The Mute, Message and Empathy Protocol for Critics
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Bloom has a repeatable response to online hostility that he developed while growing a large Twitter account. He mutes rather than blocks, because blocking signals that the person got under his skin while muting removes their negativity from his feed permanently. Before muting, in the early days he would direct message the person a genuinely conciliatory note, and found that around ninety-nine percent of the time they apologised and offered to delete. His explanation is that hostility depends on the assumption of no consequences, and confronting someone kindly removes it. The framing layer is empathy: someone who tells a stranger to go die in a fire is probably not a happy person. And the standing rule is that people on the sidelines do not get to advise the people in the arena.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Expect it once you are visible
Bloom encountered almost no hostility until around twenty-five thousand followers, largely from anonymous accounts with no reputational stake. Treat its arrival as a signal of reach, not of having done something wrong.
- 2
Message the person in good faith
Send a short, non-defensive note: sorry that whatever I did upset you, it was written in good faith. Do not argue the substance and do not fight back publicly.
Pro tip Bloom reports roughly ninety-nine percent of people respond apologetically and offer to delete the comment.
- 3
Mute, do not block
The second someone sends a bad-faith response, mute them. You never see their negativity again, and unlike a block they get no signal that they affected you.
- 4
Reframe with empathy rather than anger
Treat the comment as information about the writer's life. Bloom's read, echoing Gary Vaynerchuk, is that someone writing that is carrying tension, sadness or unhappiness, and hoping they find peace works better than being upset.
- 5
Reduce exposure at scale
Past a certain volume, stop reading it entirely. Bloom cites Joe Rogan's arrangement with his wife not to bring negative commentary to him at all.
- 6
Discount advice from the sidelines
Once you are publicly making things, stop taking advice from people who are not. Putting yourself out there is scary, vulnerable and lonely, and Bloom argues you should take pride in it and weight critics accordingly.
Watch out This is not a rule for ignoring all criticism. It is specifically about people who have never put anything at risk themselves.
In the wild
Bloom posted a thread of lessons he would teach his newborn son, written while reflecting on his own parents and a grandfather who had recently died. He was almost tearing up writing it. Ninety-nine percent of the response was extremely positive, but a small group reacted with real anger at the idea that he could teach his kid anything, telling him he was an idiot who was in for a hard lesson, and worse. Ali read the quote tweets and was shocked. Bloom's read was that it revealed a cynicism about parenthood and a passenger mentality about life, not a defect in the thread.
→ A deeply personal post attracting a hostile minority, absorbed without retaliation and reframed as a fact about the critics.
Bloom's first sustained hostility came at around twenty-five thousand followers, largely from anonymous crypto accounts where there are no ramifications for talking crap. His response was not to fire back but to send each person a message saying he was sorry if what he wrote upset them and that it was written in good faith. Almost every time, they backed down and offered to delete. His conclusion is that nobody actually enjoys fighting face to face; they assume a big account will never see it or react.
→ The overwhelming majority of hostile commenters apologised and removed their posts once directly and kindly addressed.
Common mistakes
Blocking instead of muting
A block confirms to the person that they got under your skin, which is the win they were after. A mute achieves the same removal of noise with no signal back to them.
Fighting back publicly
Bloom explicitly does not fight people on Twitter. Public argument amplifies the attack to your whole audience and rewards the behaviour with attention.
Taking advice from spectators
People on the sidelines are often those too afraid to put themselves out there. Weighting their feedback equally with that of people doing the work distorts your decisions.
From the transcript
“my policy in general is the second one person sends like a bad faith you know negative response to me i'll just mute them and…”
“i would message them and say like hey sorry that whatever i did upset you was you know generally trying to write it in good…”
“when you're in the arena it's not like never worry about the opinions of the people that are on the sidelines”
From the episode
How I Grew from 0 to 500k Followers In Under 2 Years - Sahil Bloom
Sahil Bloom