Crazy thing is you’re building something.
You’re creating content and growing your audience, hell. Like many of us. You’re trying to make a living from your ideas and work.
But then…
Some miserable piece of shit crawls out from the internets sewers to tell you that you’re either a fraud, scammer or worse.
Welcome to the internet. Where broken people tend to get together and tear down anyone who dares try.
The thing is, fundamentally they’re incredibly unhappy with their own lives, so they make it their life mission to drag everyone else down to their level of misery.
They see someone building something and I mean it could be anything, which indirectly reminds them of their own inaction, cowardice and their failure to create anything meaningful. So they attack cause it’s so much easier to tear down than to build up.
These aren’t successful people taking time out of their busy lives to critique your work. These are basement dwellers whose greatest achievement is reaching level 50 in whatever video game is currently consuming their existence.
(Don’t get me wrong. I like a little video game action here and there…)
They have no audience, no business, no creative output of their own and on the surface they’re just consumers who moonlight as critics.
They target creators because creators represent everything they’re not.
They’re not brave enough to put themselves out there, disciplined enough to create consistently, resilient enough to handle criticism and keep going anyway. Cause we know how hard and exhausting it can be most of the time. It’s something they’ll never fathom.
The troll’s psychology is simple. If they can’t build, they’ll destroy. If they can’t create, they’ll criticise. If they can’t succeed, they’ll make sure everyone else fails too.
They hide behind fake profiles and anonymous usernames because they’re cowards. They punch up at people who are actually doing something while contributing absolutely nothing themselves. They mistake cynicism for intelligence and cruelty for honesty.
Every minute they spend attacking you is a minute they’re not spending building their own thing. Every nasty comment is proof that they’d rather be a spectator than a player. Every attempt to tear you down is an admission that they’ve given up on themselves. Which all in all is pretty damn sad if you look at it from an empathetic lens.
Don’t let broken people break your momentum. Don’t let people who’ve never built anything convince you to stop building.
Best thing to do is block them and delete their comments cause if you interact with their negativity, it’ll slowly bleed into your own output.
Stephen Walker.