The haters gonna hate

Earlier today, I was scrolling through TikTok as I usually do daily when I came across a video of a brand influencer I follow. The video was about her unpacking the food items she just bought that day (basically she was just showing off what she bought) which is just a regular day on TikTok. I went to the comment section just to see what people had to say about the video and a particular comment caught my eye (as well as the eye of the influencer). I'm just going to quote what the comment says;

How will this girl ever value a man in her life. just asking respectfully
imagine spending all these with your personal money as young girl.

Crazy, right? And of course, it's not surprising that the comment section was set on fire because of that particular comment and it just got me asking; what do people really want? I don't know if it's the same in your country but in mine, a lot of men bash women who solely depend on men for their needs, calling them all sorts of derogatory names. This in turn has led more women to take up jobs and make money for themselves. But now, it has also become a problem for young women to earn and spend their own money.

I have a habit of relating most things I see or hear to a song and while reading that comment, I found the perfect song for it; Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. This song was released back in 2014 and if I remember correctly, it was the first Taylor Swift song that I liked. I didn't care for her other songs before this one, probably because they were mostly about love, relationships and breakups but Shake It Off was different, it had a groovy beat to it and I played it repeatedly for several weeks back in the day.

The song had a clear message; shake off negativity and just do what's best for you because people are always going to hate no matter what you do. Like I said earlier, a lot of men in my country are always saying that women should have their own money and not depend on men to provide everything in a relationship and some even go as far as saying "If she's not working and independent, I don't want" but it seems that is changing these days, as I'm now seeing a man saying a woman who provides all her need by herself can't bring value to a man.

I don't even want to decipher what that means but I'm just pointing out a problem here; people are going to always have an opinion. If you are jobless and depend on someone for your needs, people are going to have a problem. If then you have a job and are independent, people are also going to have a problem! A lot of people don't even realize this and have fallen into a trap; the trap of conforming to what society wants and doing things to please people even to their own detriment. We see this everywhere, people living their lives according to the standards of someone else.

People have ended up in the wrong place or doing the wrong things simply because someone had something negative to say about their choices. I once saw a story online of a girl who broke up with her boyfriend because her best friend convinced her to do so but guess who got married to the same boyfriend several months later? The best friend! We have seen people change their lifestyles because people had a problem with the previous one. "People said I'm too skinny, so I'm going to put on some weight," and what happens after you gain a few pounds? The same set of people will call you fat.

But to be honest, it's not easy to develop a thick skin about people's negativity, after all, we are humans with emotions and we easily get hurt by what people say. I am not saying it's abnormal to get hurt by people's negative comments but the major problem is how some people react to this negativity. Let's look at this same brand influencer that I started this story with, she posts frequently on TikTok and in some of her videos, people have called her ugly and all sorts of names because she has an acne problem which affects her face.

After all those insults, a lot of people would've given up on content creation and maybe only post videos where they won't show their faces or they would start using makeup to cover the acne. But she didn't do any of that, she continued posting videos every single day and I admired her for that. It's not like she isn't working on the acne but some people just have a never-ending battle with acne and that's totally understandable. There's a lot of negativity and toxicity on social media and if you're not strong enough, you may have a mental breakdown, and some people have even committed suicide because of these negatives (I know of 2 cases that happened on Twitter).

The thing with negativity is that it's mostly caused by things beyond our control which can be envy, rejection, unforeseen challenges or maybe the person is just deranged. So, why will you be playing their game by trying to conform to their rules? Instead, you should focus on things you can control which can be honing your skills, setting goals or nurturing positive relationships. Just remember to place your happiness above anything else and shake off any negativity because, in the end, haters will always keep on hating no matter what you do.

Thanks for reading

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