Can't get the stupid comments and hate get to you.
I remember reading/watching somewhere where someone said (sorry for the vagueness) that you always need a solid little black box in your head you can retreat your conscience to. Where nothing can touch you. Where everything is constant.
Ever since I read that I have never gotten an ounce of hate get to me. I can honestly say I'm living a 100% stress-free happy life. In fact, the more hate I get, the happier I am, I feed off it, it's my fucking life line. It meant I was doing something right.
If I ever let it get to me, I'd retreat to that little black box, and it would tell me everything I accomplished in my life, the things I've been through, where my roots are from. Things nobody will ever take away from me unless they murder me, and that reassurance has helped me get through incredibly tough times.
To cope with hate even further, always look at what's coming your way from their angle. Why are they spouting hate? Do they genuinely feel you have a scammy product? Why would they think that? More often than not it boils down to two things: ignorance and a result, spouting bullshit, and/or personal issues being projected. I know that myself, when I'm in a rage state of mind, I'd spout terrible things at people that I'd instantly regret after. Especially on the internet, typing terrible comments that help to vent your anger temporarily.
I've always been an outsider. I've had so much time to observe people. This is what I found out.
Core human values -> projected mask (either bully, asshole, something else that is fake) -> external projection. You need to see through the mask. I've dealt with huge egos before that after awhile, cried on my shoulder and spilled their guts, all just by being understanding, not getting angry at them, and truly understanding where their emotion comes from and why. By being a source of support.
>Somehow... I read on CML and other idiotic forums, that I an a hypester, a scam artist. I just have to wonder what these guys are smoking. But I have to say... they have gotten to me. I don't need this. I don't deserve this. Life is short and I am tired.
Revolutionized the film industry, yet lets internet comments get to him. Fuck the haters. You changed the world.
Sorry if I went off topic, it's just something I wanted to get off my chest and hopefully this perspective can help others.
A cool tip I've picked up on is to have a label in your inbox called "feel good" (or whatever). Then tag the emails that make you feel good, whatever they are. For example, in mine I have an email of my former academic advisor congratulating me on my MSc defense, the first email sent to me by one of my mentors which led me to move to CA, etc.
Ideally those emails will span a period of years, if not decades- it brings a nice perspective on life during stressful times.
I believe the point of the black box is to not be dependent on others for your happiness. Needing external validation to feel good about yourself is a serious mental issue. But, to you, it shouldn't really matter what I think ;)
Needing external validation to feel good about yourself is a fundamental characteristic of human psychology. The black box thing is about picking and choosing whose validation you care about and whose you don't. That's healthy. Genuinely not caring what anybody else thinks sounds more like sociopathy.
In Red's case I don't think it's quite that simple. One of the foundations of Red has always been that the founders interact with the customers continuously through social media; that's how Red built their fanboy army. But that kind of aggressive social media presence always creates an equal and opposite backlash, and it's pretty much impossible to expose yourself only to one side.
It really is fascinating. Professional equipment combined with consumer luxury marketing to sell a dream of overnight success to aspiring filmmakers. A super-secretive company whose marketing is founded on "transparency". Over-promising and under-delivering seen as a feature. Industrial espionage. Patent lawsuits. You can't make this stuff up; it's better than fiction.
Yeah that's fine but instead of getting angry at bad comments, try to engage them. If that fails, move on, big deal.
It's not personal. It may be for them, but it shouldn't be for you. At the end of the day, their negative social interaction is based around your product, and you as a founder, have to mitigate that.
Nobody is out there digging up personal facts about the guys life and giving him a hard time for it, then its personal.
If the negativity is based around your product, then it's business as usual and should be treated as such.
I think the bits of negativity are more about their methods than their products. There aren't many people who find much to fault in the actual cameras, but the way they are marketed and supported is maddening to people used to dealing with the older-school cinema companies like Arri and Panavision.
The attitude is even evident in this last post:
"In 2005, I could see that the powers that be (Sony, Arri, Panavision) were going to attempt to persuade the film industry that 1080P was going to be the digital replacement for film." - for fifteen years years people have been aware that 4k was a sensible equivalent resolution. The first digitally restored film was done at 4k in 1993! The Panavision Genesis (with a Sony sensor) had a 6k horizontal sensor pixel count! The Arri D20 had a 2.8k sensor!
"Sony's digital cinema cameras were $200k+" - cinema cameras are always rented, not bought. Very few people care or even know about their list price. At the time it was bizarre to market a camera like this to the public rather than to rental houses.
"The only way we could do that was through incredible compression technology" - they use JPEG2000. Not even something more specialised like CineForm, which already existed.
"I should mention here that there were many color science and feature upgrades... for free. Again, what company ever offered that?" - cameras rented from a rental house have always had regular firmware upgrades, doing the kind of things Red's upgrades did.
Compare the technical documentation from Red to that of Arri - Arri will shower you with whitepapers full of numbers and graphs, and tell you exactly what is going on in their cameras. The Red colour science is still secret. What are the primaries of the sensor? It's secret. What do the F-LUT controls do? It's secret.
Enough moaning. Red were the first cinema company with a real marketing budget and it was all very strange to people who were all about the right tool for the job, most of those tools being made in limited runs in extremely practical packaging without shiny logos on every corner...
Its exceptionally hard to not get pissed off. If you work hard on a product, put your money on the line and people get all huffy about the shape and size of screw holes, or the wrong coloured button.
