双语阅读：如何对付网络暴力？.

　　Anyone who has ever been online has witnessed, or been virtually walloped by, a mean comment. “If you’re going to be a blogger, if you’re going to tweet stuff, you better develop a tough skin,” said John Suler, a professor of psychology at Rider University who specializes in what he rers to as cyberpsychology.

　　每一个上过网的人都曾目睹或亲历过刻薄的评论。“如果你打算写博客，或开始在推特上发布内容，那你最好先练就一张厚脸皮。”莱德大学心理学教授约翰·舒乐(John Suler)说，他称自己的研究领域为网络心理学。

　　Some 69 percent of adult social media users said they “have seen people being mean and cruel to others on social network sites,” according to a 2011 report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

　　据皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)2011年发布的《网络与美国生活》(Internet and American Life Project)研究报告，社交媒体成年用户中，约69%的人表示“曾在社交媒体上看到人们用刻薄恶毒的语言攻击他人”。

　　Posts run the gamut from barbs to sadistic antics by trolls who intentionally strive to distress or provoke. Last week, Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, said she was going off Twitter, possibly for good, after brutal tweets by trolls about her father’s death. Yet comments do not even have to be that malevolent to be hurtful.

　　网络喷子(trolls)在网上发帖，故意冷嘲热讽，哗众取宠，造成困扰或挑衅。罗宾·威廉姆斯(Robin Williams)的女儿塞尔达·威廉姆斯(Zelda Williams)曾表示，由喷子在推特上用粗暴恶毒的语言妄议她父亲去世一事，她打算放弃推特账号，可能不再使用。然而，如果要想达到伤人的目的，甚至无需那么恶毒的评论也足以。

　　The author Anne Rice signed a petition a few months ago asking Amazon.com to ban anonymous reviews after experiencing “personal insults and harassing posts,” as she put it on the site of the petition, Change.org. Whether you’re a celebrity author or a mom with a décor blog, you’re fair game. Anyone with a Twitter account and a mean streak can try to parachute into your psyche.

　　几个月前，作者安妮·莱斯(Anne Rice)签了一份要求亚马逊禁止匿名用户评论的请愿书，她在请愿网站Change.org上写道，自己曾遭遇“带人身攻击和骚扰性质的评论”。不论你是知名作家，或仅是写写装饰类博客的母亲，你所遭受的都是相似的。任何拥有推特账号且品性卑劣的人都能对你的心灵来个突然袭击。

　　In the virtual world, anonymity and invisibility help us feel uninhibited. Some people are inspired to behave with greater kindness; others unleash their dark side. Trolls, who some researchers think could be mentally unbalanced, say the kinds of things that do not warrant deep introspection; their singular goal is to elicit pain. But then there are those people whose comments, while nasty, present an opportunity to learn something about ourselves.

　　在虚拟世界里，匿名性和隐蔽性使我们感觉不受约束。一些人会因此以更大的善意对待他人;另一些人则暴露自己的阴暗面。网络喷子说着那种不值得我们深省的话，他们唯一的目的是造成痛苦。一些研究人员认为，网络喷子的精神可能有点失常。然而，有些人的评论尽管很可恶，但也为我们提供了了解自我的机会。

　　Easier said than done. Social scientists say we tend to fixate on the negative. However, there are ways to game psychological realities. Doing so requires understanding that you are ultimately in charge. “Nobody makes you feel anything,” said Professor Suler, adding that you are responsible for how you interpret and react to negative comments. The key is managing what psychologists rer to as involuntary attention.

　　说来容易做起来难。社会科学家指出，我们往往更在意负面评价。但与心理现实相博弈的方式还是有一些。要做到这点你得明白，你才是最终掌控者。“没有人能影响你的情绪，”舒乐教授说道，并表示你需要对自己就负面评价所做的解读和反应负责。问题的关键在于控制心理学家所称的“不自觉注意”(involuntary attention)。

　　Just as our attention naturally gravitates to loud noises and motion, our minds glom on to negative feedback. Much discussed studies like “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” published in 2001 in the Review of General Psychology, have shown that we respond more strongly to bad experiences and criticism, and that we remember them more vividly.

