As public dudes who create content for millions of people on the internet, we have had to deal with our fair share of haters. You may not be getting youtube hate comments, but we know that there are a lot of haters in this world, so we want to help you deal with them effectively. Whether it’s bullies in high school or people that just always talk negatively about your passion projects – we’ve been there and we get it. So today we’re going to help you understand who haters actually are and give you some tips on dealing with them. We’ll start by defining the three types of hating and then give you the strategies to deal with each one.
Why Do People Hate?
A lot of times the act of hating is unconscious because we consume it everywhere – from the media to our social circles hating has become a sort of every day occurrence. When we’re around that kind of negativity, we find that we start doing it to. That’s not a good thing because when you hate on something, the person that negativity affects the most is yourself.
No matter how much you hate on someone, it’s never going to make your life any better. Not only is hating mean, but it stops a lot of people who have awesome things to offer from pursuing their passions because hate instills fear and doubt.
What is A Hater?
So what really defines a hater? For us, a hater, is someone who talks negatively about someone or something outside of himself or herself. These comments are almost always unsolicited and often times the hater doesn’t even actually know the person or thing they’re hating on. For example, someone who says they hate Justin Bieber doesn’t really know him as a person. They only know what they hear about him in the media or on social platforms. They get these ideas in their mind about who this person is and talk smack for no reason other than to try and build themselves up. Haters are also known online as trolls and these are basically just people who hide behind their keyboards and post mean comments on content.
3 Types of Hating
As we mentioned, there are three different types of hating and each one can affect your life in different ways. We’ll walk you through all three types so let’s get to it!
1. Hating In the Media
Probably the biggest place we see hating is in media and online. You’ve probably heard it from your friends and even said some of these things yourself. Online hating usually targets people who have influence, so think in terms of actors, athletes and musicians. Some of the most popular targets are people like Justin Bieber, Lebron James and Tom Brady.
What’s interesting about this is that most of these people are incredibly successful when it comes to their fitness and skill. They are at the top of their game and just killing it, yet there are tons of people out there who say they suck or that they hate them. That is largely because a lot of times hate comes from a place of insecurity.
In mass media, we put people on a pedestal and then we compare ourselves to these people, there is a desire to create this narrative that focuses on the negative aspects of these people lives. There’s some sort of intrinsic desire to find some flaw in these seemly perfect people just so we can tear them down and make ourselves feel better. Most of the time, when people hate it’s because they don’t feel like they are as successful. Basically, if you have a lot of awesome things going on, you don’t have time to hate on someone else’s stuff because you’re too busy doing your own thing.
2. Subtle Hating
This hating is different from hating in the media in that it most often comes from the people closest to you. This hatred comes from a place of love but it can sabotage the way you want to live your life. Some of the most common victims of this kind of hating are people who are into wellness like vegans, fitness gurus and people who don’t like to drink a lot. You’ve probably even experienced this in your daily lives. When you go out with friends and just don’t feel like drinking, but they keep hounding you about having fun and joining the party. The make you feel bad because they know drinking isn’t good for them, but they still do it.
Another example can be when people decide to go vegan and get backlash from their families. For a lot of food-oriented cultures in Latin America or Asia, sometimes parents and grandparents don’t understand these food choices. They think something must be wrong with you or that your eating habits are going to be detrimental to your well-being so they hate on your choice. Their concern comes from not understanding what these changes might actually be about or even ignorance. It’s foreign, so they simply think that it must be wrong, which leads us to our next type of hating.
3. Hating Something Foreign
Just because someone is doing something differently from you or that is foreign to you, that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. For example, we wrote an article about how not eating breakfast can be beneficial and received an insane amount of hate. The hate came mainly because these people felt like they had been told that what they do is wrong. They’ve been eating breakfast every day for years and now suddenly they discover there might be a different option and that feels terrifying to them. So they lash out and say mean things, even though these articles are based in scientific fact.
Instead of this knee-jerk reaction to something that is done differently than you would do it, try to understand or find the benefits this new approach might have. Keep an open mind and even if you don’t agree, try not to react with hate, just accept that you both may have different approaches and that doesn’t mean one of you is right or wrong.
Tips to Deal With Haters
1. Detox From Media Haters
Detox from the media of hating – don’t go to gossip blogs or listen to gossip radio. As much as you want to say it’s just entertainment, it actually permeates your being. You’re going to talk about that gossip with another person and that just fuels the hate. Take yourself out of that equation and don’t participate in the hate.
We’re not just telling you to stop hating because it’s bad for you; it’s also really bad for creativity and innovation in our society. Hate holds talented people down and prevents all these cool ideas from getting out because people are afraid of the backlash and how they’ll be received.
2. Detox From Haters in Your Own Circles
You are the sum of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. So if you’re constantly hanging around with haters, it will seep into your being and will change how you perceive things and make you more negative as well. Think in terms of your own circles, if you’re around people who hate a lot, you don’t leave feeling good about yourself. Instead, surround yourself with positive people and you’ll feel better about yourself.
3. Detox From Being a Hater Yourself
We’re human beings so we catch ourselves hating sometimes too. The thing is, we work on being self-aware so we try to catch ourselves when we have those negative thoughts. We try to remember that we are no better than anyone else on the planet and this helps us recognize this negativity but not feed into it.
Try to find articles and content that don’t necessarily promote or agree with your understanding of the world. Be aware of your reactions and make sure to keep an open mind and see if maybe these different methods could have a positive impact on the things you do. Any time you feel like reacting negatively, take a second to understand why you felt that hate. Is it because you felt insecure? Maybe your lifestyle or ideas were threatened by another method? Once you understand why you reacted negatively, try to solve the underlying problem, whether it’s insecurity or not understanding.
Wrapping Up
You are what your thoughts are so if you constantly spend time on negative thoughts, you’re just wasting valuable headspace that could be used for pursuing your own goals and passions.
There’s no better revenge than seeing someone live a happy life. Whatever someone thinks about you, as long as you’re living your passions, you won’t have time for negativity. There’s never a situation in your life where you feel better after talking bad about someone else. It never makes your life any better to identify other people’s flaws. All it does is perpetuate bad feelings and then you carry around all that negativity all day.
If you are getting hated on right now, it probably means you’re doing something that scares the person that is hating. Hate comes with success so you just have to learn not to care about it and understand that this hate just comes from people not understanding you or just because they feel insecure in their own lives. The best thing you can do in response is to lean into it and just give them love back. Don’t feed into the hate by responding aggressively because that will only make you miserable.
We choose to live in love. When you respond kindly to people who make nasty comments, it can sometimes make them think about their responses and how they might not have been warranted. Haters can’t touch you when you know your own identity. If you build your confidence and are certain of who you are and what your path is, then these haters can’t affect your life. We all have unlimited potential and can achieve greatness, we’ve just got to focus on doing the things we want and care less about other people’s reactions to it. Moral of the story, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone – just do you and forget about the haters!
#dothething