Dealing with online hate

(Transcribed from the Freelance Fairytales Podcast)

You guys know I have a lot to say about this topic. I have found myself on the receiving end of, to be honest, way more hate than I ever thought I would get making videos about freelancing online. I was certainly not equipped to handle the global backlash from my first CNBC exposure in 2018 - but I had to learn - and fast. I do believe I have a lot of insight to share on this topic with anyone listening who is dealing with their own online hate. I also believe talking about it more openly can maybe - just maybe -  intimidate the online bullies into some kind of silence. Nah, that’s probably just wishful thinking.

So long as there is a way for human beings to anonymously leave their thoughts and opinions under posts, they are going to take it. I don’t believe we can change that part of human nature. We all have a lot to say, many people are hyper judgmental, many people are dealing with their own demons and can’t handle other people doing well, and many people just want to watch the world burn. When you give them a keyboard, anonymity, and no direct physical repercussions for their comments, they are going to take it. Obviously back in the day, these people wouldn’t say these things for fear of being punched in the face. People behave accordingly when they perceive some kind of physical impact. So with the internet comes a protection they are afforded that emboldens them to behave like assholes. There’s no other word for it.

Accepting Inevitable Hate

When I first started dealing with online hate, I immediately wanted to figure out how to fix it. I thought to myself: how can I make this go away? I realize that was the wrong approach to take. Today, I have accepted that it’s never going away, and instead, take steps to protect myself and my mental well-being from the comments left on my social media. When that first CNBC article came out, I was 25-year-old, and I was actually in the middle of a road trip out in the desert in Arizona. The article came out, and sure, I felt proud. It was a feel-good article, and I was excited to show the world what I was doing and hopefully help some people. Don’t get me wrong - thousands upon thousands of people reached out to me thanking me. But, thousands of people also descended on my social media calling me every name in the book. I’ve read it all, and if you guys follow me on social media, you’ve probably read some of the nasty comments, too.

I will be honest: I wasn’t prepared for hate from people around the world. I didn’t get it - what had I done wrong? I was so naive. Simply being happy, content with your job will make people angry. Throw good money on top of it and forget it. And throw being a young woman on top of all of it and you’re toast. It was shocking. And in a way, it was still just as shocking in 2021 when CNBC did a 12 minute episode on me, and 4x the hate poured in. And I think that’s something important to acknowledge in this episode - that heaping amounts of online hate are upsetting, no matter how bad ass you are. One thing that drives me nuts is when I occasionally vent on my social media and everyone following me proposes what I call toxic positivity by telling me to just ignore the haters and keep going. Don’t worry, I do that eventually. But I think everyone deserves at least a day or two to process it and feel sad if they want. We can’t just pretend we aren’t human beings who aren’t hurt by hundreds of people telling us to go die. Toxic positivity robs a person of experiencing real emotions so they can heal and make a new plan of action.

It’s Ok to Feel Upset

So that is my first piece of advice to you in this episode: it’s ok to be upset by online hate. For a period. But then it is up to you to see the online hate for what it is. My next piece of advice is to understand where the hate comes from, and to really understand it actually has nothing to do with you. You merely draw out a feeling or emotion in the hater that makes them upset. Maybe they aren’t happy with their Job, maybe they have no money, maybe their spouse just died, maybe they had abusive parents. Whatever it is, they are hurting deeply. It doesn’t make it ok for them to attack you, but they are attacking because something about you is making them reflect on themselves. We all know by ejecting that kind of nasty energy out of themselves, they are going to continue blocking anything good from happening to them - but that’s not your battle to fight. Understand to your core that the hate really has nothing to directly do with you. I know this is hard - it took me years of honestly meditation, prayer, and just play maturity to understand this fully. And even though I do understand it fully, it still of course, hurts at time.

Create Personal Hate Buffers

Which brings me to the most important part of dealing with online hate: creating a buffer between you and the hate. Human beings were never designed to handle reading the thoughts and opinions of thousands of people in one hour. Think about it, for all of history, we’d be around the same 8-20 people probably until we died. Maybe for those that traveled, around 50 people. That was it. We’d only ever know about 50 people’s true opinions of us. When you increase that number to 5,000 or 50,000, your brain cannot take it. I don’t care how enlightened you are. To be human and empathetic is to connect, relate, and care about the people around us. You’re not supposed to shut that down. You need that empathy - it’s what truly makes you a human being. 

In order to protect that part of your spirit, you need to buffer yourself and the hate. Here are a few ways I try to go about doing this: first, only read/respond to comments on social media posts for a 1-2 hour window per day; second, you can consider hiring someone to respond for you - I don’t do this as I do like to directly connect with people still - but I suppose that could change if the hate ever got really bad; you can have a strict no DMs policy in which you do not read your DMs, I only scan mine about once per month in an effort to feel protected from some of the really disturbing private messages people send me - you can also build in windows of internet use altogether, and strictly get off around 6PM for the rest of the night. You can also hire a virtual assistant to read your emails and scan for hate emails, first, deleting them before you read the rest. There are a lot of options, and if you plan to put yourself out there, I do encourage you to do at least some of these things.

The most important thing of all though in the conversation of online hate is to not let it stop you. Please do not avoid posting on social media, changing your life, growing your income, and retiring early because of a few people in their mom’s basements with a Reddit account. No, these people aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but your time is. Your time is invaluable. Setting yourself up on social media, describing your side hustle journey can create new revenue streams, it can help you build a community, it can bring other likeminded people to your doorstep, it can elevate you beyond where you ever imagined. I avoided posting to social media for 4-years because of this very reason - and how silly that was! I didn’t change the online hate - I just procrastinated it. It still came. It’s an inevitability - but you can prepare yourself mentally and create systems that buffer you from it. My advice is always to be brave and don’t let this BS stop you. The more people who step into their divine purpose online, the better it will be for all of us. Again, that doesn’t mean you can’t sit at your computer and call these losers every name in the book. Feel free to FEEL every ounce of your emotions when it happens. You don’t need to be toxically positive every day.

Please Don’t Let Internet Hate Stop You

And don’t forget, if someone takes the hate too far, like making slanderous statements or lies about you and your business - or my favorite - using your image, a photo of you that you own, in their social media photos for their own personal profit, you have legal recourse. Don’t be afraid to use it. You don’t have to just sit there and take it. As Google says after one very quick search on the topic, “you can be sued for using someone else’s name, likeness, or other personal attributes without permission for exploitative purposes.” If someone takes a photo of you and inserts it into a thing like a YouTube thumbnail, there is a thing called copyright infringement, as well as a slew of other legal problems with that. Don’t be afraid to defend yourself. It’s not ok for internet bullies to scare everyone into submission. They thrive on this kind of submission. Collectively defending ourselves can maybe change the future of internet hate. Or at least I have to believe that.

Bottom line: internet hate can hurt, but please don’t let it stop you. Be brave. You will be so happy years from now that you persevered through the hate.