How To Deal With Haters!!!

[Caroline13]

Truthfully I had not heard the word "Haters" until maybe a yr ago or so. In my own world I don't Hate and I Don't Love easily.. There is a lot in Life I don't like but don't hate, and a lot I like but don't love. Love and Hate are FINAL words. But many use them and are stuck there....

With so many coming out of the wordwork, podcasts etc etc etc,,,so many have so much to say.

Here is a good summary on "Haters".. this is long, but read what you want to:

I have some advice for those of you who find yourselves faced with haters.

And given that you and I hold unpopular ideas, it's more than possible that at some point you'll have to deal with haters.

Not critics, mind you. Critics are fine. Constructive criticism can be helpful, and many critics are themselves accomplished people. Haters never are.

And if you let them, they can suck away energies that you should be expending productively.

Now listen, I understand.

When someone attacks you – on a blog, on YouTube, or wherever – it’s extremely tempting to respond. But in most cases, you shouldn’t. I realize this is counterintuitive. But I insist to you that I’m right.

I myself didn’t always follow the sound advice I am giving you.

I used to have a Google alert on my name. Back around 2004 I used to respond to every attack on me on every blog, no matter how obscure.

Don’t do that. It’s a stupid waste of time. You’ll get nowhere, you’ll waste valuable time you could have spent creating, and you’ll keep yourself in a constant state of agitation.

Trust me, I know you want to take apart every last one of their stupid so-called arguments.

Here’s one problem:

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares about you, your attacker, or the dispute. So your three-hour, point-by-point response, far from making things better, will only make you look obliviously self-absorbed.

I know you don’t want to, but you have to just let it go.

I myself maintain a page on my website in which I keep ongoing responses to ridiculous and evil things said about me. I quietly update that page from time to time. But that’s it.

(I think my favorite one is: Woods contributed to Ron Pau’s “theocratic” homeschool curriculum. When I asked for evidence that any of the material could be described as theocratic, you’ll never guess — I got crickets. What a surprise. It’s almost like they were criticizing something they knew nothing about.)

Ron Paul gets attacked by moral and intellectual pygmies every day. Does he make three-hour videos responding? He ignores them. He lets his content speak for itself.

Occasionally, if he’s absolutely had to, he would say one thing and move on. But that’s it, and even that I don’t think he does anymore.

People find his content every day on their own, and start following him.

Then, if they even come across his critics at all, they’ve come to know him well enough to say: these claims are b.s.

There is a book available for sale on Amazon called Ron Paul: America’s Most Dangerous Nazi.

Now Dr. Paul could sit down and write a full-length defense of himself, explaining to this lunatic that he is obviously the exact opposite of a Nazi.

But why bother? His whole life speaks for itself. He is a good and kind man with a wonderful family and who preaches nonaggression, free markets, and peace. World’s worst Nazi!

Do you think someone who writes a book alleging that Ron Paul is a Nazi is open to reason? Do you think he will evaluate evidence impartially?

Do you think that someone who takes such a book seriously can be reached, or is worth reaching?

Remember the economic idea of opportunity cost. In the time you waste trying, how many other people you might have reached during that time never hear about our ideas?

So don’t bother.

Again, nobody cares about the latest drama in the libertarian world. Karl Marx spent an embarrassing amount of time writing melodramatic responses to people of no consequence. Don’t do that.

This is a tough pill to swallow, I know.

If it helps you take it, though, here are two things to bear in mind.

Ben Settle, one of the world’s great email marketers, put it this way: most of the people attacking you are self-hating, miserable losers. You don’t exactly have to hire a private detective to figure that one out.

Second, it’s very, very rare to be attacked by someone who’s more accomplished than you are. Virtually all the people attacking you will be well below you, in whatever metric you want to use: they produce less than you (usually nothing), they have less success, and often a general feeling of impotence. That feeling of impotence grows the more they attack you and the attacks don’t accomplish anything.

The crazies attacked me nonstop last year, and yet I had by far -- as in, not even close -- my most successful year ever. That's some serious impotence.

