Grey Rocking Online

How to Make Boring Win on Social Media

If you haven’t heard about the Grey Rock method you haven’t yet met your share of narcissists (or sociopaths). I’m well trained by these people—my mother was a narcissist—so they’re attracted to me like flies, both on- and offline. Grey rocking has saved my sanity IRL many, many times.

What is Grey Rock?

Grey Rock is a psychological strategy for disengaging from toxic people and conserving energy for the things that energize us. The idea is to make yourself as bland as possible—like a dull grey rock.

Narcissists, trolls, sociopaths and just plain shitty people thrive on our emotional reactions. When they don’t get one, they typically move on while feeling enormously frustrated. This is excellent if, like me, you’re energized by schadenfreude. Or, again, like me, you tend to revel in conscious passive aggressiveness.

Lately, it occurred to me that the same technique that saved my sanity offline might be a good strategy for dealing with toxic people online, too. We all know what a time—and energy—suck these people are. We feel we must defend the truth, but it seems like nothing works.

Enter Grey Rock

A perfect example of grey rocking in action happened when DEI expert, author, and CEO advisor Tara Jaye Frank responded to trolls complaining about her post on LinkedIn. Her response to these “gentlemen” was terrific:

“Reading your post made me anxious, so I watched the show again.”

Brilliant! (Now go read her book, The Waymakers.)

A double (quadruple?) dose of jerks

I’ve done communications, including social media, for healthcare clients for over a decade. As you can imagine, that industry draws the nasties by the thousandfold. I’ve worked in social media during some pretty “fun” times, including Trump’s 2016 attempt to repeal Obamacare, the chaos of COVID-19, and many other things. (My hats off to the communicators in healthcare right now—no one knows what heroes you genuinely are!)

For a very long time, healthcare communicators (and other good people) have tried to argue points. But that requires a lot of energy, and most of us peter out quickly. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown during Trump’s first time in office. In May 2016, I had to spend several days off the grid at a ranch, burned out, stressed out, and ready to quit after just three months. Without that equine therapy, I don’t know how I would have found my brain again.

My happy place - C Lazy U Ranch in Granby, Colorado

The steady drumbeat

During COVID, the brilliant public health officials and eventually the vaccine folks I worked with advised the “steady drumbeat” approach. Have 5-6 facts at your disposal, and post those in response to the misinformation accordingly. Like a steady beat.

This worked ok, although an old high school friend, a busy small business owner, responded with this:

“You’re welcome to your perspective, Bonnie. But I’ve done the research.”

I won’t go into how she managed to do actual research and run a bowling alley simultaneously, or why she thought she was more intelligent than the epidemiologists, clinicians, and other researchers I was working with. I’ll just say as the rhetoric engines have become much more potent (follow this link for some scary shit) one thing has become clear.

We need another method to combat the people determined to provoke us. I think it’s time to try Grey Rock.

Grey Rock phrases

Pulling these out of your hat can be challenging when you first start, so you might need a few to consider. Here are some of my favorite Grey Rock responses:

Duly noted.

Interesting perspective.

Thanks for sharing.

If you say so.

These are the more lawyerly ones. Of course, you can be a little more off the cuff/sarcastic if you like:

That's a cool thought, bro.

Wow, I read that once too.

I’ll pray for you.

Icons like the head scratcher or shoulder shrug are also great! Substack made this one for me, and I’ll likely use it soon. (Side note: the female prompt “female headscratcher icon” only showed me sexy images. Bad AI, Bad!)

Head scratcher icon

Also, don’t immediately try to achieve that perfect combination of “Is it sarcasm or genuine?” I did, and it backfired a few times. I survived but got several interesting comments like “you need a facelift.”

Duly noted.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT for more lines. Most of theirs were equally boring, and included just the one word “okay” and another “not sure what to say to that.” Then it spit out this one:

“Did you know octopuses have three hearts?”

I’m unsure how or when to lobby that one, but I’m determined to try it. I’ll let you know how it goes

Disengagement—the argument for Grey Rock

When it comes to nasty people off or online, I want to rent space in their heads, not vice versa. It seems almost instinctive by now to respond to provokes with some version of “how can you be such a f*ing idiot?” integrated with evidence-based research from Stanford and a smart quote from Maya Angelou or Ben Franklin—or Gandalf.

But remember, we’re dealing with people who are brainwashed by rhetoric. It won’t work. You could end up like me in 2016, struggling to construct standard sentences in some place while you try to find what’s left of your brain.

As my friend Christopher always says:

“Stop expecting rational responses from irrational people. “

The best part about grey rocking (for me, at least—you’re probably a much nicer person) is that most people don’t know how to respond, which confuses them. While they might lean toward the sarcastic interpretation, calling that out online makes them look even more terrible. They’re confused AND defused.

If you don’t believe me, try it live on the Karen in your building sometime. Or that nasty coworker. Look at their face and let me know what you see.

Toxic people online get attention, energy, and control by triggering our reactions, just like in real life. What would happen if we just grey rocked everybody like that online? ¹What if, when our buttons got pushed, we all turned into a bunch of bland, boring people?

I think it would be an interesting experiment.

Tell me, what are your favorite grey rock lines?

1. I will get a tiny commission if you buy Tara’s book.