The word ‘hater’ sounds like it would come out a child’s mouth. It has a ring of the playground ‘my Dad’s bigger than your Dad’ about it.

There are people who write shitty things on the internet. They are angry, bored and maybe none too bright. But there aren’t ‘haters’.

Whenever you use a noun in place of a verb, you make a problem bigger. Think ‘relationship’ over ‘relating’.

If you use the label ‘haters’ to label people who don’t like your content, what comes to mind? An angry, baying, mob? An out-of control hoard? A mass of Proud Boys? These are strong mental images.

An image of a person in a dark, messy room, puce of face, with steam exploding out of their ears, writing a dumb comment doesn’t have so much impact. Even lots of sad, frustrated, angry people bashing away at their keyboards, trying to make themselves feel better, doesn’t disturb in the way that the mob images do.

The second paragraph is probable a more accurate picture of what’s happening. There are just people typing comments. Not gangs of marauding ‘haters’.

It’s a subtle difference, but see if it works for you.

Either way, whatever these people write, it’s not about you. It’s about them. Nothing is about you.

There will always be people who behave like this. It doesn’t matter whether you think they should behave like this, they do. And they always have done.

I agree that it’s not a pleasant experience. Someone told me ‘take my hate elsewhere’ because I commented on their post about how to diagnose narcissists based on their LinkedIn content. I said it wasn’t a very smart thing to do, and I was nice and constructive to boo