A lot of us who write or perform are scared of haters—trolls, negative commenters, hecklers, one-star reviewers, and other bottom-feeders who just don’t like us and just can’t stand to see us succeed.
We’re so scared, in fact, that we don’t put ourselves out there. We can’t bear these cruel people who might not like our work.
In this terrible scenario, the haters win!
Haters are a reality. If you produce creative work of any kind and dare put it in front of strangers, the haters will be there sure as mosquitoes in summer.
You can try to hide in improv classes or writing groups where everyone is supportive, but you’ll ossify in those places if you aren’t also putting yourself in front of strangers. The true mark of success is entertaining people who don’t know you, don’t like you, and don’t care about you.
If you get dark, negative energy from people hating you, maintaining the sense of joy and playfulness you need to succeed can be difficult.
You have to get good at handling haters.
Here are 10 ways to deal with them:
Remember that Nobody Cares
This may not sound like a confidence booster, but it actually puts you in the right mindset to minimize any feelings of hate directed at you. The most common reaction you’ll get when you start putting your work out in the world is indifference. There are untold volumes of material unleashed on the world every day. Nobody can stay on top of it all. People have their own lives and their own problems. They don’t care about you or your work. They’re worried about themselves. That means you’re free to be yourself, have fun, and stop worrying about what other people think.
It’s About Them
Whatever’s going on with a hater, it’s not your problem. What kind of monster screams at someone or writes a negative comment about someone who’s just trying to have fun? It’s a person with emotional problems, that’s who. It’s a person who’s having a bad day, who needs help, who needs a hug, or who’s drunk. In any case, it’s a person who’s not worth listening to or engaging with. They’re alone in their sad puddle of emotional issues, and you’re in your own enlightened sphere of doing what you love, having fun, and not caring about them.
Accept Them
The sooner you can accept the reality of haters, the better. You don’t have to acknowledge them or respond to them, but just knowing they’re there and accepting their existence can give you power. It can give you a sense of calm to know they’re just part of the landscape. If you look at a beautiful scene with grass, trees swaying in the breeze, a clear sky, and a deer bounding over a picket fence, look closely and you might see a little turd on the ground. That turd is part of the scenery. We all know it’s there. You can focus on it and get upset, or you can enjoy the beautiful scene. Learn to accept haters the way you’ve already learned to accept that turd.
Celebrate Haters
You don’t want to enjoy someone else’s suffering, necessarily, but you are entitled to laugh at them. It can be fun. They’re putting themselves out there just like you are, so they’re fair game. Shutting down a heckler makes you look good. Continuing to move forward in the face of a one-star review of your book is the way a professional behaves. A professinoal laughs it off or uses it to their advantage. It’s a rite of passage. There might be a funny story in it.
Love Haters
This is a Jedi-level strategy. These people are hurting, and you’re allowed to have empathy for them, just like you might have empathy for a child with Tourette Syndrome melting down at Costco and yelling at you. You don’t have to comfort them or soothe them—that’s going too far—but you’re absolutely elevated by feeling concern for your fellow human who’s having a bad day or a sad life.
Never Give a Heckler the Mic
The mic is power. You need to keep it. The best policy is to ignore them. (They usually go away on their own.) Or, if you have a good comeback, shut them down quickly and efficiently. Move right along and don’t let them take over your show.
Develop a Thick Skin
The more haters you get, the less they’ll affect you. Think of it as reps. When you start out, a single hater might hurt. That’s you going to the gym for the first time. You might be sore the next day. The next time you get a hater, it’ll hurt less. And so on.
Develop Confidence
The more confidence you have (which you get from repeatedly putting yourself out there, doing more work, and getting more experience dealing with haters), the better your work will be and the less haters will hurt you. Unshakeable confidence will make you impervious to any kind of hater or negative comment. Whether you’re performing or writing, audiences want you to be confident. They want an entertainer to be at ease, a master of their craft. They want to know they’re not squandering their precious time and attention on an amateur. They want to be spellbound, taken by the hand, and walked through a beautiful garden of delights.
One Hater = 50 Fans
Here’s a good reason to celebrate haters. If you have a hater, that means you have 50 fans. This is a ratio you can bank on. When you first start out, you’ll attract a handful of people who like you. They might be your friends or other people you know. These “likers” will accumulate at a 50-1 ratio to haters, and you won’t actually start to get haters until you have about 50 solid likers. When you get a new hater, enjoy the warm, cozy feeling that comes from knowing you now have 50 people who like you! “Every time a troll rings, an angel gets its wings.”
If you Have More Haters than Likers, Retool
There’s something wrong if more people hate you than like you. It’s time to appreciate this excellent constructive feedback, take stock of what you’re doing, and retool your work from scratch.
Have fun!
A troll rings me and Dikkers swoops in like an angel with this post! Very helpful, thank you so much.
Really good advice. I love the idea of developing confidence, loving the haters and maintaining control. A hater is often a bully, and a bully can't stand to be punched back or ridiculed. Having fun with it is always fun to watch, even though a heckler, like other bullies, is suffering his own private pain. When you're online, you get a lot of drive-by haters, and I have a "one strike and you're out" policy with them. The block option is my friend, or as we say in Tai Chi, "remove the target and lead them into emptiness."