Anyone who has ever amounted to anything has had enemies. And here is the sentence you need to accept: if you amount to anything, you are not going to be the exception to that rule. Count on it. You will not be the exception to that rule.

Let your content speak for itself. This is a much, much better and more productive use of your time, and it also gives you much more inner peace.

Speaking of inner peace, here’s more advice, which I myself have adopted only recently. Block nasty people on social media, liberally. Anyone who tells you that that means you don’t support free speech is a fool who doesn’t know what free speech or self-ownership mean.

The kind of people who follow me have what Ben Settle calls a Mission. You should be single-mindedly devoted to your Mission. Don’t be distracted by nobodies who will hate you no matter what you do. I promise, even as someone who makes his living through words and persuasion, there is no magic combination of words you can utter that will get your haters to like or respect you.

People without a Mission have the spare time to attack you. But you do have a mission. Resist the temptation to engage with them and waste time and energy. Block them. To use a formulation of Ludwig von Mises, time is an irreversible flux. You can’t get it back. Spend it doing productive things that will help people and/or bring you happiness.

Don’t do what they want. If you laugh at them or ignore them, it gets under their skin. So do that instead.

Now you’ll say to me: Woods, if I block them, they’ll consider that a victory. They’ll say, hey, look, so-and-so blocked me!

Here is my answer to that: let them have that stupid victory. Let them have it! Why should that bother you? Imagine what a loser someone would have to be to boast (as some people do in their Twitter bios) of being blocked by such-and-such person on Twitter. Meanwhile, you’ve saved yourself time and annoyance. And I promise you are living a happier life than they are. (Imagine how miserable you’d have to be to think attacking a podcaster is the best use of your time you can think of.)

If someone boasts that I blocked him, I just think: well, that’s really nice for you. I’m hopping on a plane to beautiful St. Lucia for a week, but that Twitter victory you just had is really super.

There are exceptions to my general rule that you should ignore haters.

One exception is when the attacks are high profile. For instance, if the New York Times attacks you, answer. I did that in 2005. They didn’t like my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, and said so on the editorial page.

Now, did that hurt me? Not at all. By the next day, everyone who read their article had already forgotten my name. They have other things to do. But I had generated massive street cred among people who are still my fans to this day.

Another exception is if you can monetize the attacks.

Let me tell you a story about my friend Connor Boyack.

CNN ran a headline alleging that Connor’s excellent Tuttle Twins children’s book series amounted to “right-wing indoctrination.”

So Connor had a sale and guess what the coupon code was?

CNN.

He earned a fortune from this.

And he was doubly right to respond: both because CNN is a high-profile source and because he could make money from the attack.

Now, a few final thoughts.

There are plenty of things I’m no good at. I don’t do my own home repairs. I don’t know how anything works -- like my car, for example. For all I know there’s an angel under the hood who makes it go.

But I’ve tried to use the skills I do have to accomplish two things: to promote our ideas to the general pub..................there is more but I'll stop now, and maybe you'll read some of the above.

[Dude111]

Danke Danke Carole........

I try not to hate........ Hate is a strong word and I dont like to use it....

[Penny Lane]

Good advice!

[PaperClips]

if you had time to type that wall of text you have too much time on your hands.

You said in another post it was important to be nice -just be nice. In reality, no-one cares about your opinions Or my opinions Do volunteer work, do something to help someone today, but if you think anyone cares around your writing your opinion on the internet - you are wrong. Nobody cares.

[Caroline13]

Originally Posted by PaperClips

if you had time to type that wall of text you have too much time on your hands.

You said in another post it was important to be nice -just be nice. In reality, no-one cares about your opinions Or my opinions Do volunteer work, do something to help someone today, but if you think anyone cares around your writing your opinion on the internet - you are wrong. Nobody cares.

Yes indeed I have a lot of time on my hand, into my 20 yrs of being retired...

And for helping others I've done plenty of that in my life, and now where I am I need help.

And you, help anyone????


Thanks for your kindness.....