That's why you get paid. Plenty of people build cool stuff in their garages and never distribute it to the world. Lots of people worked hard for the money they pay to these companies, too. That's no excuse for incivility though.
It is also the same attitude that conservative christians have to criticism about some of their campaigning for things like opposition to gay marriage. They see that Jesus suffered at the hands of the Romans so they take all the criticism as proof positive that they are in fact living up to a the ideals of christianity.
The point being that gauging your success by the amount of opposition you receive is really measuring the wrong thing, its actually orthogonal to the value of your work.
But it is a valuable way of handling criticism. Most of us are easily cowed by critics (internal and external.) I applaud any way that helps me "deal" with criticism.
No, it is not. It's straight out delusional. You could be torturing puppies on a webcam and feel good about it by repeating a quote like that.
If you want to become a genuinely good person, you'll have to learn to differentiate between deserved and undeserved hate.
"In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner."
I have no problem deciding if I'm a genuinely good person. I am able to determine if my actions are correct and accept valid criticism.
This isn't about that. It's about not "letting the bastards get you down."
The creative world is rife with people who pooh-pooh your work. Often this criticism is within your own mind, preventing you from developing/creating/succeeding. Having a defense against other people's negativity is an important step to keeping you going.
Duke Ellington simply refused to read critics. In today's hyper-connected world, it's difficult to not be "part of the conversation." Having a way to insulate yourself from undeserved hate is an important tool, and knowing the difference is an important skill.
Angry online comments wear on a lot of people down over time, especially if you feel like you're accountable to your product's fans, because it's hard to just say "he/she's just a stupid commenter" without feeling like you're abandoning that mandate.
Actually, writing this, I'm beginning to think it might be better to abandon that idea of accountability, because I'm sure people like Jannard have high personal standards, and holding themselves to their fans' capricious opinions may be more trouble than it's worth.
I've read time and time again about musicians, actors, and directors that all slowly come to realize that reading the reviews about their product just isn't worth it. It's hard to reconcile this sentiment with the "customer first"-attitude that should go into running a company. Yet if there's one thing I've learned from running my company over the last five years, it's that the Internet hate delivered by our users will be constant, never-ending, and more often than not, baseless.
I think that the creatives who just cover their ears and stop listening to the reviewers have something useful figured out. There are so many channels through which feedback can travel, why bother spending time on the mean-spirited, irrational ones?
> Can't get the stupid comments and hate get to you.
I'm getting there on my own websites. Feedback is an essential part of the process of publishing, if the feedback is mostly negative in nature then that gets interpreted as 'we don't value this, go away'. Small wonder that in the end that is the result.
Just like people get pestered away from neighbourhoods people can get pestered away from running websites, I can very easily relate to this.
This made me think of a quote from a movie. Actually it was just the trailer I saw, years ago. Took some digging but here you go, it's from The Libertine:
"...you must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. In my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: The stupid and the envious. The stupid will like you in five years time. The envious, never."
Revolutionized the film industry, yet lets internet comments get to him.
Really. I feel for the guy. But this stuff is nothing new, that's how it works when you do revolutionary stuff. Look at what RCA did to FM inventor Edwin Armstrong, and to TV inventor Philo Farnsworth. It's Not a Business for Old Men.
100% stress-free gets boring though. I'm good at insulating myself from drama and anger and hate, but I'll be the first to admit it leads to a sort of _sterile_ existence, that sometimes starts to feel devoid of passion. "You've made enemies? Good..." and all that.
It does get boring. However, instead of just being a friend to people, they see me as someone above their friends, where I become their main listener and comforter.
However I don't really hang out with anyone that much because I can't relate to their problems or experiences. People come to me with their life problems and for advice and I'm okay with that, kind of like a "life consultant".
I remember reading/watching somewhere where someone said (sorry for the vagueness) that you always need a solid little black box in your head you can retreat your conscience to. Where nothing can touch you. Where everything is constant.
Ever since I read that I have never gotten an ounce of hate get to me. I can honestly say I'm living a 100% stress-free happy life. In fact, the more hate I get, the happier I am, I feed off it, it's my fucking life line. It meant I was doing something right.
If I ever let it get to me, I'd retreat to that little black box, and it would tell me everything I accomplished in my life, the things I've been through, where my roots are from. Things nobody will ever take away from me unless they murder me, and that reassurance has helped me get through incredibly tough times.
To cope with hate even further, always look at what's coming your way from their angle. Why are they spouting hate? Do they genuinely feel you have a scammy product? Why would they think that? More often than not it boils down to two things: ignorance and a result, spouting bullshit, and/or personal issues being projected. I know that myself, when I'm in a rage state of mind, I'd spout terrible things at people that I'd instantly regret after. Especially on the internet, typing terrible comments that help to vent your anger temporarily.
I've always been an outsider. I've had so much time to observe people. This is what I found out.
Core human values -> projected mask (either bully, asshole, something else that is fake) -> external projection. You need to see through the mask. I've dealt with huge egos before that after awhile, cried on my shoulder and spilled their guts, all just by being understanding, not getting angry at them, and truly understanding where their emotion comes from and why. By being a source of support.
>Somehow... I read on CML and other idiotic forums, that I an a hypester, a scam artist. I just have to wonder what these guys are smoking. But I have to say... they have gotten to me. I don't need this. I don't deserve this. Life is short and I am tired.
Revolutionized the film industry, yet lets internet comments get to him. Fuck the haters. You changed the world.
Sorry if I went off topic, it's just something I wanted to get off my chest and hopefully this perspective can help others.