How to Piss off Critics and Get People to Love You

Something strange starts to happen once you make the decision to commit to something—an idea, a business, a challenge. Try as you might to make everyone like you, the opposite starts to come to manifest itself. Trolls, dreamzappers, and angry critics start to show up to derail your plans.

This usually happens after you start to get a little attention. In the beginning, you have to navigate the murky waters of finding your supporters amongst friends and family. Once you see a little success, though, even the friends that were hesitant to get behind you start to come around. Also, that’s when the haters show up.

They’re usually anonymous, never make it out of the red zone on the crankiness meter, and seem to have an endless amount of time to spend telling you how much they dislike you and what you’re doing.

It’s not all bad news, though; the phenomenon is a double edged sword. Yes, you have a whole new faction of devoted haters that need to be ignored, but they’re also a just a very small percentage of the people who are now paying attention to you. They swoop in after your success, making themselves the loudest of the bunch. Meanwhile, a silent majority of amazing, supportive people are standing in the background, ready to propel you even further forward if you ask them to help.

Indeed, having a small audience of haters is a good problem to have; it means you’re probably doing something interesting.

The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. As a general rule, I’m much happier to have a team of detractors to ignore than a world of people ignoring me. That’s a trade I’m more than willing to make. If you are or ever plan to follow your dream, it’s good to get comfortable with this.

Just like clockwork, any time Riskology.co gets a little attention from a major media source or big social network like Stumbleupon, I get an inbox full of hate mail. I affectionately refer to this as “payday” because, despite having to sift through a lot of really hurtful emails, it also means at least ten times as many incredible people are busy going through my archive, getting to know me.

If there’s one good thing to keep in mind during these times, it’s that many of your biggest fans and greatest supporters are also quite silent. They don’t send emails often, and they don’t always leave comments on your site. They’re just happy every time you do something and include them in it.

Sometimes it’s fun to play along and watch these trolls’ anger expand, but it’s not very productive. Other times, it’s totally depressing and makes you want to curl up into a ball and hide in your bathroom with a tub ice cream. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to make that very productive either. In both cases, you short-change your true fans and feed the trolls even more fuel.

The best answer, then, is also the simplest: stay the course.

Keep creating like you always have and let the cards fall where they may. If you’re doing it right, the scales will eventually tip in your favor anyway.

The only way to get more people to fall in love with your work is to simultaneously get more people to hate it as well because it tests their assumptions about who they are and how they think.

Keeping that in mind, here are nine of my favorite strategies for creating my best work possible, getting more hate mail and, of course, attracting more like-minded people that will support me when I occasionally do succumb to the bathroom-fetal-position-ice-cream-tub coping mechanism.

1. Create specifically for a small group of people.

When you pinpoint who you’re talking to and speak directly to them, you become a million times more useful, helpful, and interesting to that group. They feel like you really understand them. You also piss off some people who don’t fit into that group. Instead of just moving on like everyone else, they leave comments and write emails letting you know just how upset they are that you left them out.

Feel free to ignore them or let them know you can’t help, but whatever you do, don’t start creating for them. You can never make them happy and you’ll alienate the people who love you. The more hate mail you get, the better you’re probably doing.

2. Acknowledge critics, but ignore their negativity.

When you really connect with the right people and start getting hate mail from the angry mob, one of the best ways to really piss them off (and, incidentally, help them the most) is to kill them with kindness. Acknowledge that you can’t please everyone and even refer them to others with differing opinions from yours. They’re angry at you and looking for a fight. Best to help them out by referring them away.

For bonus points, send them to someone you don’t like. May God have mercy.

3. Try to be yourself.

Nothing will piss off your biggest critics like being undeniably and unapologetically authentic. The more real you are and the more comfortable you get with yourself, the angrier they’ll be that you’re not like them. It’s threatening and they’ll let you know it by writing angry emails and posting nasty things about you on their blogs.

You’re on the right track. Keep it up!

4. Do more of what they hate.

Sometimes your critics will be very articulate. They’ll write paragraph upon paragraph to you explaining exactly what you do that upsets them so much. If you want to become wildly popular with your tribe and get the additional benefit of really inflaming your critics, do more of that! Take what that small group of people loves you for and leverage it like crazy.

5. Be completely honest.

I cannot tell you just how upsetting it is to some people when you’re completely honest and constantly tell the truth. It feels so real that they’re only explanation is that you must be a liar and trying to put one over on them. They can see right through you! Of course, honesty is what will endear you to everyone else, so go ahead and stick with it to get the double benefit of great people that love you and pissed off critics.

6. Do something even remotely interesting.

You can be confident that if you ever decide to do something even remotely interesting, you’ll be going up against a small army of perpetually unsatisfied people that think you’re a) crazy, b) an attention whore, c) a fraud, or d) all of the above. You’ll also find a few people that find you inspiring and appreciate the encouragement you give them to do their own interesting things.

There is no sweet without bitter, though, so learn to appreciate the hate mail. It means you’re onto something.

7. Ask people what they want and give it to them.

What’s the best way to help people that support you? Ask them what they want and give to them. So then, what’s the best way to piss off your critics? Ask the people who support you what they want and give it to them. You see, no matter what length you go to help people, your critics will be happy to point out the flaws in anything you offer, even if those flaws were put there intentionally to keep them away! Never mind them. They’re not who you were trying to help anyway, and they’re not a good indicator of whether you were successful or not.

What are the people you’re actually trying to help saying about it?

8. Have an opinion about something.

“Opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got one and they all stink.” That was my physics teacher’s favorite saying in high school. Well, it’s kind of true. We all think opinions stink when they don’t agree with ours, but we love them when they do. When you stick your neck out and take a stand on something, you’ll find your supporters rally behind you. You’ll also find that your critics slay you for it. There’s no way to avoid it, so it’s probably best not to waste your time trying and watering down your true ideas.

If you never take a stand, you’ll be boring and they’ll slay you for that, too. With those as your two options, you might as well make your opinion known.

9. Sell anything.

If you have a knack for something and can help a lot of people by offering your expertise and experience, it makes perfect sense to create a product or service from it in order to support yourself. Let it be known, though, that your critics do not agree. They prefer to tear apart everything you do for free and having to pay for something to get mad about would be an inconvenience.

Luckily, if you keep your community in mind while you’re developing it, they’ll actually thank you for it and support you even more. Don’t worry about the critics. They won’t buy your stuff anyway, and if they do, they’ll complain about it. I recommend steering these people away as much as possible. They’ll cost you in the short and long run.

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Image by: Babbletrish