Engaging in political discussion and posting opinion pieces on the Internet, as I have for the past few years, is the proverbial double-edged sword. On the one hand, having people read and appreciate what you write provides validation and satisfaction, for the arguments you make, for the form in which you make them, and for the courage to make them. On the other hand, posting your ideas and thoughts in public opens you up to rebuttal, criticism, scorn, derision, and hostility. The first two, properly thought out and presented, should be welcomed and embraced. The latter three, oftentimes unwarranted or baseless, are a price that must be paid.
Consider this depiction of a man and a woman riding a donkey, shared recently by a friend. A comment “Two people on a donkey’s back! Poor animal!” is offered. It then depicts the man on the donkey with the woman walking, with the comment “How cruel he is by letting his wife walk!” Next, it depicts the man walking and the woman on the donkey’s back, and “How stupid he is by letting his wife take the ride alone!!” Finally, it depicts both the man and the woman walking next to the donkey and “Fools, don’t even know how to utilize the donkey!!”
The message? Someone’s always going to have something negative to say. Or, in urban slang, “Haters gonna hate.” This message can be taken as a lament or a warning, but it is, at its core, a liberation. Once we recognize that some people are going to criticize no matter what we say or do, we know that no degree of perfection in what we say or do will prevent that from happening, and we know that some criticisms need not be considered or even acknowledged.
Consider the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Baseball Writers Association of America nominates and votes every hear to admit retired players, managers, etc to the Hall. In its 79 years of history, 310 have been admitted. None have been admitted unanimously. Only 5 have received 98% or more of the vote. Tom Seaver, the man with the highest induction percentage ever, didn’t receive 5 votes. As it turns out, 3 of those 5 non-votes were protests against Pete Rose’s suspension and one was due to recovery from open-heart surgery. The one vote without an excuse? The voter, as a personal rule, didn’t vote for first-year eligibles. Look at the balance of the top vote getters, and you’ll find similar circumstances. Time and again, we find one or more voters that made it about himself rather than about the player. Some came up with elaborate rationalizations, others made it clear that they felt no one should get a unanimous vote. Mariano Rivera, the recently retired Yankees relief pitcher, is undeniably one of the greatest to ever play the game. No one can rationally claim that he does not belong in the Hall of Fame, and there’s speculation that he may very well be the first to get 100% of the vote. If I were a betting man, though, I’d bet that some self-important asshole will equate 100% with a declaration that he’s the greatest player in baseball history, and therefore will withhold his vote.
Do we grant the voter who withheld his vote from Seaver, or the theoretical but probable voter who’ll vote against Rivera despite his utterly obvious deservedness, a moment’s legitimacy? No. They are assholes, who are looking to make the vote about themselves rather than about the player. So it goes with Internet critics. Not all responders warrant consideration. We are under no obligation to presume all critics have credibility, we have no duty to grant them the power to hurt our feelings or make us doubt what we say or write, we need not empower them by granting even the possibility that their negativity has validity. This stands in contrast to the content of their responses. If a response has legitimacy, that legitimacy must stand on its own. In other words, the act of responding means nothing, it is the quality of the response that matters.
Many people, however, and especially many newcomers to Internet debate, do grant power to the negative responders. Putting one’s beliefs out in public can be emotionally perilous, especially if those beliefs are still developing and maturing. Getting attacked can be intimidating and painful. While self-doubt is vital for individual growth, too much makes one vulnerable to browbeating and cause one to shrink back from sharing opinions in the future. This is the effect that the hater seeks – to intimidate us, to put us on the defensive, to deter us from putting forth our opinions and beliefs. A free society is a marketplace of ideas, and public sharing of those ideas is vital to the growth of that society. There are those, unfortunately, who dislike the sharing of ideas they don’t agree with, but either lack the ability or the desire to challenge those ideas. So, they resort to attacks, intending to stifle future sharing. This is abundantly evident in the countless stories coming out of today’s college campuses, where open debate has become nearly extinct because some have chosen aggressive and oppressive tactics over rational rebuttal.
In his memoirs, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau noted that, when he found out that Richard Nixon had called him an asshole on Nixon’s private tapes:
I had been called worse things by better people.
That is how we disempower haters. That is how we take away their power to affect us, to alter how we behave, what we write and how we think. A stranger does not deserve your consideration if first contact is unwarranted negativity or unjustified criticism. Certainly, take measure of that first contact, and give it a fair chance, but if you find it wanting, dismiss it and don’t look back. Don’t grant respect when none is given. Don’t grant a degree of goodness to responders until one is demonstrated. Don’t presume a stranger’s words have more, or even the same, merit than yours. Above all, don’t let hating, or the fear of it, daunt you from sharing your opinions.
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