Dealing with hate on social media is like staying still in the middle of busy Times Square in New York. PHOTO| PHILEMON MAKINI
“How do you deal with all the hate?” people often ask me. “I
drink like a fish and cry myself to sleep” seems like the realistic
answer they expect, but that’s simply not the case. I don’t waste my
admittedly limited, and therefore precious, brain activity on the
opinions of random people on the Internet.
It’s not
just a coping mechanism, it’s a simple philosophy I have developed over
the last decade to explain the army of trolls in cyberspace. When I
started out on the idiot box barely out of my teens, I had modest
expectations of a conventionally acceptable level of success and not
much else.
What I didn’t sign up for was having to explain my life to strangers on the Internet for the rest of my life.
“If
you live for people’s acceptance, you’ll die from their rejection,”
Grammy winning hip hop star Lecrae’s book, Unashamed, admonishes.
I
didn’t know that at 20, obviously, but it is a painful lesson I have
learnt in the time since. It baffled me that even after I had overcome
crippling self-doubt just to claim my place in the world, I ended up in a
career with a deluge of disapproval. I dropped out of journalism school
for a long time but even if I had graduated before I started reading
aloud on the news, nothing would have prepared me for the coming of age
of cyberbullying.
NOT SEEKING VALIDATION FROM RANDOM PEOPLE
First,
it was about how I said my name, then how I looked, what I wore, what I
said, the colour of the sky and the unnecessary letters in the word
queue.
Even when I was making major strides
professionally, there has never been a shortage of people telling me how
much of a failure I am. When I was mixing with presidents and prime
ministers, Nobel laureates, global business leaders and award-winning
artists at the top of their game, there were naysayers telling me I was
nothing. Asking important questions, holding public officials
accountable and trying to untangle the issues that divide us, talkers
have always dismissed all of it as worthless. I could walk on water in a
true. modern-day miracle and people would still say it is because I
can’t swim, which I can’t, but that’s not the point. You can’t please
everyone in this line of work and you shouldn’t even bother.
I
am not seeking validation from random people on the Internet. There is
no amount of hate on my Facebook page that will make me change how I
live my life. You can call me every colourful name under the sun on
Twitter but none of them will force me conform to what you want me to
do.
Write every insult possible on my Instagram page
and I will still proceed on my own terms. Social media hate no longer
has any impact on me like the old adage: sticks and stones may break my
bones but words will never break me. Never underestimate people’s
capacity for malice, I tell friends who come into contact with the
online mobs. Strangers who have never met you but are happy to
aggressively attack you for no reason at all do not deserve your
attention, not even an acknowledgment.
I have been
judged constantly for the last decade and found unworthy every time but I
couldn’t care less. It hurt in the beginning because people who didn’t
know me were saying horrible things about me. I was just a kid trying to
make my way in the word and I didn’t know that human beings can be
cruel to others just to feel better about themselves. It was brutal, but
it taught me that I didn’t need permission from anyone to be myself. To
know me is to love me and those close enough already know that. I’m
doing this life on my own terms because I’m not trying to be like anyone
else. I don’t want to live according to your standards, your timelines
for what I should do at what age, and certainly not your demands for how
I should do my job.
People will tell you how you’re
nothing and you don’t deserve anything you’ve worked hard for. Ignore
them. They will try to shame you and criticise you into apologising for
living your best life now. Disregard them. Underachievers will project
their fears or shortcomings on you, jealous people will try to diminish
your accomplishments so they don’t have to confront their own failures,
bigots will try to beat you down with their prejudice so you agree with
them and zealots will ram their beliefs down your throat. I have an
Audience of One - God. He is the only one I’m trying to please. I don’t
judge my progress based on what the crowd is saying. Whether they’re
praising me or railing against me, I’m running my own race at my own
pace. Like a man standing still in the middle of manic Times Square, I
have found myself in the middle of the noise. That is how I deal with
the hate.
**********
HUGH HEFNER’S COMPLICATED LEGACY
Hugh
Marston Hefner, the founder of the magazine that preceded Internet
pornography by several generations, died last week at the age of 91. The
founder of Playboy lived an enviable life for many men, surrounded by a
bevy of beauties in a mansion, even though their exact relationship
with him was much too complicated to describe in a few words.
“In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined a sweeter life,” he once said and everyone groaned in envy.
“He
might have given money to some anti-racism causes, but the man was rape
culture’s mascot,” writer Luvvie Ajayi wrote. “Legacies are complicated
for sure, but let’s not erase someone’s bad deeds because they wrote
some checks.” Under that Facebook update, a user named Sarah S Nester
had an even better description: “He was a pimp with savvy marketing and a
knowledge of publishing with a little bit of class for the finer
things. If he were a regular pimp in a plaid suit, he’d be seen as the
pervert he is.”
In the early days, before people stopped reading magazines, Playboy featured lots of naked women and surprisingly good interviews with celebrities. He turned that into a multimedia empire but his legacy is much more nuanced and not everyone loved what he became.
In the early days, before people stopped reading magazines, Playboy featured lots of naked women and surprisingly good interviews with celebrities. He turned that into a multimedia empire but his legacy is much more nuanced and not everyone loved what he became.
*********
BOINNET’S REFUSAL TO APOLOGISE BAFFLING
I
watched inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet engage my boss,
Linus Kaikai, with growing bewilderment. On the question of whether
police used excessive force on University of Nairobi students, a first
year public relations student could tell you what the obvious response
is. “I would like to personally apologise to any UoN students who were
harassed and assaulted by our officers,” he should have said.
“The
matter is still under investigation but if any of them is found guilty,
we will take action against them according to our guidelines. Those
actions do not represent those of the philosophy nor the beliefs of the
police service and I condemn them fully.”
Casting
doubt on the veracity of the video of obvious police brutality was to be
expected, but refusing to take responsibility for an obvious breach of
ethics and evident poor judgement is just perplexing. How can we trust
him if he doesn’t even trust us?
Send your comments to Larry Madowo at lmadowo@ke.nationmedia.com
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