how to be hated on

ok so we have established that “everyone” (if you don’t feel spoken to, remember that I might not be speaking to or about you) wants to be an influencer.

you cannot be influential without having attention on you (if no one cares, no one cares!), repetition (some kind of thing that creates your recognisability, it can be smart thoughts but you can also just be known for being hot, repeatedly!), discourse (where something that you brought to the table is now being discussed at other tables and you might not have a chance to participate in the conversation) and mythology (lore!!!! you have to have some myth around you for the conversation not to die down). if you get lucky, your haters participate in all four-

your haters, critics, sub tweeters, are very much unpaid historians of your mythology, of your clout, of your rise to whatever online popularity you hope to achieve. you are nothing without them and on good days you can appreciate them and on bad days you want to never be seen, discussed, gossiped about by another human being ever again. letting go of the need to controlling the narrative is extremely hard, and I often do not manage it.

I have a million thoughts on this but I will try to organise my thoughts properly-

maybe you are a writer, a designer, a freelancer of any sort, another influencer, and we could universally agree that it would be wonderful if everyone liked us. the reality is, though, as soon as you put yourself or your work out there into the world, physically or digitally, it will not resonate with everyone. did you ask for feedback? I certainly do not, but that doesn’t stop anyone to dissect my on twitter or forums in their free time or even dm me their long thoughts about my latest outfit post. if you wonder what is missing from people’s lives (or brains) that drives them to spend their precious time on earth bringing you down (while promoting you, which certainly isn’t their motive but the outcome of circulating your name), you will die wondering. I struggle with anxiety in my life, and much of it translates into a struggle of control. trying to control my thoughts, my day, people in my life, and I find giving into the unknown very hard. so having built my precious personal brand that is “brendahashtag” over a decade, it is extremely hard to accept that it has outgrown my control. proving to strangers, or worse, to private accounts, that you are a good person, deserving of love, is a losing game.

I personally do think, if there is irritation attached to my reaction to seeing someone post or talk about me negatively, that means I could use a little reset. self love is a journey as we all know, and if someone catches you in the wrong moment, it might show you that you need to take a step back and reflect, decide how much power over your day you are giving to a loser. and the losers, those you have hurt souls and try to take that out on others, will thrive off of your attention. they will also insist they aren’t losers.

someone obsessively posting about why a person is irrelevant, paradoxically, is producing evidence of their relevance. if you go through a list of people you look up to, people who have achieved great things, people who have achieved something culturally significant, they all have attracted controversy, disagreement, detractors. the bigger the achievement, or just the bigger the platform, the more visible a person (or their work) is, the more projection is created. and why not let people project onto your work, or your person?

having haters definitely isn’t proof of greatness, but greatness almost inevitably produces haters. (“people hate me, so I am important” is not the right angle here!)

for my work, I wanted to be a household name, impossible to ignore, being part of zeitgeist and conversation around fashion, and that comes at a price. do I find it hard to not clap back, to not cuss people out about how much of a waste of their time hating is? sure, but you’re talking to a brick wall. this sounds delusional but I really see heartbreak, missed opportunity, missed direction in life when I see the haters, there is some empathy there for them, not matter how ugly their words are. I truly see them as broken souls. not the people who offer a different perspective to what I have to say, the people who truly have hatred in their hearts and spend hours obsessing over people who are thriving.

everything I am telling you in this text is stuff that you already know. the better your life, the stronger your friendships, the more you focus on achieving your goals, sleep right, eat well, move your body, do something good for someone and not expecting anything in return, a clean home, fresh air, less screen time, more creative outlets-

anyone could say anything about you and it won’t hurt you while you have your ducks in a row. one of my worst moments online, where I had people who I’ve never met make videos about me, my family, spreading awful lies about me, I was on vacation introducing my boyfriend to my family, barely on the phone, and nothing bad happened at all. I didn’t watch the videos in full, but I reposted some of them lol. a decided my reply would be a text in print for i-D magazine a year later. I am sure some haters bought the physical copy-

and honestly it was kind of like the problematic tweet I showed you at the top, these things simply didn’t exist in real life. I have never met any of my reddit warriors in real life, maybe I sit next to them in fashion shows, but their hate doesn’t exist in a physical form. have you met yours?

the internet can be a scary place, and I wish I could only talk to my audience that supports me and gets it, but if you never get exposed to anything else, that equals no growth. every few months I get some motivation to post on tiktok, usually it turns into my once a year viral moment, which is fun at first, and then a nightmare and I delete the video and whatever I was talking about. there is a tipping point usually (hello malcom gladwell!) and you go down the “wrong” pipeline, and it’s all tits up from there. but I think that’s also where you can loosen up a bit. you can decide to leave things up and gain the followers, I decide this didn’t happen. it’s gone, where are you gonna post your angry comments now? idk, but not on my page. I am also a big believer in blocking. “she can’t take the hate!!!!”, yeah, sure, you’re right. “she can’t take criticism!!” also true. you are a stranger to me.

so, I still didn’t really get to the helpful stuff. how to practise detachment.

I don’t need to manage other people’s version of me.