What is the difference between frank debate, bullying, abuse and a pile-on, and what are the appropriate responses to each?

Let’s start with Mary Beard, who has responded very differently to very different types of online provocation in ways that feel to me to be vaguely instructive. I am a big fan of the Cambridge historian, who for a while there was the poster child for how to deal with online abuse, famously shaming the trolls by trying to connect with them and, in one instance, messaging the teenager who had sent her sexually explicit abuse with kindness and an offer of lunch. Eventually, she reduced him – and others – to pathetic, blubbing balls of apology.

What is curious about this is that a few years later, Beard herself was reduced to a quivering wreck, not by the rightwing misogynists who target prominent women online, but by shouty criticism from the left, accusing the historian of racism after she posted a tweet about the aid-worker prostitution scandal in Haiti.

Criticism of the tweet had validity; to her detractors, Beard’s apparent empathy with abusive aid workers in Haiti – corrupted, as she saw it, by the trauma of being in a disaster zone – was classic Eurocentrism, identifying with those with backgrounds similar to her own over their “alien” victims.

A great deal of the criticism was also packaged in the standard idiom of online “debate” : abusive language, ad hominem attack and an absurd oversimplification and escalation of the charges (“just say that you hate black people”, etc). Rather than rising above it or facing them down as she had on previous occasions, however, in this instance Beard posted a photo of herself crying and after complaining that the response “just isn’t on”, disappeared off the platform for a while. She had toughed out the trolls, but collapsed when people called her a neo-colonialist.

Of course, accusing someone of racism is reputation-damaging in a way that hurling mindless sexist abuse at them is not, and for someone like Beard, an enlightened and progressive academic, it is likely to be much more hurtful. Nonetheless, the episode remained startling. It seemed to suggest that the largesse it takes to engage with incivility online – to continue to encourage debate in the face of attack – is only achievable from the moral high ground. In this scenario, the only angry people one can engage with online are those who everyone else agrees are beneath contempt and therefore aren’t really a threat.

I understand Beard’s retreat. Taking refuge in victimhood is a powerful instinct. It is also not terribly productive. Understanding how those with whom one disagrees reached their position – from the point of view of Beard’s detractors, allowing for the possibility that she is not simply a racist; in the case of Beard herself, acknowledging that anger directed towards her was not purely an expression of misogyny or troublemaking – is the only way these exchanges will lead anywhere.

The historian Mary Beard offers a lesson in how to, and also how not to, respond to criticism. Photograph: David Hartley/Rex/Shutterstock

Beard should probably have toughed it out. The problem is that once the pitchforks get raised and emails come in calling her a “pervert” and a “sick cow”, it becomes very easy for all criticism to be rejected. If the aim of these interactions is not merely to enjoy the catharsis of telling someone they suck, but in some tiny way to improve the discourse around aid and race, then calling someone a sick cow doesn’t do much to further that end. There is a recreational aspect to all this that warps the terms of the exchange and insures that no one will ever, ever consider the possibility that anyone else has even a fraction of a point.

And yet for Beard’s critics, the entreaty to be polite is laughable; politeness in the face of, as it is seen, coded racism, is a delicacy afforded those whose lives aren’t affected by it.

I have no idea what the answer is, although I think most angry tweets would benefit from the sender waiting 24 hours, or even five minutes, before sending. It might also be possible to understand that when we accuse others of acting tribally, we overlook the fact that we are all, inescapably, tribal creatures ourselves. It might also be worth recognizing, in ourselves and others, that it is possible to be simultaneously cynical (posting a photo of oneself in tears in order to gain sympathy, or accusing someone of racism because it gives you a little buzz of moral superiority), and genuinely to feel the thing that you are exploiting for kicks.

I haven’t answered your question very well. I think it should be possible to distinguish between those who are trying sincerely to present an opposing point of view, albeit angrily, from the trolls and the idiots. I think the former should be engaged with, and the latter ignored. (Of course, another part of me thinks we should all just leave social media and get on with our lives. But I understand that ship has sailed).