meaning where there was none.
• Resist the urge to react emotionally. Strong emotional reactions to criticism will impair your ability to analyze it. Never respond to the critic with an emotional backlash. You will regret it later.
• Determine if the criticism is constructive. Is there something that you can take away from it that you can improve upon?
• Try to see the other person’s perspective. It may not change your mind, but it will allow you to think outside of your normal viewpoints, which will improve your ability to empathize with others.
• Disagree? That’s okay too. Criticism will not always bring you to change your mind, and people rarely agree on everything. We should be able to respect another person’s viewpoint, without agreeing with them.
• Always respond positively. Thank the critic for their input. Even if you still disagree, do it respectfully, without insult, and based in facts and/or relevant experiences; not on emotion alone.
• Never take it personally. Don’t invest too much of your self-worth into how well you are received online.

Most importantly, don’t feed the trolls. Some people are just trying to get attention by posting critical and usually insulting responses on blogs, message boards, and the like. Ignore them.

How do you deal with criticism? Do you have any advice to share?

I am an information addict.  There, I said it.  I’m not afraid to admit that I have a problem. I come by it honestly, though, as one of my hobbies as a child was reading encyclopedias (mostly because we didn’t have a television, but that is another blog post).

The Internet is an enabler for someone like me.  Anytime I want to know more about a particular subject, I can google it or hit the wikipedia (which in many cases leads me down a rabbit trail of information discovery).

In way, its not all that bad, because I am continuing to learn, and learning is a key to keeping the brain active and healthy.

Where it did become a problem for me was that a lot of that information came to me in the form of RSS feeds in Google Reader (of course I DID subscribe to them).  I was easily getting upwards of 2000 entries in my Google Reader feed everyday at one point.  Combine that with following several very active twitter users, and I was hitting information overload.

With all of that information capitalizing on my time, just getting through it was taking away from the things that I want to do more, like blogging, for instance.  It was also stressful for me, because an unread item in my feed was to me an undone task on the to-do list. Getting that additional time and lowering the stress level of my life were enough of a motivation to reevaluate my habits.

So I took some steps to start cutting down on the noise.  I realized that there were hundreds of entries that I was never looking at, outside of scrolling past them in the feed. There were several hundred more that were really of no informational value at all (funny pictures or videos, and the like).  And there were several blogs with multiple posts per day, that I was not actually reading, other than skimming through them.  It was wasting my time to bother even scrolling past them.

It was somewhat painful, but I eventually made some very large cuts.  The first thing to go was the junk.  Sure, it was entertaining at times, but not always useful.  Next, I cut out the blogs I wasn’t reading regularly.  I also trimmed down my news feeds to only the top stories from two major sources.

Now, the majority of my feed subscriptions are from people – bloggers that I actually read and interact with through comments – who I feel are making positive impacts, and are sparking valuable conversation.

I’ve also made a personal commitment to continue to fine-tune my information gathering, to make the best use of my time going forward.  It’s an ongoing process, but I am already seeing the results, and if you’re reading this, you are too.

I’ve noticed something recently. There is somewhat of a phenomenon on Twitter among some of the people I follow, in which they post an update which almost immediately causes several of their followers to stop following them. This even happened to my friend* Jon on his Facebook (you can read about that here).

It seems that many people cannot disagree with someone, without then disassociating themselves from those with whom they disagree.  I see this occurring more among people who claim to be Christians, which makes this even more alarming.

Have our interactions on the internet turned us into the kids on the playground who get mad and say “I’m not your friend anymore!”, in some immature attempt at comeuppance?

I think the roots of this attitude extend much farther past the online world.  I’ve seen too many people leaving churches, churches firing pastors, or churches splitting in much the same way.  But it never seems to be an issue of outright heresy or theological inaccuracy, it is usually a difference of opinion.

I’m not saying that we should compromise our convictions. But, each one of us is responsible for our own life, and it is not our job to project our convictions on others.  And even if ‘our’ way is the right way, showing disrespect to the ones with whom we don’t see eye-to-eye us destroys our ability to influence them positively.  We can’t convict people of their wrongs, but our lives can reflect an example for them to follow.

Where does this leave us? The things keeping us at odds with one another are affecting our ability to positively impact the world around us.  We’ve got to get over ourselves, love one another through our disagreements, and focus on what we can agree on: we have a message the world needs to hear.  It will be a lot easier to get that message out, if we can do it together.

[*Friend in the facebook sense. I don't know Jon personally, but would totally be his friend in real life too.]