[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?

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.

livus,
livus avatar

In a democratic society, there is no way to entirely "proof" yourself from consequences of your own antisocial actions like if you sexually assault people or something like that.

I think the answer to what you're really asking is

  • do not be in an industry where you are customer-facing or public-facing,

  • and do not seek a public platform.

That will shield you from arbitrary and exaggerated mob type/snowballing behaviour, such as the Justine Sacco incident (in which a woman lost her job over an ironic joke about AIDS which fell victim to Poe's Law).

Reliant1087,

Try to not be reactive. Take appropriate action whenever needed but choose to act after a delay so that you aren’t responding impulsively. In my experience 90% of conversations that were problematic could have been avoided if either party chose to walk away or take a break.

argv_minus_one,

How could one set up their life such that it would be impossible for people like that to rob one of their livelihood?

You can’t. As long as you live and breathe, no matter how bad your life is, there’s always some jerk looking to make it even worse. It’s one of my many reasons to not have children.

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!

bouh,

You can’t rejection proof your life. You live in a society of people. Your freedom ends where the freedom of someone else begins.

The be yourself mentality is an illusion or a trap from liberalism. Liberalism pushes individualism to the extreme. To support individualism, people need the illusion of ultimate freedom, the illusion or the dream that you can do or be anything. But it’s not possible in a society, so a caveat is added: money and consumerism will allow you to be or do anything you can afford. But it’s still not true, it’s an illusion to keep you trapped in the illusion. Because you can’t get money by being or doing anything you want. Because you live in a society.

Second point : you cannot please everyone, because it is impossible, and because it will destroy you.

It is impossible because different people have different tastes, expectations and cultures. And those are often not compatible. You cannot please a white supremacist if your not white. You cannot please a misogynist if you’re a woman. You cannot agree with flat earther if you know some science. But you don’t need to. Worse, trying to please them would be harmful for you. These are extreme examples obviously.

Synthesis: what you want is to find your place in your society. You need to be comfortable with yourself, in a group of people who share your values, and abides to the society’s needs. You need the society, so you need to obey its rules. But you also need enough space to stay sound of mind, which is space and a place to be yourself as long as you’re not too much of an asshole.

You can sum this up with the idea that you need balance. Be yourself, but don’t be an asshole.

This is a quick and dirty writing on the topic. It would certainly need more words to detail some places.

LesbianLiberty,

For me, I’ve never found it possible. Internet stuff, whatever, but when friends or loved ones turn on you there’s not much to be done in my experience. Try and be compassionate to all involved and try to politely explain yourself to anyone, but those who stick with you are the real ones. If folks are liable to turn on you after a social misstep or something as serious as assault, they’re bad folks, folks.

neptune,

If no one has said it, try talking to a therapist. Not only is rejection unavoidable, but it seems you might have anxiety or some sort of fixation on rejection. Totally normal to talk something like this out with a professional

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Holy shit, and now you all are labeling OP mentally ill for voicing a valid concern and getting upset when you all do the exact same thing they were afraid you would do

You scumfucks are fucking incredible.

neptune,

Lol dude, calm down. Anxiety about social rejection is normal. If it begins to interfere with life, then OP should consider talking to a professional or a trusted mentor/friend type person. Picking fights online about how hard life is and how mean people on the internet is probably just more proof of need for professional help. For you too bud

pinkdrunkenelephants,

And you’re STILL doing it. And getting defensive because you know you’re wrong and you don’t like being called out on it.

It’s almost like the way we treat each other as human beings actually matters and you just don’t want to admit it.

It’s almost like you’re a piece of shit

Picking fights online about how hard life is and how mean people on the internet is probably just more proof of need for professional help. For you too bud

Lol yeah, literally everyone else is the problem, it couldn’t possibly just be you and the way you’re treating OP or anything.

Where did you get your psychology degree at? Your license to practice? Your authority to diagnose anyone with anything?

👂✋ Oh, where did you say? Your own asshole?

Sit down and shut the fuck up, troglodyte.

pixeltree,

The person you’re responding to isn’t putting OP down. Getting help from a professional isn’t a weakness, and based on what OP said, it could be something that really helps them.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Oh lol at someone from .world speaking authoritatively on anything. I left your dumbass instance for a reason.

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?

you might have anxiety or some sort of fixation on rejection.

The person you’re responding to isn’t putting OP down.

Sure looks like a fucking put-down to me.

Again, you are taking a very valid concern that other people aside from OP have, that has prevented justice on serious issues, that other people in the thread provided evidence for and you’re defending a knuckledragger whose only response was to blame OP and invalidate their emotions by labeling them with a mental disorder they do not have the knowledge or authority to apply.

And of course your alt-right yee-hawing cousin-fucking ass from the right wing instance is going to defend an action that obscenely and blatantly cruel because you do it to people all the time and you don’t want to admit what you’re doing is wrong.

