The Courage of Compassion
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:14
Talk here on stage one is kind of going to be the opening keynote for one of the topics that we really want to focus on in this year's Republica
00:22
How do we deal with hate speech with? Unconstructive criticism with people who are aggressive or violent or fundamentally of a different opinion and How do we hold a dialogue with them? Like I said, this is kind of the opening keynote for that track But there are many different sessions happening the next three days on stage including the keynote from Karolina emka tomorrow here
00:44
On stage one or the workshop on trolling and community management with Neela Heizer on stage six on Wednesday That's a session that's not going to be recorded. So for all of you who are interested in this topic, I recommend this one to you We are really really proud to have Heather Armstrong with us today
01:01
She's known as the world's most famous mommy blogger But she's also New York Times best-selling author and has over 1.5 million followers on Twitter Heather is here to share with us her experience on how to deal with criticism. Please. Give her a warm welcome
02:04
Finally figure out what a vapid waste of time they're fine I think I know a lot about narcissism and you get the bill use self-absorbed liner Do you even have a maternal bone in that flat-ass body of yours?
02:23
You've got this very lantern job paper mistake Head look going on like you're dying of cancer, which I hope you do Maybe it's because the only person who really cared about your welfare was your ex and look how you screwed that up
02:40
It's clear from your blog that you're just a bottomless sponge of need and desperation I hope your kids do you for every penny you ever made because they'll need it for the therapy They'll have to pay for for having you as a mother
03:16
And
03:20
Those were just the emails from my mom she can be a little critical What if I were to tell you that people who leave that kind of feedback and that kind of nastiness are More deserving of our understanding and compassion than anyone else who leaves commentary
03:42
More deserving of those who really support what we do and who leave really encouraging comments and really encouraging Messages on your Facebook wall those people deserve our compassion more For Those of you who are unfamiliar with my work probably all of you I am
04:00
I've been blogging for 15 years and 11 of those years. I have been writing about my children Meaning I am what responsible for the blight that is known as mommy blogging. I Have been minding my children's childhood for content for the last
04:20
11 years 12 years and According to some and I made it my Twitter bio I have exploited my children for millions and millions of dollars thereby obliterating their chance of having a functioning adulthood First there was this one. She made me a lot of money
04:41
She was she was great for content And then when I realized if I expanded my family then I could make more money added this one Made a lot of money on that one. It's a very viable business model adding children But because mommy blogging is so controversial
05:01
I have experienced that kind of criticism that you heard day in and day out for the last 15 years It's in all of my email. It's in my Facebook page. It's on my Twitter account Everywhere I go. I have to hear that kind of feedback And what if I were to tell you that?
05:21
This feedback is A gift it's a gift to all of us who share online Now we think that the people who leave that kind of commentary look like this That's my favorite animated gif on the internet. We just watch that all day long We think they look like this and that makes us feel better
05:42
but in fact They look like this Now I don't go around leaving that type of commentary But the people who leave those nasty comments look like me and they look just like you Now this gift of these awful comments how on earth could this possibly be a gift and
06:05
I like to compare it. I begin this metaphor by comparing it to the emergency room scenario and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the very Amazing health care system that we have in the States My friend heard that I was coming to Germany and she's like bring me back some health care
06:24
She has no health care She can't afford it which means that she's going around facing bankruptcy if she happens to get hit by a car Which I don't hope that doesn't happen but in in the States if you Can't make it to the clinic where your insurance pays for your doctor and you have a broken toe
06:42
You have to go to the emergency room and you have to fill out a ton of Depending on who's working in the in the hospital that day and depending on how how big your injury is You may wait there all day long But then they rush someone in who has a gunshot wound to the chest and he doesn't have to fill out the paperwork
07:04
He gets right to the doctor because his wound is greater than your broken toe those people who leave those comments are the ones with with the gunshot wound to the chest and Anybody who's ever followed me online knows that I have not always been this generous to these people ever
07:25
I've had some very major public meltdowns, but I know that a lot of us experience this again We experience it in our Facebook feed. We experience it on Twitter. We may have that random Email from an aunt to tell us that we are a disappointment to our mother
07:40
How do we deal with this? How do we deal with this conflict that is in this space because it's never going away You can't cure it. You can't put it in a corner. How is this a gift? How do we make it so that those comments don't form a noxious cloud in our head and paralyze us?
