To extrapolate:
People often say that one should not worry about what others think of them, but life simply doesn’t work that way. What other people think of you really does matter; point-in-fact, it can be everything depending on what field you go into.
Like say, for example, you’re a business owner and you’re recorded arguing with an angry Karen of a customer, the video’s posted online, and the internet sides with the Karen. Then, people boycott your business and you’re left without a livelihood.
Or perhaps you say something crass and get cancelled. Or simply anger or inconvenience someone with a lot of influence.
Or, even more horrifyingly, say you were assaulted and you came forward, and were ostracized and shunned by your community as a result.
How could one set up their life such that it would be impossible for people like that to rob one of their livelihood? How could one make it impossible for others to shun or ostracize them?
How could a business owner set up their business so that other people couldn’t simply shut it down on a whim in such a manner?
EDIT: I’ll just “be myself” since that’s what the majority of people in the thread want and repeat what I said to another individual:
Honestly, the way everybody is acting is really, really shameful. I am a person who made a thread and gave it a [Serious] tag because I wanted serious, literal answers to a serious problem that, given my chosen career path, will affect me at some point in my life and could potentially ruin it without good info to prepare for such a crisis beforehand. But all I’m getting is denial, mockery, condescension, lies, put-downs.
And it’s rooted in this desire to either pretend the problem is not real because you’re all secretly afraid it’ll affect you yourselves, or it’s because you know it’s real but you view it as a positive because ostracization and shunning people is an emotional cudgel you wield to silence people you don’t agree with on the internet, and answering the question honestly would require framing such actions as a negative and that would make you question the morality of your actions. And that’s not only sick, that’s just cowardly. If you believe cancelling people is morally A-O good, then at least have the temerity to threaten me with a “Don’t speak your mind and mask up” response like at least a few people were honest enough to do.
But don’t insult my intelligence by thinking you can lie to my face and pretend that something I’ve been personally watching happen to other people for over a decade is not, in fact, happening.
Now I came here for a serious answer to a serious problem that affects everyone. If you can’t participate in good faith and offer meaningful strategies to avoid or fix such problems and want to either misconstrue it as an emotional issue – much as you’ll do with what I’m saying here after the majority of you demanded I just be myself and not worry about the consequences – or outright deny it’s a real problem when it’s been real for over a decade, just don’t participate in the thread. Just go elsewhere.
Okay, I just acted like myself. Everyone happy?
In almost every case, the best defense against this is to be a genuinely good person. Treat everyone with kindness and you will get surprising amount of support.
Like many imaginary worries (something that could, but hasn’t happened) the answer to how do I avoid this 100% isn’t just, “you can’t” but rather, “you shouldn’t”.
Imagine the similar question, “how do I make sure that there is zero chance of being harmed in a terror attack?” While the consequences are dire, the chances are very low, and the costs of avoiding it completely are far to high.
And this scales with the level of risk and consequences:
- do wear a seatbelt, don’t avoid all vehicles
- do check travel safety warnings, don’t avoid all travel
- do stay off social media while on booze and ambian, don’t lock yourself in a windowless cabin with no electricity
Ultimately, it’s (getting cancelled, rejected en mass, etc.) a new and very visable fear in the 21st century, but like a long list of worries, spending time trying to solve something that hasn’t and likely won’t happen, is a waste of our limited years here. Be a good(ish) person, live your life and IF rejection happens, do your best to deal with it as it comes.
🤔
It means you aren’t suited to run a public facing business. There’s nothing wrong with that, but speaking as someone with a lot of social anxiety baggage there are things I’m equipped to do well and things that I’m not. I shouldn’t let that stop me from opening a business if I really want to, but if I simply don’t want to deal with the social rejection elements I have to accept that I’m better off letting someone else run that side of a business.
As for the non-business elements of your question, all you can really do is conduct yourself in a way that you don’t believe you’ll find yourself regretting later. If you say something in a public place, especially online, consider it part of the public record. It can and will come back to bite you later. Assume your [morally positive family member here] is always watching.
better off letting someone else run that side of a business.
Good advice.
Assume your [morally positive family member here] is always watching.
You mean big brother, right? Had me literally laughing tears for over a minute 🤣🤣🤣
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don’t say or post something you aren’t willing to 100% stand behind
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don’t say or post something that you don’t want the whole world to hear
You still may say something unpopular and get canceled, but keeping these in mind I think will eliminate most of these opportunities.
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Have those examples even happened? I’m still not sure what cancellation involves and how long you need to be in that state before it counts as cancellation.
The internet told me Louis CK was cancelled, but he won a Grammy last year. Kevin Spacey has been cast in movies this year. JK Rowling is still publishing books.