　　正如注意力天生会被更大的声音和更夸张的手势吸引，我们的心理也更容易被负面反馈所占据。2001年发表在《普通心理学评论》的文章“坏影响比好影响作用更强烈”(Bad Is Stronger Than Good)指出，我们对不好的经历和批评的反应更强烈，记忆更深刻。诸如此类研究曾引起过多次讨论。

　　“These are things that stick in our brain,” said James O Pawelski, the director of education and a senior scholar in the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we allow our attention to move involuntarily, that’s where it goes.” The mind, however, can be tamed. One way to become proactive is to ask yourself if those barbs you can’t seem to shrug off have an element of truth. (Glaringly malicious posts can be dismissed.) If the answer is yes, Professor Suler has some advice:

　　“You can treat them as an opportunity,” he said. Ask yourself why you’re ruminating on a comment. “Why does it bother you?” Professor Suler said. “What insecurities are being activated in you?”

　　“这些是在我们脑海里根深蒂固的东西，”宾夕法尼亚大学积极心理学中心教育主任及资深学者詹姆斯·鲍威斯基说道。“如果我们任由自己的注意力不自觉地随意移动，那它就会跑向坏经历。”然而，这种心理是可以进行干预的。变得积极主动的一种方式是问问自己，这些你似乎无法摆脱的恶意言论中是否含有某种真实成分。(明显恶意的言论可以忽视。)如果答案为肯定，那么舒乐教授有一些建议：

　　“你可以把它们当做一个机会，”他说。问问自己，为什么你如此在意一条评论。“它为什么令你困扰?你的不安全感又因何而起?”舒乐教授问道。

　　For instance, maybe you have an unconscious worry that you’re somehow not good enough. Professor Suler said it was not uncommon for some digital luminaries (bloggers, social media power-users) to harbor such worries because one motivation, be it conscious or unconscious, is that they want to be liked.

　　例如，你可能会不自觉地担心自己是不是不够好。舒乐教授称，网络名人(博客主，社交媒体活跃用户)产生这种心理并不鲜见，因为他们总是自觉或不自觉地有一种希望自己被喜欢的心理。

　　“They want to be popular,” he said, adding that it’s a goal easily pursued on the Internet. “It’s all about likes and pluses and favourites.” Yet if someone says something cruel, he continued, “it activates that unconscious worry.”

　　“他们希望自己受欢迎，”并且这在网络上很容易做到，他还说道。“一切都和赞、+1和收藏有关。”然而，如果有人说了恶毒的话，他继续说道：“它就会激起莫名的担忧。”

　　But let’s say the negative comment fails to induce self-psychologizing. Perhaps it can help you learn something about your work.

　　但是，我们要说，负面评价不会导致自我心理强化。也许这能帮你了解关于工作的一些东西。

　　“It’s easy to feel emotionally attacked from these things,” said Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution. But he said that doesn’t mean that your critics don’t have a point.

　　“人们很容易因负面评价而受到情感上的打击，”哈佛商学院高级讲师、布鲁金斯学会高级研究员鲍勃·波曾(Bob Pozen)说道。不过，他也指出，这不意味着所有的批评都毫无依据。

　　Consider the more than 50 reviews of Mr. Pozen’s book “Extreme Productivity” on Amazon.com. Most were four and five stars, but for the purposes of this article, he conducted an unscientific experiment and checked out the handful of one- and two-star reviews. “You know, some of them are pretty negative,” said Mr. Pozen, the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, “but the question is, ‘How do you read them?' ” One unfavorable review was easily dismissed, Mr. Pozen said, because it was apparent that the writer had not thoroughly read the material. Another reviewer criticized the book for being too “U.S.-centric.” Mr. Pozen considered that idea — and decided that the reader, despite not having put it particularly nicely, might be right. “So I thought, ‘Well if I ever write another version of this book I ought to take that into account,’ ” he said.

