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?

  • @[email protected]English
    13•1 year ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      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

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 year ago

        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.