It does, and it’s a possibility that terrifies me. A lot of the celebrities who are cancelled are cancelled for justifiable reasons, granted (especially scumbags like R. Kelly), but it can happen to ordinary people for unjustifiable reasons, too, meaning anyone who seeks to do anything in life has to live with a sword of Damocles hanging over their head. Meaningful relationships with others can’t be built if the dynamics of that relationship include the fact that that other person has untold, unchecked power over you and you have legitimate reason to be afraid of them, given that it’s a thing.
I want to own businesses in my life and even saying that has earned the ire of, by my count, at least one person in this thread. What’s to stop them from doxxing me and putting my personal information on blast all over the fediverse, or even old social media like Twitter, preventing me from ever being able to pursue my dreams simply because they don’t like capitalism? What’s to stop the right wing from doxxing me and sending me death threats if I gain a following and then speak out against them to that following, or boycotting my business because I put up a pride flag for Pride Month? How can community even be possible with the threat of something like that happening to you in existence?
As others have already covered, everything we do comes with risk. Some people go through life without spending much thought on those risks, and if they’re lucky they never have to deal with these things. Others let it weigh upon them heavily, and it’s fairly evident that you fall into the latter camp.
You’ve caught on to the general theme though, which is that the more of yourself you put out there needlessly, the greater a possibility for negative things to happen as a result of that. I’m not going to ask you to wave a magic wand and become the type of person who doesn’t worry about those things, so here are the best compromises:
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Quality over quantity with your friends. Find some good people you can be yourself around, and don’t stress over having fewer people that you hang out with than others. It’s not a competition and it doesn’t make you an inferior person.
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Minimize how much you “put yourself out there”. The internet wasn’t around 25 years ago, and when it was young it was common sense to use an alias on the internet wherever possible. Use different nicknames on different websites to minimize the ability of casual bad actors to link your identities between different social forums. The possibility of database leaks doxxing the e-mail address you signed up with is still there, but thwarting the low effort attempts does a lot on its own. You can go through the effort of registering with different e-mail addresses as well, but there is a point of diminishing returns here and you need to decide where to draw the line for yourself.
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Remove yourself from online discussions when it’s healthy to do so. Assert your opinion, clarify your points if they need clarifying, and move on. Turn off notifications once you’re past that point. Winning arguments on the internet is not realistically a thing that happens, and notifications on your mobile device from an argument will needlessly pull you back into a place of anxiety. Considering how little those mobile notifications contribute to your positive frame of mind, it’s best to be rid of them completely if you ever find them having a negative impact on your day to day life.
Edit:
- Put yourself out there when you feel strongly that it is important to do so. Some causes are worth weathering the consequences, and you shouldn’t let a fear of consequences completely cripple you when you feel strongly enough about something. Will your friends have your back if you stick your foot into it? Then go for it.
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You’re an NPC. Stop behaving like one and your fragile ego won’t be hurt.
What’s to stop them from doxxing me and putting my personal information on blast all over the fediverse
The fact that nobody cares. Which is what @livus@kbin.social said: https://feddit.de/comment/2037918
I’m not worried about my ego, I’m worried about my livelihood, my dreams and my life. It’s so easy to dismiss the problem by wrongly framing it as an emotional one instead of treating it like the real threat that it is. It’s a lot harder to acknowledge there’s a serious problem here that everyone, not just myself, has to worry about.
Ordinary people get cancelled all the time whether they deserve it or not, too, so we can’t reasonably just assume nobody will care. People clearly do.
It is an emotional problem. I own part of a business and it’s nearly impossible to “cancel” me.
As someone else said, perspective makes all the difference.
Ordinary people get cancelled all the time
Citation needed.
You must have been living under a rock the past decade then.
It is an emotional problem. I own part of a business and it’s nearly impossible to “cancel” me.
EDIT: Never mind, I know you’ll purposefully with-hold a straight answer because you think the fact that I am worrying about this is a moral failing on my part and you are trying to condition me to adopt your way of thinking. And that’s sick. It’s also a pretty good example of what I’m talking about so keep going
How do you avoid people boycotting or review-bombing your business en masse and still freely express yourself?
Simple rule in business: no sex, no drugs, no politics.
Well, I thank you for answering the question, at least.
You must have been living under a rock the past decade then.
You seem to have doomscrolled a lot. Our earth is inhabited by billions of people with millions of businesses and you’re thinking a few isolated cases mean you’re in danger of being cancelled 🤣
And this is where you lost me. It’s a very real and very easily observable phenomenon; you can do a quick search on Twitter or Google (such as they are) and see for yourself it’s a very real and very frightening phenomenon.
