I'm already re-visiting a previous blog post!? Have I run out of ideas this fast!? No... I just wanted to write about this while it was fresh in my head, and after I sobered up a little! So why don't we just get right down to it! While listening to the Nerdist Podcast yesterday (which I highly recommend...for those of you who care), I noted co-host Matt Mira's mention that he had been getting a lot of hate from people on the internet! Let's fill you in, if you don't know! Matt is a ... let's say "heavy-set" gentleman, who has of late, and surely to his credit, been making great strides in losing weight and living healthier and advancing his career in comedy! So, naturally, there would be a lot of hate directed at him by "the internet", because he's actually doing something with his life and he is a semi-public figure. I'm not saying it's right...in point of fact I think it's deplorable, as did his fellow podcast hosts. But I must admit, it is, in all its unfortunateness, to be expected! Anytime somebody in the public eye makes a mistake, they are publicly chastised for it... and likewise, anytime somebody in the public eye makes an attempt to better themselves, they are publicly ridiculed for it! In some circles this is known as a "crab in the bucket" mentality. Anytime one of the crabs tries to crawl out of the bucket, the other crabs pull it back down! Lord forbid somebody make anything of themselves and shine a light on how we fail on a daily basis! And the internet, with its veil of anonimity, is the perfect forum for people to try and get you down without being judged publicly and in person... like the crabs they are! But there is an upside to this phenomenon!
There's something to be said for people hating on you! Like Katt Williams says, "You need haters to make you stronger..without haters most people wouldn't try to become better." And if you have a certain mindset, that's exactly right! Remember when you were younger and somebody said to you "I bet you can't do 'that!'" What did you do? Immediately try to do exactly "that!" I can only imagine how many broken bones and bloody noses and bruises of all shapes and sizes and a wide variety of other injuries result from simple schoolyard challenges to jump over something or pick something up or throw something or race somebody, and so on and so forth! It's not always a bad thing to have people saying "you can't", if for no other reason than when you do, you can rub it in their faces! And that almost always feels good! In this way, Katt Williams' wisdom extends even further when he says, "If you have someone hating on you right now you better think of how to get five more people hating by Christmas." If you're doing well enough for somebody to try and get you down, make it so more people are trying to get you down... AKA Do Even Better!
So you see...one more Measure of Success is how many people profess to hate you and wish you ill! But...then again... that was likely part of the rubric for determining how successful you were for forever! I can imagine Machiavelli (the author, not the rap pseudonym of Tupac Shakur...which you're misspelling BTW) saying something similar in the 15th/16th century! "Those who decry their hate for thine very existence in a public square shall be held dear to thineself as a number which decry they be worse than thineself!" (Forget that he spoke Renaissance Italian and just go with the "Olde Timey-ness" of it!) So, in order to add specificity, let's say this : A Modern Measure of Success is how many people profess to hate you and wish you ill on the internet, whether via blogs/forums/message boards/tweets/ facebook posts...and even on MySpace!
I don't hate on the internet, cuz Lord knows I don't have my shit together! Until I do, I can only hope to one day be as "Internet Hated" as Matt Mira... at least you'll be reading this and everything else I'm writing... one would hope!
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