RE: I Love Steemit AND Its Haters & Complainers
To me, it comes down to respect and love for fellow humans, even those with tragic expressions of unmet needs. Haters gonna hate and trolls are gonna troll. What I discourage is purposefully hurtful language. I'm a big fan of non-violent communication (see one of my first posts for more), and I think it can reshape the world to be a better place. When saying X or saying Y has a drastically different emotional response from person Z (and when we have some confidence of this, though it is admittedly a subjective measure and requires to actually know something about the psychological state of person Z), I think it's important to use X or Y based on whatever will be best for Z. And yes, sometimes people need tough love. I fully get that. They don't, however, need to be abused verbally (or otherwise) which some trolls/haters seem to enjoy. I'm not advocating for trigger warnings or any of the emotionally juvenile stuff we see on college campuses today, but I am advocating for compassion, understanding, and love, especially when people disagree. I'm advocating for us all to become more emotionally intelligent.
So why am I saying all this? I'm not advocating for Steemit to become some kind of "safe place," but I am hoping for it to be part of the world we all want to live in. If someone is abusive on purpose in order to emotionally harm someone else, again, on purpose, I'm just as happy for them to stay away.
100% agreed, on all of this.
Part of the value of people like me, and like you, saying things like "We love you all, haters!" is to also lead by example in showing proper perspective, healthy confidence, and real maturity.
There will be, for the forseeable future, always some kind of troll army, and to those who are not trolls -- but are sometimes easily affected by them -- the beacons of sanity and calm, intelligent strategy will encourage them to choose the higher path and move towards what they want, regardless of what the trolls are shouting.
Some people just feel threatened by someone else being able to be open and honest. They take that sense of threat to their own ideas and belief system and launch an attack. I've seen this in a lot of situations.
Sometimes I tend to rise to it. If I see someone being bullied and disrespected I have a bad habit of wanting to jump to the person's defense. Working hard on learning balance between supporting someone and just getting into a fight.
I think many empathetic people feel a need to jump in when they see an injustice happening. I like to call it support or solidarity rather than defending. I would like to see a world where we learn that we all have the ability to stand for what we are believing in at the moment, and that we don't need to do that at the expense of another. We don't ever have to choose to be victims. With all the words we could use, especially in written conversations when we have the luxury of time, we can start by choosing the words that are more emotionally neutral, re-read before sending, and ask ourselves would I be ok being on the receiving end of this comment?