I’m sorry you don’t take the problem seriously, but don’t jump on me to make yourself feel better over it.
In a democratic society, there is no way to entirely “proof” yourself from consequences of your own antisocial actions like if you sexually assault people or something like that.
I think the answer to what you’re really asking is
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do not be in an industry where you are customer-facing or public-facing,
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and do not seek a public platform.
That will shield you from arbitrary and exaggerated mob type/snowballing behaviour, such as the Justine Sacco incident (in which a woman lost her job over an ironic joke about AIDS which fell victim to Poe’s Law).
Lol, aids
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If there was a way to do this, assault and rape survivors would have already used it to be able to come forward with their experiences (per your example).
This would have happened long before businesses had to worry about public perception on the Internet.
I def recommend a book called “so you’ve been publicly shamed”
It goes over how quickly things online get out of hand, how we used to publicly shame people 100s of years ago until we realized it was cruel and unusual punishment.
(Don’t get me wrong, we should def shame alt right racists and push them back into their hidey holes)
Honestly we need more education and emphasis on critical thinking skills. Until then, we’re all at the mercy of the dumbest among us with an Internet connection
You can’t rejection proof your life. You live in a society of people. Your freedom ends where the freedom of someone else begins.
The be yourself mentality is an illusion or a trap from liberalism. Liberalism pushes individualism to the extreme. To support individualism, people need the illusion of ultimate freedom, the illusion or the dream that you can do or be anything. But it’s not possible in a society, so a caveat is added: money and consumerism will allow you to be or do anything you can afford. But it’s still not true, it’s an illusion to keep you trapped in the illusion. Because you can’t get money by being or doing anything you want. Because you live in a society.
Second point : you cannot please everyone, because it is impossible, and because it will destroy you.
It is impossible because different people have different tastes, expectations and cultures. And those are often not compatible. You cannot please a white supremacist if your not white. You cannot please a misogynist if you’re a woman. You cannot agree with flat earther if you know some science. But you don’t need to. Worse, trying to please them would be harmful for you. These are extreme examples obviously.
Synthesis: what you want is to find your place in your society. You need to be comfortable with yourself, in a group of people who share your values, and abides to the society’s needs. You need the society, so you need to obey its rules. But you also need enough space to stay sound of mind, which is space and a place to be yourself as long as you’re not too much of an asshole.
You can sum this up with the idea that you need balance. Be yourself, but don’t be an asshole.
This is a quick and dirty writing on the topic. It would certainly need more words to detail some places.
Short of total isolation, you can’t.
You can’t control how other people react, as you’ve no doubt picked up. You can reduce the risk by controlling what they see of you, however. That doesn’t mean you should lie about who you are, but there are things that are better left unsaid. Don’t bring up embarrassing things to a new acquaintance, things like that.
Even POTUS makes gaffes. The problem for the holder of that office is that the consequences could be enormous, well beyond a single person’s ego or reputation. You could study what the president’s communications team does to avert damage and control it if it does happen.
You’re also getting advice worth the price you paid - free - so it’s probably not a good idea to get upset with people offering their opinions.
I generally recommend never using social media under your real name. And every business communication (where you need to use your real name) should only consist of bland and necessary stuff. A business, whether as big as Disney or just you, offering a thing from a website or food truck, simply does not need (and imo should not have and not pretend as if it had) values and political views.
The podcast blocked and reported often revolves around your question (or more around the drama after it happened), sometimes they also interview people who had it happened to them, or wrote books about it.
I cannot remember a specific episode now, there are so many. In one, a family-owned(?) bakery lost everything cuz they were falsely accused of racism.
Probably the most interesting and famous case that underlines that simply being a “genuinely good person” is not enough, is the one of Justine Sacco; the woman who tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” and then lost her job etc., almost got her whole life destroyed (she fine today).
While it may not be hilarious to everyone and kinda on the tasteless side, shitposting and making jokes should not destroy your life, so never do it under your real name!
Thank you for being the one person taking me seriously here.
You just chose not to listen to the others telling you similar things in words you like less.
Seconding this. OP seems very determined to avoid interacting with comments that don’t explicitly confirm their own worldview.
😊glad I could provide some balance to some of the weird answers you got here.
I tried to find the bakery episode, cuz it’s really crazy, but could not find it. But what I found is that it has more than just a happy ending ($36M payment, jesus fuck, I wanna get it happening to me in the US too!) 🤯
some of the weird answers you got here
Can you elaborate which answers you found weird and why?
Uh, pointing out comments and shaming them would now be kinda ironic, so I’d rather not elaborate.
You don’t need to shame them. Just explain what is weird to you.
The dumb fuck tankies found the thread and are harassing OP in exactly the same manner as they feared, which made OP blow a gasket and edit their post with a rant about it.
