Verbrauchermeinung: Liza Koshy

Freitag, 12. Oktober 2018

When haters leave mean, cruel and disgusting comments (opinion)

How would you feel if strangers commenting on you and your work tell you in front of the world and using the most abusive and mean words how ugly you were, how much they hate you, and that you should go and kill yourself? That is what social media influencers and others whose work is visible in public have to deal with daily. But who are the haters? And how to handle them?

Tati Westbrook, a makeup-artist, beauty-influencer and actress, born in Seattle/Washington, now living in Los Angeles, this week tweeted about incredibly mean and cruel things haters had said to her in comments, like that she was old and ugly and how she deserves the health issues she has etc. These comments were really hurtful to her. The haters that had left them in the comment section of her YouTube channel are probably fans of a makeup brand and now at war with her because they did not like her review on the makeup products (!!!). Can you believe it?!

Tati Westbrook in the meantime made a video about the situation and what the direct consequences will be on her YouTube channel: I am done being quiet!

Social media influencers, creaters, artists, entertainers, bloggers/journalists etc. want feedback on their work, this is why they invite people to communicate with them in social media, e.g. to leave comments on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc.

Positive feedback and supportive words of cause make everyone feel good, fair comments (positive and negative) help to improve what people do and how they do it. But hateful uninformative comments that are supposed to hurt do not help anybody - and the same goes in my opinion for lies, unproven accusations used to make a person look evil.

Oh wrong, actually hate comments and insinuation tell a lot about the person who spreads them: the person is obviously very unhappy, lacks clearheadedness and the ability to normal communication, and sometimes is just a child, teenager or other immature person seeking attention, lacking a decent role model and can easily be manipulated by others (and maybe is used by competitors or enviers).

How influencers address the situation with the haters and alike (examples)

Some influencers, creaters, artists etc. have a huge supportive following but since a pin in the matress hurts no matter how beautiful the bed is, day by day hate hurts people and wears out the creativity. Some of the influencers and others receiving hateful comments do not read their comments anymore to be mentally able to continue their creative work. Others try to read selectively and ignore the haters' comments, and some disable comments or hire staff to read the comments for them, summarize things up, write a report and forward only chosen comments to them.

Influencers, YouTube creators, artists, journalists etc. cannot spend their time trying to convince each hater to behave better but some of them address the topic in their YouTube videos.

Liza Koshy, a YouTube creator, entertainer, actress and TV host from Houston/Texas (USA) now living in Los Angeles, makes fun of the haters in her video.
Reading Mean Comments (Youtube, Liza Koshy)

Jeffree Star, influencer, singer-songwriter, makeup creator and businessman from California (USA) and still living in the Los Angeles area, also makes fun of them using ASMR.
Reading Brutal Hate Comments in ASMR (YouTube, Jeffree Star)
ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (here is a blogpost about ASMR in German)

Furthermore, many influencers, bloggers, journalists etc. get racist hate comments.

Lilly Singh, a YouTube creator with her own production company, actress, author, model and Unicef embassador, is the daughter of immigrants from India. She is Canadian and grew up in the Toronto area, now she lives in Los Angeles/California (USA). In the following video Lilly gives the haters a ~~roasting~~ lesson.

A Geography Class for Racist People (YouTube, IISuperwomanII)

What do you think:
Should YouTubers and others delete hate comments and block the haters on their channels?
Should fans come to the rescue - but how to do that without fueling the hate and its spreading even more?

There is more to read