People have asked me over and over again how I deal with haters. Truth be told there is not a one fits all method. It’s highly dependent on how they try to hate me. I don’t react or argue with online haters for example. Why would I? I assume that I’d be arguing with some guy who lives in his mom’s basement and doesn’t have anything better to do. I know better ways to spend my time and so do you. Or at least that’s what you should try to do. But there are always those people who hate on you in person. Some people just can’t help it I guess. They have deep-rooted hate towards a person for some dumb reason that’s only logical to them. I have a couple of haters like that, I can assure you that they bring entertainment to my life.
Now before we dive into this blog post I want to make one thing clear. Someone that disagrees with you isn’t a hater. Well as long as they can have a proper debate of course. I have friends who have different points of view on things. We just agree to disagree, as adults do.
How to deal with haters the proper way.
What you’re about to read is a conversation that took place some months ago when I bumped into a hater at a party. We have friends in common so I started talking to my friends. After a while, the hater got annoyed by me (maybe a lack of attention, I don’t know) and took a verbal swing at me.
hater: You think you’re amazing don’t you?!
Me: How do you mean think?! I know that for a fact.
hater: You see, this is what I mean.
And the hater walked off while the others laughed because they know me.
Do you see what I did here? Can you guess why this is so effective?
Let me break it down for you.
A breakdown of how to deal with haters.
There are some things you need to realize. There will always be people who hate you and try to bring you down no matter what. Some people are threatened by the progress you’re making in life, others just don’t like you for some weird reason, others are jealous of something you have and so on… There are numerous reasons why people turn into your personal haters. Way too many to write them all down. So let’s focus on what happens when they try to attack you personally.
Attacks will always be personal and the intention is to make you look bad in front of people. They have this weird narrative in their head that everything is bad about you and they’re out there to prove it to themselves. These people need help, a hobby, and maybe a good bang. All of the 3 might help as well.
So you get attacked and you have 3 options. You can:
- defend yourself
- insult them as well
- be proactive and dismantle the whole situation
What you shouldn’t do and why.
Don’t go on the defensive.
Never defend yourself when someone takes a swing at you. There’s no point since they will find something that proves them right even if the evidence proves them wrong. It also just makes you look weak. You’re on the defensive and they’ll keep on attacking you. They will never acknowledge you for who you are even if they’re presented with the facts. In psychology, they call this cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. (source)
So a person with certain beliefs will do everything to hold on to those beliefs even if evidence proves otherwise. I can assure you that the illogical ways of changing reality to fit their narrative make sense to them. The creativity of those people amazes me to this day. If they would only use that creativity in a better way…
There’s not a lot of money to be made in hating on people you know. Probably not the best for your happiness either.
The creativity of the illogical hater.
So imagine that you save the world from an alien invasion and solve global warming. That would be an amazing thing right?! Well, a hater’s logic might assume that you caused the invasion and global warming so you could then solve it to save your image.
I’m aware that this is an extreme example but look at this real-life example of how the theory works.
Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult which believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members). (source)
The funny thing is that I understood how illogical it was while still making some kind of sense. They so committed that they will do everything to protect the dogma (it’s not even a belief anymore at this point). And that is why you avoid dogmatic movements. Them vs us movements. More on that in a later blog post.
don’t insult them either.
Insulting them doesn’t solve a lot either. It might be easy to do but then you just get into a dumb conversation in which you insult each other. This might also what they want.
Those 2 options will rob you from precious time, they’ll make it awkward and it won’t make you happy. It’s just a huge waste of time. The thing you have to realize is that they want to prove that you’re a horrible person.
So defending yourself or insulting them is a signal to them that hit you in a weak spot. Which somehow feeds their narrative they have about you. Their logic goes as follows: I insult the person and the person takes it personally so it must be true.
It’s like I said before. I have a hard time imagining that you can hate a person from the bottom of your heart. Life experience has taught me differently though. I have a build-up my little hate club by now and the crazy thing is that I have no clue how I did it…
Allegedly…
Enter the third option: not giving a flying fuck.
So we know what doesn’t work but what works? Just acknowledge what they claim but give a little twist to it so that it sounds absurd. As I did in the example. The situation never escalated and the person walked away. Their goal is to get a conflict avoiding it is the way to go. They can’t say a lot when you’re saying “you’re right, so what?!”. I just turn it into a joke because of my playful personality. Doing that will make the haters go away. The people around you will realize that it’s a joke, even the ones that don’t know you. Even some of the haters might realize how absurd they are.
I acknowledge what you say and by doing that you have nothing to say anymore. Case closed.
In conclusion: haters.
People have opinions about everything and everyone. They see their opinion as facts and those “facts” are built on poor foundations. Sometimes they even hate someone/something because of their friends. Because why would you have your own opinion if you can look cool in front of them?! I’m not even kidding this happens among adults.
So what you have to realize is that everyone has an opinion about something. That doesn’t make it right.
So just acknowledge what they say or exaggerate so that it’s a joke. They won’t see the joke but they will stop attacking you. It’s a win-win.
Some examples to end the post
- Hater: you’re the worst person I ever met.
Me: Can you introduce me to number 2? We could become best friends. - Hater: I like to call you stupid.
me: I always knew you were my biggest fan. Do you want an autograph? - Hater: All of my friends hate you as well.
Me: So you started a fan club for me? How nice of you! - Hater: gives off a huge rant of how horrible you are.
me: could you give me a summary, please. You lost me before you started.
You get the drill right?! I wouldn’t take them too seriously and you might as well have fun dealing with them.
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Till next time
Alex