Simultaneously showing us that OP’s fears apparently are valid and why we don’t let dumb fucks who worship at the altar of genocidal foreign powers on our servers, at the same time. A double whammy of retardation
There’s a huge difference between not giving a shit what others think of you, and being a massive asshole. Being an asshole is chewing Karen out and getting caught on camera. Not giving a fuck is politely telling Karen that hers and your goals don’t align, and you don’t think you can do business with each other, and then moving on.
BUT, even if you do everything right, you can still get screwed, both in business, and personally.
Do your best to be a good person, treat everyone kindly, and live your best life. That’s the best you can do.
Don’t.
If you’re worried about being cancelled, the only thing you have to worry about is not being a cunt to people.
Decent people don’t get cancelled just because some Karen had a bad day, at most they’ll get some fairly minor Twitter bullshit that dies out fairly quickly, or there will be some unhinged motherfucker in your inbox that no one wants to back (feel free to call the cops on those).
What truly damns the people that get cancelled are their own actions, not some Karen with an overinflated sense of self importance. Their attempts to cancel people usually backfire because they think they have a cult of personality behind them, when what they really have are a bunch of people just getting entertained.
If you say something that gets misconstrued, explain yourself politely, understanding how this mixup could have happened. Those that are reasonable will back off, and those that still keep going just look unreasonable and not someone you’d want to back.
What happens when those that still keep going make up the vast majority of the population, including your customer base and/or employers?
What happens when people just lie and make shit up about you, and the population refuses to listen to the truth because the lie resonates with their political beliefs?
What happens when those that still keep going make up the vast majority of the population, including your customer base and/or employers?
They won’t. Most people don’t have time for that shit.
What happens when people just lie and make shit up about you, and the population refuses to listen to the truth because the lie resonates with their political beliefs?
Then these people were never going to help you anyway. Normal people don’t just up and believe anything they are told by some rando. They may however use it as pretext for discriminatory behaviour that was, realistically, going to happen anyway.
Normal people don’t just up and believe anything they are told by some rando.
Uh… MAGA? Trump? Alex Jones? Hello?
These people weren’t randos to their audiences. They spent quite a bit of time building their audiences and engendering trust before launching their attacks on democracy and sandy hook victims respectively.
If you’re worried about being cancelled, the only thing you have to worry about is not being a cunt to people.
If only it were that easy.
It…is?
Think about every cancelling attempt that didn’t fall flat on its ass. It isn’t as simple as some Karen lighting someone up on Twitter or FB.
Think about every innocent black person who was imprisoned and enslaved. They weren’t cunts to anyone; all it took to ruin their lives is some rich jerks not liking their skin color.
…that’s your comparison to getting cancelled? The slave trade?
Methinks you should sit down and actually think about the differences there.
My point is that it’s not enough to not be a cunt to people. They can and will hurt you in all manner of ways for all manner of reasons, many of which you can’t reasonably anticipate or control.
Okay, but you’re ignoring the scope of OP’s question, which is specifically how to avoid getting cancelled or otherwise socially rejected.
It is true that even acting as a good person, there are ways to get someone cancelled. However, not acting like a cunt reduces these methods to false allegations of rape or child abuse, something your average Karen isn’t going to be able to pull off without getting charged themselves for malicious false reporting. Whereas acting like a cunt widens the possibilities significantly for a) an opening and b) for it to stick.
Okay, but you’re ignoring the scope of OP’s question, which is specifically how to avoid getting cancelled or otherwise socially rejected.
Does that not qualify as “hurt[ing] you”?
However, not acting like a cunt reduces these methods to false allegations of rape or child abuse, something your average Karen isn’t going to be able to pull off
You kidding? “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The whole reason false accusations are so scary is because they’re easy to make, yet difficult if not impossible to disprove, and in the court of public opinion, the burden of proof is always on the accused.
without getting charged themselves for malicious false reporting.
Only if it’s reported to the police. If it’s posted on social media instead, the only thing the accuser has to worry about is being sued for defamation, and that’s only an issue if the victim is rich enough.
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You can’t, we live in a society, unless you’re prepared and able to live alone off the grid in secret. Get as good at being popular as you personally can be. When people say “be yourself” they mean be a polished, market-friendly version of yourself.
I’m not sure what all the drama in here is about.
Serious question for you OP and I ask it in a spirit of… possible solidarity? Anyway: I tend to word things clumsily, flub delicate social situations, and just generally put my foot in my mouth at the worst possible time. It’s worse in high pressure situations. Are you like this too, and if so, do you worry a lot about unintentionally sabotaging your livelihood or relationships?