Don’t come crying when your ass loses your job because someone purposefully bullied you in public, got you angry enough to yell at them, then recorded you and put the video on Twitter. Which happens to a lot of people. Just tell yourself what your dumb fuck friend told OP, it’s all in your head and you just have anxiety even though it’s clearly other people actively abusing you. See how you feel then, genocidal Nazi

STUPIDVIPGUY,

you’re so angry you’re seeing everything red. Your interpretation is completely wrong

neptune,

This is quite the summary of the conversation.

Saigonauticon,

Well, my first strategy has apparently been to sell all my belongings, immigrate to the developing world, lose every dime to my name.

A wiser person might have focused on doing a less harrowing (but still difficult) thing. If we can excel at something difficult, perhaps the world can forgive our mediocrity in other matters, and if it doesn’t… well, at least we have something useful to focus on. For me, that thing is engineering.

I do own and operate a business. Owning the business means I get to invent my own job (which mostly amounts to ‘mercenary science hermit’). I’m reasonably good at it, and have the correct legal paperwork to continue doing it, so it’s hard to displace me – I can just go find more customers. If that fails, maybe the problem is me :D

All that being said, I do use a variety of figurative cudgels on people who forcibly inconvenience me with their opinions (although almost entirely offline). Some of these tools are emotional, some are financial or legal, and many are technological in nature. I do this to defend my freedom to think freely about subjects that interest me, which sometimes people feel entitled to encroach on.

Mostly this pertains to ‘people who don’t want to pay me for work’, or ‘Asian superstitions’, because I am nowhere near North America. The current political situation over there is puzzling and fascinating to me, although I am sad to see it causes so much harm. Maybe come visit Asia someday for a vacation from it?

Oh also I mostly avoid social media, especially for political stuff. I sign on primarily to answer questions travelers have about Vietnam, and help hobbyists choose components for electronic circuits (although Lemmy is not super active in these regards yet). I approach it as training to learn to be more patient with people, and in this sense it has been a rewarding activity.

Anyway, those are some of the habits I’ve cultivated to try and make peace with the modern world. Hopefully some are useful to you as well.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It’s funny to see you here, I found your instance a while back. Do you plan on updating to 18.4 soon? I might come at some point and post some content

Saigonauticon,

Oh, thanks for the reminder! I’ll add that to the ‘to do soon’ list. Check back in a couple of days and maybe gently remind me if I still haven’t done it.

I still need to get around to enabling registration, but enabling outbound port 587 for the registration emails causes the datacenter to grumble and complain. So that might take a bit longer. Well, at least we’re not a spammer-friendly jurisdiction.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That sounds great, I’ll keep an eye on it

Saigonauticon,

OK done! The ansible install never seems to work out of the box for me. Always got to find a slow day at work so I can troubleshoot a bit.

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Great to hear!

kava,
  1. don’t say or post something you aren’t willing to 100% stand behind
  2. don’t say or post something that you don’t want the whole world to hear

You still may say something unpopular and get canceled, but keeping these in mind I think will eliminate most of these opportunities.

dumptruckdan,
dumptruckdan avatar

Serious question for you OP and I ask it in a spirit of... possible solidarity? Anyway: I tend to word things clumsily, flub delicate social situations, and just generally put my foot in my mouth at the worst possible time. It's worse in high pressure situations. Are you like this too, and if so, do you worry a lot about unintentionally sabotaging your livelihood or relationships?

zeusbottom,

Short of total isolation, you can’t.

You can’t control how other people react, as you’ve no doubt picked up. You can reduce the risk by controlling what they see of you, however. That doesn’t mean you should lie about who you are, but there are things that are better left unsaid. Don’t bring up embarrassing things to a new acquaintance, things like that.

Even POTUS makes gaffes. The problem for the holder of that office is that the consequences could be enormous, well beyond a single person’s ego or reputation. You could study what the president’s communications team does to avert damage and control it if it does happen.

You’re also getting advice worth the price you paid - free - so it’s probably not a good idea to get upset with people offering their opinions.

CanadaPlus,

You can’t, we live in a society, unless you’re prepared and able to live alone off the grid in secret. Get as good at being popular as you personally can be. When people say “be yourself” they mean be a polished, market-friendly version of yourself.

I’m not sure what all the drama in here is about.

keepcarrot,

I don’t want to be my LinkedIn self :'(

CanadaPlus,

Yeah, this is the kind of thing that makes people regret ever coming down from the trees. Healthcare, steady meals and no predators is pretty dope, though.

new_acct_who_dis,

If there was a way to do this, assault and rape survivors would have already used it to be able to come forward with their experiences (per your example).

This would have happened long before businesses had to worry about public perception on the Internet.

I def recommend a book called “so you’ve been publicly shamed”

It goes over how quickly things online get out of hand, how we used to publicly shame people 100s of years ago until we realized it was cruel and unusual punishment.

(Don’t get me wrong, we should def shame alt right racists and push them back into their hidey holes)

Honestly we need more education and emphasis on critical thinking skills. Until then, we’re all at the mercy of the dumbest among us with an Internet connection

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