[Serious] How can a person "rejection-proof" their life?

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?

Tigwyk,
@Tigwyk@lemmy.vrchat-dev.tech avatar

How could one make it impossible for others to shun or ostracize them?

When you figure it out you can sell it to Elon Musk for billions.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

🤔🤔🤔 Okay, now that I am done slapping the shit out of alt-right dipshit .worlders and the other knuckledraggers taking advantage of the situation to bully you, OP, allow me to throw in my two cents.

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?

This is the main question and the answer’s honestly pretty simple: achieve financial independence, buy some land and start a farm somewhere, and spend your golden years in peace and watch the sun set with your doggos. Or kitties, if you’re a cat person. Maybe some cows, pigs, sheep and horses too.

In the meantime, your best tactic, and the one that stands the best chance at getting what you apparently want, to have riches and be well-liked, is to simply force other people to accept you. When people cancel you, they’re doing it to fulfill a goal: to drive you away from the society, and the best way to combat that is to stand your ground and when applicable, fight back. Sue motherfuckers left and right for defamation if they lie and make shit up. Refuse to shut your doors if they try to boycott your business and appeal to members of the other dumb political tribe in your community to drive up sales. Get insurance and build an emergency fund for just such an occasion. And most importantly, be willing to tell people to fuck off when they violate personal and business boundaries, stand your ground and give them a taste of their own medicine whenever you can – record them threatening you or trying to hurt you and post that shit online, be willing to play victim, ally with their enemies, air their dirty laundry, pay off influencers to talk shit about them, and do everything possible to destroy them.

You want to run businesses. That’s corporations, that’s politics. That means you need to nut the fuck up and get your hands dirty.

Why even are you trying to start a business? What’s the end goal here?

MiddleWeigh,
@MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world avatar

Just come to terms, probobly through traumatic events, that all life is is rejection. Then there is no rejection. There all done!

SighBapanada,

What you think of others matters equally as much. Be a good person and be careful who you surround yourself with. Be descerning of different groups of people and their beliefs/values/culture. Being rejected by a group of bigots is a good thing, and you wouldn’t want to be embraced by them to begin with. There are countless historical examples of individuals led astray by group-think, so don’t be too concerned what multitudes think of you. It all depends on context, and wanting to be “rejection proof” might signal too much interest in one’s reputation, although I’m not accusing you of that.

blazera,
@blazera@kbin.social avatar

Silly, business owners dont argue with their customers, they dont work there.

darthfabulous42069,

🤔

CurlyWurlies4All, (edited )
@CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net avatar

Don’t be a business person who lives to exploit workers and fuck over the world.

Don’t be surprised when the moral code you live by that is founded entirely on the exploitation of others means the exploited need little reason to cheer on your downfall.

DogMuffins,

You just see the world this way because you’ve been exploited.

Plenty of small businesses treat their employees very well, or don’t even have them.

CurlyWurlies4All,
@CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net avatar

Being treated nice ≠ not being exploited

DogMuffins,

I didn’t say being treated “nice”. I said treat their employees “very well” which of course does mean not exploiting them.

Jtlkybncv,

I would also love an answer to this question. I have worried about this issue a lot. One of the only answers I have come up with is to have multiple skills. So that if people “side with a Karen” for example, you can hopefully transition into a different industry and leave the previous industry behind. Varied skills in multiple areas are the way I hope to avoid cancellation

vd1n,

It’s human nature to do what you said. Just keep being human. Bring back to others what they deserve.

Smokeydope,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

What you want is something you can’t have. Stop worrying about things that don’t immediately affect you and take a fucking chance in life. You will fail. You will make mistakes and judge yourself for it. People may judge you for things beyond your control like appearance and personality quirks. Fuck em. There’s only a hand full of people who know and care for you well enough that their opinion matters, the rest of em just see a shadow on the wall. Most people don’t care about you, they care about comparing themselves to their mental image of you. Who cares what they think. Do you have like severe anxiety of something because this is hardcore catastrophizing. 99% of your fears are baseless. You aren’t the center of anyone else’s world, nobody thinks about you that much. Sorry to burst your bubble but the sooner you realize this the sooner you can start to chill a little on the worrying.

darthfabulous42069,

Who cares what they think.

I do, because those people are either my employers or my customer base, and I need their money to survive.

If we lived in a perfect world where everyone had their own 40 acres and a mule and didn’t have to depend on other people to survive, I’d believe you. But we don’t, and as a member of society I am dependent on these people to live.

And most people are aware of this, and don’t really want to give a meaningful answer to my question because that would mean losing the power they wield over me, so the only meaningful response is to dismiss the reality of the situation or wrongly frame it as an emotional issue when it is anything but. My fear over it is extremely justified. People, including rich and powerful celebrities, have lost everything over this.

Take Sinead O’Connor, for example, who was cancelled in the 90’s for opposing the Catholic Church and trying to expose their sex abuse scandal. And she died, her reputation having never really been repaired, in the U.S. at least.

It matters. It’s real. And it’s a very, very valid concern. What other people think doesn’t just matter, it means everything if one wants to live.