　　例如，波曾所著的《这样工作最高效》(Extreme Productivity)一书在亚马逊的50多条评论。这些评价大多是4-5星，但出于本文目的，他进行了一项非学术性的实验，调查了一些1-2星的评论。“你知道，有些评论真的非常负面，”曾担任MFS投资管理公司主席的波曾说道。“可是，问题是，’你如何解读它们?‘”他表示，有一条负面评论是明显可忽视的，因为评论者很显然没有仔细读过此书。另一位评论者的批评是“太以美国为中心”。波曾细想过这种观点，并认为，尽管这位读者评论的方式不怎么友善，但他的评价可能是有道理的。“所以我想‘如果另写一个版本，那么我会考虑到这点’。”他说道。

　　It’s not always possible, of course, to learn something from a nasty comment. Some are baseless; some are crass. One way to help them roll off you is to consider the writer’s motivation. Professor Suler wrote in 2004 in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior about a concept known as “the online disinhibition fect” — the idea that “people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world.”

　　当然，我们并不是总能在负面评论中有所收获。有些评论毫无依据，有些非常粗鲁。摆脱它们的一种方式是思考评论者的意图。在2004年发表于《网络心理学及行为》期刊的一篇文章中，舒乐教授提出了“网言无忌效应”(the online disinhibition fect)的概念——指“人们在网络上的话语和行为是在现实世界中通常不会说也不会做的”。

　　In the virtual realm, factors including anonymity, invisibility and lack of authority allow disinhibition to flourish. The result can be benign (“unusual acts of kindness and generosity”), or it can be toxic: “rude language, harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats,” as Professor Suler put it.

　　在虚拟世界，匿名性、隐藏性、无权威性等因素使人们无所顾忌。舒乐教授说，其结果可能为良性(“超乎寻常的善意和慷慨行为”)，也可能为恶性(“粗鲁的语言，严厉的批评，愤怒，仇恨，甚至威胁”)。

　　The latter is the realm of trolls. Some people think of their online life “as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living,” he wrote, a game for which they do not feel responsible. If bloggers and people who use social networks keep this concept in mind, he said, “they will see the psychology” of aggressors, and their comments may be easier to take — and possibly ignore. Sometimes it’s smart to do as Ms. Williams ultimately did: disconnect.

　　后者即是网络喷子所为。舒乐写道，许多人把他们的网络生活看作是“一种有着不适用于日常生活的规则的游戏”，认为在这个游戏中自己无需负责。如果博客主和社交媒体用户在脑海中存有这个概念，那么“他们将会看清挑衅者的心理”，从而能更自如地应对他们的言论，也可能直接忽视它们。有时候，像塞尔达·威廉姆斯最终所做的那样也是很明智的：不上网。

　　Harsh comments can also be made to feel less potent by directly disputing to yourself what was said. If, for example, someone writes, “You’re an idiot and no one likes you,” you can marshal evidence against it by reminding yourself, Stuart Smalley-style, of the obvious: You have an education, a job, more friends than you have time to see in a week.

　　你还可以就苛刻的评论直接进行自我争辩，以降低它们的说服力。例如，如果某人写道：“你是笨蛋，没有人喜欢你，”你可以像斯图尔特·斯莫利那样，找出反对证据，提醒自己：你受到良好教育，你有一份好工作，你有用整个星期时间都见不完的朋友。

　　Speaking of time, be mindful of when you choose to glance at your blog or social media feeds. Researchers have discovered that feeling blue or even being in a so-called neutral mood makes people more vulnerable to nasty comments. In other words: Stay off Twitter if you just bombed a presentation.

　　说到时间，留意一下你浏览博客或社交媒体信息流的时间。研究人员发现，当一个人心情不好的时候，或处在所谓的中立情绪时，则更易受到恶意评论的伤害。换句话说：如果你刚搞砸了一场演讲，请远离推特!

　　State of ‘flow’

　　”心流“状态

　　Another way to stop yourself from dwelling on negative feedback is to enter into what psychologists rer to as “flow,” a state in which the mind is completely engaged.

　　另一个使自己摆脱负面反馈的方法是进入心理学家所称的“心流”(flow)状态，即一种全身心完全投入的状态。

　　Flow can be achieved when playing a piano concerto, practicing karate, writing code, being deep in conversation with a friend. “The toughest time is when the mind is not fully occupied,” said Professor Pawelski, who also prescribes humour as a way to dlect barbs. He joked that bars would make a killing if at the end of each semester they offered “professor happy hours” where teachers could bring their evaluations and pass the negative ones around. “Nobody should be alone when they’re reading these things,” he said.