08:02
How do we move forward people will tell you to shake it off because the haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate Now I have given this response to many interviews and interviews because mommy blogging is very important It's a very important job and people will ask me
08:21
How do you deal with this feedback? Does it hurt you and my response is yes It does because if it didn't hurt me Then I think I would lose the capacity that I have to write stories that connect with people If I become immune to the hurt and the pain Then then I can't write something that moves someone
08:42
There's an author and a researcher an American author named Brené Brown. You may be familiar with her She wrote a book called the gifts of imperfection and in it She wrote the best quote that I can think about this whole this whole metaphor The problem is that when we don't care at all what people think and we're immune to hurt. We're also
09:04
ineffective at connecting Courage is telling our story not being immune to criticism staying Vulnerable is a risk that we have to take if we want to experience connection. How is this a gift?
09:21
Now this all began when my now 12 year old daughter Who was 10 came to me and she said mom. I want to start an Instagram account and a YouTube channel at 10 Now my website is called deuce and Again mommy blogging is a very polarizing and controversial
09:44
Situation people have very strong opinions about me and I said I didn't take her seriously and I said well What are you gonna call this Instagram account? And she says I'm gonna call it deuce jr Now when I'm in the States and I tell this story I like to say, okay, let's
10:01
It's basically like OJ Simpson's son who has no idea What people think of his father is gonna start an Instagram account called OJ jr Yeah, not a good idea. But since I'm in Berlin, let's use the metaphor Donald Trump Let's say Donald Trump had a 10 year old son who had no idea what the world thought about his father and started an
10:24
Instagram account called Donald Trump jr Imagine the hell that would happen so when she told me that my instant thought was to sit her down and say Humans are awful, okay
10:40
People suck everyone is a sociopath. Okay. Okay good go forward you're prepared Except that that's not gonna prepare her for What she's about to encounter when she goes online and our children are going to experience this in a way that we cannot possibly
11:01
Comprehend they already are Our children will face this kind of criticism and bullying and awfulness that we on a scale. That is just unimaginable And so what I'm gonna tell you is what I'm gonna tell her is all the ways that I have done it wrong Over the last 15 years all the ways that I got defensive
11:23
Defensiveness Steals your energy and demands that you explain yourself to those who will deliberately and maliciously Misinterpret you it's a waste of time like screaming words into a vacuum And this all started back in the year
11:41
2000 when I first started blogging the before computers existed and There were no comment sections there was no Facebook basically people just emailed and All of a sudden I'm getting emailed from people telling me that I suck No, you suck and then I would respond and we go back and forth and it was just
12:02
Useless screaming at each other. It was like a Trump rally And I'm gonna drop his name as much as I can so sorry, sorry for Donald Trump you guys so sorry So I didn't know how to respond to it and it's a useless screwing back and forth over email And so then as my website got more popular what I would do is I would collect I would collect the best hate mail
12:27
and I would collect them into a post called the exclamation point edition Because people who send this feedback Can't resist the exclamation point on the keyboard
12:40
They have to use seven and sometimes that eight exclamation point is gonna send the point home And so what I would do is I would collect the best ones and feature paragraphs and then feature what I would have responded to them like someone said Stop blogging about your stupid boring life in your house all day and eat something already You look anorexic like you're dying eat a cheeseburger for Christ's sake and then I would respond
13:05
Does making fun of skinny people make you feel better about being an asshole? Because apparently I can cure my metabolism with the cheeseburger. How are you gonna cure your personality disorder? And it made me feel temporarily better and my audience laughed about it
13:22
But it didn't prepare me for the next onslaught of criticism and then in 2009 During a particularly bad period of my life. I had just had my second child meaning I had just expanded my business. I Had my second child I had a really bad case of shingles and I had taken to my Twitter account where I have
13:42
1.5 million followers and called out a multi-billion dollar corporation for not fixing my washing machine and my critics came out and said that I had bullied that multi-billion dollar corporation Maytag and The the hate mail that ensued was unreal and I was in a bad place as it was and I did not
14:02
Know what to do So I did what a friend told me to do and I collected all pages and probably a good 150 pages of comments left on Facebook comments left on websites comments on my own website emails and I Put it in a web a wordpress template and I surrounded it with ads
14:23
150 pages and called it monetizing the hate That made eight thousand dollars in the span of seven days Paid for a lot of therapy But it's still I was hosting the hate is what I was doing I was hosting it
14:44
I wasn't getting over I wasn't working through the emotion of what was going on and It and it still came in every day. I'd add another page I'd add another page because the hate didn't stop. I still wasn't processing it Recently psychology today an American publication did a study about this troll like behavior and
15:05
Found that the majority of these people are narcissists psychopaths and sadists And when I read this study, I was like well duh Did you have to spend any money on this study
15:21
Couldn't have used that money to buy a cheeseburger. Of course, they're this but then I also thought I Am willing to bet that the majority of these people are hurting That they're in pain Something is wrong And you might have heard from a friend or a family member
15:41
That when someone says something to you or does something awful to you has nothing to do with you It has everything to do with them and that's it completely correct. It's very very good advice But I would take that a step further Because if there is something going on in their life They're in a lot of pain and they don't know how to process it in a healthy way except to take it out on
16:05
You and on me through a screen. That's how they're processing their pain and how sad is that? How sad is it that they do not see us as human? How sad is it that their opinion and their right to free speech is more important than our humanity? I
16:27
On Twitter who said TMZ Because they're celebrities not humans TMZ is a tabloid in the States. The thing is though is that it's not just celebrities anymore
16:43
It's anybody who has a Facebook page and anybody who has a Twitter feed and anybody who has an email account is now getting this type of feedback and having any experiencing this type of bullying So, how do we how is this a gift? How do we process this and so?