Smokeydope,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t agree at all. Unless you are a smelly unwashed hobo with plastic bags for clothes or an absolute batshit insane sociopathic asshole thats a blarant menace to society nobody is going to care if you are a little ugly or not wearing a dress or if you have a shitty opinion about something. this mindset of yours will 100% turn you neurotic if you aren’t already. Worrying at the level you are doing is simply not mentally healthy. May you find some inner peace my fellow human being.

darthfabulous42069, (edited )

Okay. You win the argument. I hope that makes you feel better, and more importantly not angry at or inconvenienced by me in any way.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

🤣🤣🤣 Leave it to some .world alt-right dipshit to purposefully misconstrue what OP was asking and then beat around a strawman like it’s his second wife.

Oh, and then your ass wants to assert power over OP with talk like:

What you want is something you can’t have.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the sooner you realize this the sooner you can start to chill a little on the worrying.

As if corporations don’t extensively engage in astroturfing, upvote manufacturing, hiring PR firms and running smear campaigns of their own against anyone who tries to challenge them. As if corporations don’t do what OP is asking for information how to do all the fucking time and you’re just taking advantage of someone upset and panicking so you can feel like you have power over someone.

Who cares what they think

Literally everyone else including OP.

Do you have like severe anxiety of something because this is hardcore catastrophizing. 99% of your fears are baseless.

Holy shit, you said almost the exact same thing as the other .world redneck cow-fucker I spanked up above. Are you one person harassing OP with alt accounts? Because that’s sure as fuck what it looks like.

You .worlders are vile, disgusting bigots and you deserve to be DDoSed non-stop. I hope whoever’s doing it breaks into and wipes your stupid-ass instance completely so you are forced to grow the fuck up and stop abusing other people.

ReallyKinda, (edited )

if you try you’ll push yourself into a bad mental space that many therapists make their livelihood off of! I am a big people pleaser so have had issues with over-valuing the opinions of others. One important thing I did to combat this tendency was to come up with a reasonable set of principles for myself so that I didn’t feel like I always had to take what others might think on board (because I’d given myself a reference). Another thing that helped was eliminating anxiety around things I was quite certain one shouldn’t be judged for (in the sense that some things just shouldn’t reflect on your character).

Being worried about having your job taken away and similar is a bit different. I think the things you do to prevent risking this include not voicing “hot takes” except with people you trust and who understand you, avoiding internet arguing, keeping your boundaries up at work, etc. I think most people have a pretty good sense of what ideas might be wildly unpopular in their locale.

As a slight side note, things like tenure (in the US) and anonymous review processes in academia were put in place precisely to ensure that people weren’t blackballed for theorizing things that were unpopular or that would potentially step on the toes of some politician who was threatened by your research. Many things that are popularly supported have and will continue to be wrong, so you need a certain self assurance to fall back on. Preferably your self assurance is supported by logic and reason and not dogmatism—but this entails a fair amount of hard work and study and reflection—you can’t just rely on intuition.

GardenVarietyAnxiety,

About being yourself… That really is the best advice to avoid rejection. The problem is that no one can tell you how to do that in a comment section.

It’s likely that something in your life is out of place, making it harder to be “Yourself.” You need to learn how to identify it and what to do once you have.

Therapy is great for this if that’s something you’d consider. I’d be willing to give a little guidance, if therapy isn’t your jam. DM me if you’re interested.

BassTurd,

I generally don’t care what people think about me. They’re are obvious exceptions like my employer. If you have shitty views that affect others negatively, like being a homophobe, transphobe, or a hard right conservative, then you’re going to justifiably get shit on and hated on. You can choose to not care what people think, but in the real world there are consequences. If you live a life of inclusion and empathy, then most of the work is done towards not caring what others think. Basically, don’t be an asshole, and if you are, keep to yourself and don’t run a business. Good people don’t get “canceled”.

darthfabulous42069,

Good people don’t get “canceled”.

I’m sorry but that’s just naive.

BassTurd,

The people that cancel good people are shitbags. I should say, good people don’t get canceled often. It’s the cunts with fucked up views that generally do. Don’t be a cunt, and you’re not likely to suffer consequences.

blightbow, (edited )
@blightbow@kbin.social avatar

The people that cancel good people are shitbags.

Relativity remains a factor. One mob's shitbag is another mob's hero. One mob's wish for freedom of thought is another mob's moral depravity.

Cancelling is just an added nuance on gossip and dogpiling, and those have been around since we've been knocking rocks together. It happens whenever a person publicly acknowledges an opinion that angers a tribe enough to single someone out. It doesn't matter whether that person is a long-time resident or a passing visitor. The more it goes against their social values, the more popular it becomes in the gossip, and the more people share it with each other as the story takes on a life of its own. Details get changed. Maybe it started with a lie or misconception to begin with and grew from there. None of that matters when people start shunning you in public or knocking on your door with torches in hand.

The only added nuance of cancelling over traditional gossip is the pervasiveness of the internet, and the distance at which people can socially band together to shun you. Most importantly, gossip has never required someone to be a good or bad person. It just needs someone to be the target of a rumor (truthful or otherwise) that pisses a lot of people off.

ElBarto,

Become a hermit and don’t interact with people.

People are always going going to give you their opinions, but the best thing about opinions is that they hold no weight in reality, we give these opinions the weight to impact us.

Now, most of those people who were cancled over nothing or what would be minor in comparison to others, they have regained most of what they lost, look at Louis C K, he got cancled, but he’s now back doing what he was doing before.

You’ll never be able to avoid rejection or criticism unless you block yourself off from the world or only surround yourself people who think identical to you, but where’s the fun in that?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •