What Do You Do When People Don’t Like You?

I’ve been on the recieving end of some flack recently. It happens, from time to time, when you reach a certain level of success in anything. You cop the odd weirdo who emails you with a particularly gruesome death threat.

You cop one or two people who call you a C**t:

You cop dudes like Morgan Rock Loehr who write entire articles solely to parody and mock your own:

This guy’s a good writer. His stuff is funny, and I’ve enjoyed some of his pieces before. But these ones still hurt.

(Update — I’ve got peace with Morgan Rock Loehr, and I don’t want this to be an attack on him. He’s written very graciously here: https:[email protected]/dear-jon-5f1a96942de6#.f1qnlsfwn)

Reading these is going to suck.

Reading comments telling you that your writing is what’s wrong with the world, your arms should be cut off so you can’t write shitty articles with the left over bleeding stumps, and that you only write because you can’t get laid — it’s going to suck, and it’s going to hurt.

Reading people who send you DMs saying they hope your partner is raped because your writing sucks — that’s just fuck’n scary.

It’s also, unfortunately, going to be inevitable. Not everyone will enjoy your work. A lot of people will hate it. A lot of people will channel that hate into making themselves think they hate you.

Others won’t care enough to hate. They’ll just mock, point fingers and laugh. But it’s no less distressing and disappointing.

Everyone will make sure that their dislike is public.

Your first reaction is going to be anger.

You are going to want to find a way to hurt these people back. You’ll think about awesome comebacks, making fun of them in return, calling them names etc. All the things that we want to do when someone takes our work and uses it to hurt us.

But that’s not the way to respond. When you do that, you take on a new role. Instead of being a writer, an artist or an entrepreneur, you become a combatant. When you start swinging punches in the street, no matter how righteous you feel, sooner or later you look like a violent drunk asshole.

You can call them losers, but they’re probably not. They’re probably normal, professional people. You can say they’re jealous, and maybe they are, but you can’t prove that.

When you start slinging shit at people online, you lose respect. You lose a little pride. And you won’t find closure. Most people on the internet can give as good as they get. You won’t win this.

Your second reaction is going to be feeling kinda shitty.

You’ll get sad. You might ask yourself if it’s worth doing what you do. You might consider quitting and walking away. When you’ve been making shit for as long as I have, you’re used to dealing with these feelings, because you will always get them.

But that’s also the wrong reaction. Feeling sad, feeling upset because people don’t like your work, that’s natural but it’s a waste of time. Let me tell you about Wil Wheaton — this guy spent years being attacked, mocked, insulted and threatened simply because people didn’t like a character that he dedicated himself to playing on Star Trek.

And he didn’t let those attacks stop him from accomplishing things. His blog is huge, his following is huge, his writing inspires me and his acting is awesome. He’s a funny guy, who does great creative work. But he doesn’t let the shit get him down.

Wil is a guru for dealing with bullshit and keeping the course. This dude gets a lot more trash than you. He keeps going. You can too. Feeling sorry for yourself won’t cut it.

So what do you do?

• You vent. Privately. You keep a journal, where you write down everything you wish you could say to the people who don’t like your work. This is private, it’s not meant to be shown to anyone, and it’s a way to say what you’re thinking without getting caught in the shit.
• You ignore. This is easier said than done, I know. But it’s completely necessary. You have to ignore what people are saying about and to you, and focus on your own shit. Focus on being a better writer, running a better company, and making better things.
• You separate your work persona from your own. Try to put up a shield between the person you are online who is fielding attacks, and the person you are offline who has to deal with the emotional fallout.
• You write more. You make more. You succeed more. Trust me, it pisses people off.