FAST COMPANY: How do you deal with negative comments on social media?
BARATUNDE THURSTON: My name is Baratunde Thurston, author of How To Be Black. When I deal with negative comments on the internet, I realize it's a losing battle, you're probably not going change peoples' minds, so I try to be as absurd as possible. For example. if someone comes at me from a very hater-filled position, he's got a lot of masculine issue, I just say, "let's go make out, dude, I'll meet you around the corner after this exchange is done." Throws them off, makes me feel better, and I don't waste my good energy on their bad.
How do you deal with negative comments on social media?
"THERE IS no 'typical' day in my life," says Baratunde Thurston, the Onion's director of digital. He may be helping a video about horse masturbation go viral (the video promoted an Onion Sports Network segment about a horse breeder). Or he could be in Paris, working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That mix of social activism and humor is what drives Thurston. "As I've submerged myself in news of the revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, I wanted desperately to feel part of what was going on," he says. "And then it hit me: This is what white people were doing to me after Obama was elected!" In addition to honing his comedic chops doing stand-up in New York, he's currently working on a book, How to Be Black, to be published by HarperCollins in February 2012.