17:02
Going forward from the day that I decided okay one day my daughter is gonna get on Instagram She's not gonna call it deuce jr. For sure What am I gonna tell her? How is she gonna process this? So it's a three-pronged approach and the first is don't seek it out
17:21
Don't Google your name Don't Google who hates me if You're if you're reading a comment and you see it going badly Delete it delete with with impunity block walk away There's no need to read or interact with that kind of feedback none
17:41
the second is Honor your pisivity, which is You're gonna get pissed and that's okay, you're gonna be angry and that's okay, you're gonna be hurt and that's okay It's because we're online to connect and that ability to connect means that we're vulnerable
18:01
It's okay to feel that way if you if you find that information online I have very very well-meaning friends who are like, did you hear what they said? It's like thanks. Thanks for sending that Maui But the third the third approach to this and the most important is Extend your hand across the table at least metaphorically and
18:23
Imagine that you were sitting there across the table from the person who has left that awful comment Telling you that they wish you were dead Extend your hand across the table. Imagine that you can see their eyes Imagine that you can see the outline of their face Imagine that you can see what they're wearing
18:41
Imagine that you can smell the shampoo in their hair See them as a human being and say Where is your pain? Why are you hurting and how can I help if? Leaving that comment makes you feel better even temporarily Let me give that to you
19:01
If I am that pint of ice cream at the end of the day that you want to eat because you need to eat away your feelings Let me give that to you and what that does for us as those who are online to share and connect that expands our ability to Reach out to others
19:21
It lets us it gives us an inside picture as to how much hurt there is that still needs to be worked through Even in our own pain it allows us to connect as human beings and then it's not a matter of Shaking it off. It's not a matter of being defensive It's a matter of finding the humanity and offering that person their humanity
19:42
Because if we want to be seen as human we have to offer the same to them Danke Do they want to do Q&A?
20:01
It's fantastic. We even have a little bit of time for questions Do you want to raise your hands and we'll come around with a mic? Hi there. Hi. I'm a great talk. I
20:23
Regarding your first call to action your first point How do you separate someone who is a professional troll like a sadist like you said and someone who is maybe? Momentarily conflicted momentarily aggressive, but there's something there Do you not feel that you lose a chance for discussion if you just delete them outright or block them?
20:44
Usually what I do is I say block You can tell pretty much in the first sentence whether this person is Delusion is is is a sadist you can tell pretty much in the first three or four four words Those who are being momentarily I will engage them and I'll say I'm so sorry that you feel this way
21:05
I don't know what's going on in your life But whatever it is I wish you the best and I can tell you 100% of the time they have commented back and said you're completely correct I'm so sorry. I let this comment. That's what I usually do even on Instagram on Facebook on all of my platforms
21:22
Do you see any changes in your behavior or how people interact with you since you've found the new focus? Yes, I
21:41
I do now block like immediately like I used to like I used to think oh, I'm if I'm blocking and then they know that They affected me. I don't care anymore. I don't need to see that at all. I don't need to see that the bad And let it infect me but I've also again I have engaged a lot of people who have left
22:03
constructive criticism and a lot more than I used to and I've grown up. I feel like a grown-up now Because I'm not screaming at them Any more questions
22:22
Okay, great. Hi. Thanks for your talk. Hi. I have a guy with 100 exclamation marks And my question is what do you do with the mentally ill? What do I do what with the mentally ill? with the mentally ill I Refer them to I refer them to several organizations in the States including a suicide prevention line
22:43
There's several organizations. Well, I will be Something is clearly wrong. Check out this website this website and here's a hotline that you can you can call Generally, those people will delete their own comment There one last one in that case
23:06
Please give another really really big round of applause for Heather and thank you so much. Thank you being with us