　　心流可在弹奏钢琴协奏曲时，练习空手道时，写代码时，或与朋友进行深度交流时达到。“最困难的是思绪无法完全集中时，”鲍威斯基教授说。他还把幽默作为转移讽刺的一种方式。他开玩笑道，如果酒吧能每个学期结束时提供“教授欢乐时间”，教授可以带来他们的评价，并将负面评价互相传看，那这个酒吧肯定能大赚一笔。他说：“每个人都不应在独自一人时读这些东西。”‘

　　Yet even when a person is alone, humour can be fective. Try reading nasty comments aloud in a goofy voice, Professor Pawelski advised, so that when your mind automatically plays back the comment it sounds absurd, or at the very least loses a bit of its bite.

　　然而，即使当你读这些东西时是单独一人，幽默也很有效。鲍威斯基教授建议，不妨用高分贝且愚蠢的声音朗读那些讨厌的评论，这样当你在脑子里自动回放这些评论时，它们听起来是如此荒诞，或至少降低了一点攻击性。

　　Such prescriptions are in the spirit of Jimmy Kimmel’s “mean tweets” television segment, during which celebrities — Julia Roberts, Pharrell Williams, Robert De Niro — read aloud the rotten things people write about them on Twitter while R.E.M.'s “Everybody Hurts” plays softly in the background. After reading the often expletive-riddled tweets — an act that Mr. Kimmel has said is meant “to help put a face on this unsavory activity” — some celebrities talk back to their detractors; others laugh; a few peer into the camera in silence. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times that other shows have similar routines: The television hosts of “E! News” have taken to reading aloud the “sour” tweets they receive from viewers, though they read a few of the “sweet” tweets, too.

　　在吉米·科莫尔(Jimmy Kimmel)的电视节目“恶意推文”(mean tweets)中就出现了这些方法。在该节目中，伴随着R.E.M.乐队"Everybody Hurts"的音乐缓缓而起，名人们(茱莉亚·罗伯茨(Julia Roberts)、法瑞尔·威廉姆斯(Pharrell William)、罗伯特·德尼罗( Robert De Niro))大声朗读推特上那些关于他们的恶意推文。科莫尔称这种做法目的在于“帮助面对那些讨厌行为”，读完这些往往充斥着咒骂的推文后，有些名人反驳自己的诋毁者，有些开始发笑，少数人则沉默面对镜头。这可能是时代的一个标志，其他电视节目也有类似策划：“E!News”节目主持人开始大声朗读评论者在推特上酸溜溜的推文，尽管他们也读了几篇正面评论。

　　Turns out they may be on to something. In the quest to quell the cruel, we often fail to savor the good. And there is, despite the meanies, much good whirring around cyberspace. Some 70 percent of Internet users said they “had been treated kindly or generously by others online,” according to a Pew report early this year.

　　看来他们这么做可能很有道理。在消除恶意的探求中，我们常常无法细细品味那些善意言论。除刻薄鬼之外，网络上也有很多善意的人。据皮尤研究中心今年初的报告，约70%的网络用户称“自己曾在网上被其他用户善意或慷慨地对待”。

　　Rather than scrolling past a dozen positive comments and lingering on the sole exception, what if you did the opposite? And what if you shared a couple of the good ones with friends instead of sharing the one that hurt you? Research shows that it takes more time for positive experiences to become lodged in our long-term memory, so it’s not just pleasurable to dwell on a compliment — it’s shrewd.

　　假如我们不是让那些积极评论一闪而过且只停留于仅有的例外上，假如我们反其道而行之将会怎样?假如我们与朋友分享一些善意评论而非互相抱怨恶意评论又会怎样?研究发现，积极体验需要更长时间才会进入我们的长期记忆。所以，更多地关注赞美不仅令人愉悦，而且是明智之举。“作为一种文化，我们通常在接受赞美上做得很糟糕，”鲍威斯基教授说。“赞美应该被接受，应该真正得到赞赏。他们本就是件礼物。”