The Great Acting Blog: “Dealing With Haters”
Haters. That rather sad and lonely section of our society. They have received a boon in recent years with the rise of social media: they can use a false name, invent a profile for themselves and display an anonymous pic and harass anyone, anywhere, with their special venom reserved for those who try to accomplish something remarkable. Haters are people slowly rotting in the acid of their own bitterness, they’re hung-up on what might have been and have an uncanny knack of taking everything personally. You needn’t be overly saddened by them once you understand that their efforts to cut you down are only a desperate attempt to increase their sense of their own self-worth (because of course, they couldn’t do that by actually accomplishing something remarkable). They are driven by resentment and personal dissatisfaction. They despise those who think for themselves, who have the courage to draw their own conclusions, those who create and envision instead of those who simply carry out orders.
The first step in dealing with haters, is realising how time consuming they can be. If one of them comes at you (in cyberspace or in reality) don’t get sucked in. Don’t  let them turn your mind away from your objectives. Remain focussed. This is not the easiest thing to do when you feel as though you’ve just been slapped in the face with a custard pie, but it is essential otherwise you’ll be blown off course.
They say the best way to get over a betrayal is to not commit one yourself when the opportunity arises. The same is true of haters: if you’ve suffered at their hands, the best thing to do is not become a hater yourself. How easy and soothing it might be to lash out and even the score. But lashing out doesn’t even the score, infact, the reverse is true: you were winning until you did that, and in so doing you lost focus on your objective. Lashing out signifies that you just lost, losing focus is defeat.
Ignore the haters, stay focussed on your goals.
talya2312/ 20.09.2013
I think since the internet and social media has now become part of our daily lives, all the hater/trolls have come out of the wood work. All you have to do is just look at YouTube and IMDB or even Facebook and all you see is hate hate hate. I never quite understood the motive of haters. I mean I know their objective is to spread hate. But why put so much energy into hating some? I mean they spend hours and hours trolling and hating on something or someone and getting into stupid argument with someone that they have never met and probably will never meet in their lives. Why not spend hours on something or someone you love? For example, I am not a fan of Justin Bieber nor One Direction, but it would be pretty stupid of me to troll their videos and forum saying how much I hate them and then going to their concerts and booing them. I think your blog post about script-writing really brought out the haters in full force.
James Devereaux actor/ 20.09.2013
Yes, passionate and insightful comment, Talya, many thanks.
I don’t really understand why they spend so much time and energy doing it. I think it comes from a need to cover their own feelings of inadequacy lonliness and just having too much time on their hands.
chicagoworksinprogress/ 20.09.2013
Reblogged this on Works In Progress.
Daniel Jude Gennis/ 22.09.2013
If only you had wrote this last year, you would saved me a world of hurt. I had a falling out with someone last year and endured several months of their venom via Twitter and Facebook. I was becoming a hater myself until a really good friend, spotted the whole thing on Twitter, did some research, and told me this person was really offensive and was pulling me down. Once I stopped responding to their bile, they continue until eventually they stopped altogether and just disappeared back into the shadows.
James Devereaux actor/ 22.09.2013
hi Daniel,
Sorry to hear that you’ve been through it, but glad that it is in the past. That’s the thing, once you ignore these people they just evaporate.
Daniel Jude Gennis/ 25.09.2013
Indeed they do James. I recently discovered the hater I had
to deal with not only hardly uses Twitter anymore but has deleted
many of the hate-filled comments they used to publish
there.