Last week, I wrote a post celebrating the sacrifices made by Jennifer Garner in order to make her dreams come true.
In another post, I wrote about McDonald’s failure to offer alternating messaging on its drive-thru menu boards.
Both posts received quite a bit of attention on a variety of platforms, including thousands and thousands of comments and shares.
In response to my post celebrating Garner’s sacrifices on her journey to excellence, a surprising number of people essentially wrote, “Yeah, but…”
“Yeah, but what about everyone who makes sacrifices and never gets their big break?”
“Yeah, but not everyone can make those kinds of sacrifices.”
“Yeah, but if she weren’t so privileged by her race or education, those sacrifices may have been irrelevant or impossible.”
Possibly true on all accounts, but those comments still surprised me. Can’t we just celebrate a person’s sacrifices and honor their exceptional grit without maligning their achievements, undermining their sacrifices, and mitigating their hard work? Must we transform my attempt to celebrate someone’s hard work into a referendum on the pitfalls and perils of trying to make your dreams come true in this imperfect, oftentimes unfair world?
I found these responses to be ridiculous.
In response to my post about the McDonald’s drive-thru board, many comments were thoughtful, positive, and constructively critical. But hundreds of people responded with things like:
“You have too much time on your hands.”
“You need a hobby.”
“You are clearly a person without any real problems in your life.”
“Why are you writing such nonsense?”
“Your stupid idea will make no difference to the company’s bottom line.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Stop wasting my time.”
Lots of other, assorted name-calling.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
First, if you know me at all, you know that I never have too much time on my hands, nor do I need another hobby. As Clara said when she heard me talking about these comments:
“You already have 14 jobs and a million hobbies!”
More amusing, every person who said that I was wasting my time or their time was simultaneously spending their time scrolling through social media, reading my post, and writing snarky, oftentimes unkind, sometimes unexpectedly cruel comments, thus wasting their own time in the process.
They also failed to see the irony in their responses.
At the very least, I didn’t spend my precious minutes scrolling through social media. I put forth an idea. Produced a list of amusing options. Assembled words. Made something that tens of thousands of people read and many enjoyed. Then I reformatted the idea into letter form and sent it to McDonald’s to see what they thought.
Who was really wasting their time in this scenario?
These are also people who don’t understand how small changes, repeated and compounded over time, can produce extraordinary results. They don’t know anything about marketing, advertising, and branding. They fail to see how small, consistent messaging can make enormous changes in a consumer’s perception, appreciation, and ultimate desire to purchase of a product or service.
Mostly, my unkind, less-than-thoughtful critics made outrageous assumptions, spoke from a place of ignorance, pretended to know things they could never possibly know, and lashed out with unkindness and cruelty.
But in both of these cases – my celebratory post about Jennifer Garner and the post proposing changes to McDonald’s messaging – the thing I found most astounding was the inability of so many people to read these posts and not respond defensively.
A simple celebration of Jennifer Garner’s sacrifices was treated like an indictment of their own life and the pursuit of their own dreams.
A proposed list of amusing messages on a drive-thru menu, and possibly the attention the post has received from tens of thousands of readers, was reason enough to personally attack the writer receiving attention for his idea.
I wasn’t angry or upset about these responses. After nearly two decades of writing and publishing something online every day without missing a day, I have grown accustomed to criticism and personal attacks. I oftentimes find amusement in the vitriol.
After suffering a libelous, anonymous attack by cowards who wanted me removed from my teaching position years ago, I have become rather impervious to unwarranted, unjustified, and poorly deployed criticism.
And being a part of a successful Supreme Court lawsuit against Donald Trump and having my name published in newspapers around the country, you can just imagine what some of my fellow Americans had to say to me.
My armor is nearly impenetrable.
I also know that almost every one of the people who have denigrated me online would never have the courage to do so in person. In most cases, these are probably lovely people who were baited by the anonymity of the internet to lash out for reasons that have little to do with what I actually wrote.
I was mostly disappointed.
Disappointed that so many people saw these posts as some kind of personal attack or threat to their own standing or ego.
Disappointed that people could not be celebrated and ideas could not be peacefully debated without ad hominem attacks and ridiculous refutations.
Disappointed in the apparent insecurity of so many people and the unfortunate response that it produced.
But as my literary agent is fond of writing in her emails to me:
“Onward!”
And as I am fond of saying whenever necessary:
“To hell with those people. I’m certainly happier than them!”
