Request comment filter ban?

Try writing technical papers about what you love. Then submit them to journals so that it can be rejected. Eventually you stop caring.

One of the most important rules of thumb when directly interacting with the community is that it's okay to engage on a personal level when replying to a positive or neutral comment. However, replies to negative comments should always be clinical and professional.

Don't be dismissive or passive-aggressive, and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you become defensive or antagonistic. Try to extract any meaningful information from the comment, filtering all of the emotion out, and respond to that. Be polite, brief, concise, and direct. NEVER let them see you sweat.

Often, when someone unloads their unfiltered frustrations onto another person, if the target doesn't rise to the insult and gives them an honest, professional response, they'll begin to feel guilty about their initial interaction. This happens because they created a vilified image of the person in their minds and made clumsy assumptions about the reasoning behind their choices. They assumed the worst, and it's easy to attack a villain without remorse. When you respond professionally, it draws attention to their unprofessionalism. When you explain sensible reasons behind your choices or actions, it undermines the imagined villain/imbecile persona they initially lashed out at and forces them to update their image of you to something more realistic and relatable; someone who didn't deserve to be attacked.

We all do this. It's a cognitive bias called “correspondence bias” (also known as the fundamental attribution error). When someone cuts us off in traffic, we're likely to assume they're an inconsiderate jackass. It probably isn't going to cross our minds that the person driving the car is an overworked single mom who's running late because she had to suddenly change her baby's diaper a second time before dropping them off at daycare. The baby kicked over some baby powder, it got all over her clothes, and she had to quickly try to find another outfit, change, then fix her hair and/or makeup because they were messed up in the process. Now she's running late to a job she can't afford to lose.

On the other hand, when you counter-attack, you reinforce the image they created of you and excuse their aggressive antagonism. And when you become defensive, in the best case, you look guilty; in the worst case, you look guilty, unapologetic, and like you're refusing to accept responsibility.

And as earlier posters said, there's nothing wrong with nuking a blatantly toxic post.