This piece was in the works for almost a whole month prior to recording. I finally stopped procrastinating on 16 March, the day of our first major pro wrestling show for 2025 — Dexcon WrestleStorm 2. It’s about how trying to convince haters is mostly a waste of time. This is an appeal to everyone who is beset by anxiety and self-doubt caused by unsolicited criticism and bullying from outside influences.
This is going to get really long because I can’t help but further bloviate on almost every little thing I talked about in the video. It’s going to go way off-topic in a lot of places, mostly pointing out examples of rubbish people tend to say, but I do that here because it’s my blog — I get to do whatever I want here.
Just keep in mind that the point is most haters don’t give a shit about the details and your actual experience, so you shouldn’t have to acknowledge whatever they’re saying. You must focus on what’s important for you and keep them at arm’s length.
My Brief Analysis of Online Interactions
Why argue with people who just don’t get it? They want them to understand their perspective, but how can that be done through online interactions alone? If they were to explain their point in a face-to-face interaction, a lot of the people they’re talking to may be put off by not necessarily what they say, but how they say it.
That’s most likely why online interactions tend to go off the rails. Poe’s Law can go both ways — the lack of tone and body language obscures the difference between seriousness and sarcasm, and it allows anyone to talk tough while they wouldn’t even think of interacting with others like that in real life. As Mike Tyson once said, “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
There’s also a difference in eras before and after the advent of social media. In old message boards and forums, the people you can potentially bump into are more limited to those who are even a little bit interested in the thing the site is about. In social media, you can trade words with just about anyone, even a kid or a grandma.
Since many of them opt to go with anonymous profiles, you don’t know if xXxDarkAssassin420xXx with the avatar of Johan from the anime Monster is either a 12-year-old kid messing around or a 36-year-old loser passing time during office hours.
The point here is to make sure you don’t have your day ruined just because some stranger on the Internet said something you believe is dumb or infuriating. It can get even worse if they insult your honor or ability in a YouTube video you made or a longform Facebook post you painstakingly wrote while you couldn’t go to sleep the previous night.
If all it takes to throw you off is some guy talking shit from the other side of the world, you’ll never get anything done and live your life as you please. Put the phone done and get shit done. Being a dopamine addict sucks, and being a masochist at the same time makes it worse.
My Online and Social Media Habits
Whenever I see a post or comment I don’t agree with, I sometimes type a reply, then take time to think about it. I would even get up and do something else, then come back and decide then and there if I’m going to post the reply. Most of the time, I would discard what I typed, realizing that it doesn’t really matter and I’d rather not attract negative attention. Perhaps you may think it’s a waste of time, but it only happens every once in a while.
At the very least, coming up with as good a reply as I can to something that triggers me at the moment is an exercise that helps stimulate my mind. There are even times when it gets me so wound up that it inspires me to write a full piece out of it. I don’t really have to respond to those things on social media, especially to strangers. If it’s someone that I actually know, then perhaps it merits a response.
They’re online interactions behind phones or computer screens. Most of these people do it behind personas or anonymous profiles — something that I can’t do since I’m unable to separate myself from whatever I say or do, even through a character or constructed identity. Even if I use a pseudonym and an anime avatar like most trolls do on X, I can’t troll without feeling bad for whoever is on the other side.
This does not make me a more moral individual — I actually feel it’s a weakness in many scenarios. I’m sober to my complicity. I’m for freedom of self-expression, but not necessarily free speech. People talk too much and their words become meaningless noise. I believe self-expression comes from action, and that weighs a whole lot more than words and gestures, especially when given in bad faith.
However, as a writer, my words are my actions. Therefore, in order to express myself with intention, I have to put those words into a ‘proper’ long format, either as a blog post or video. I can just make a long post on Facebook, where it can be more visible, but I prefer the posterity of publishing a blog post in my little self-constructed corner of the Internet instead of the ephemerality of a wall of text in my social media profile.
I have decade-old posts on this website that still hold up and can be updated and repurposed. If I posted them in my Facebook feed, they’d be more likely to get lost to time. I’ll have to find a way to better preserve the ones I’m still proud of, maybe put them in a web server that can be plugged in and put online wherever I go.
It also provides me with ammunition against haters by making them read and try to take apart whatever I’ve published, which can yield more content ideas, or they ignore me because ‘Nobody got time for that.’ Either way, I can get something out of those hostile online interactions. I’m not an academic who has published important white papers, but at least this makes me a notch or two above the usual internet troll.
My internet activities are 80% input and 20% output. I did realize somewhere down the line that output is important, even if it’s just trolling. Being able to have something to say and respond to what others say is the meat of conversations, and not being able to hold conversations is essentially being socially crippled. The older I get, the more important it is to be able to socialize — few things are more tragic than a lonely man in a lonely world.
However, I wish not to suffer fools, especially on the Internet.
Kayfabrication of Hyperreality
I tend to bring up pro wrestling in these discussions due to both my participation in the scene and my fascination in its philosophical implications. It’s a simulation of a reality that got spun into its own simulacra, yet it says a lot more about reality itself than most people would admit to realizing. The drama and theater seeps into every facet of this world, especially with the hyperreality of social media. It’s like the more you hate pro wrestling, the more it says about your life.
I pointed out how pro wrestling may be more consistently profitable compared to combat sports, although the latter has higher spikes and elite professional fighters can earn way more for ‘less work’ compared to pro wrestlers.
This shows a paradox between the supposed ‘inauthenticity’ of pro wrestling being seen as its main detriment, yet it’s actually its very strength due to being able to more consistently build stars and storylines.
Meanwhile, the very thing that makes combat sports more attractive to casual audiences — the reality of combat — is also why its strongest champions can have the hardest downfalls whenever underdogs win upsets.
While the movie Rocky has created a worldwide culture of cheering for the underdog, two things tend to happen after upsets — audiences lose interest because the underdog finally made it and the champion they upset is now seen as weak and irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter how dominant the champion has been because you’re only as good as your last fight, which is a common case of social amnesia. The fear of that resulting irrelevance then makes boxing champions and contenders so anxious about losing the 0 on their loss record that they would duck whoever may come close to being a threat.
That fear is created by haters who only like to focus on the negative. That negativity is what makes the world go round, but that also hampers the growth of the combat sports industry, especially with the on-and-off plateauing of mixed martial arts and the ongoing limbo of boxing.
Meanwhile, pro wrestling is now in a much better place, especially with a Triple H-led WWE and a still-iffy but somewhat brightening development of AEW. Of course, pro wrestling is only truly profitable at the highest levels; meanwhile, the little leagues like ours (PUSO Wrestling) still need more support to stay afloat.
However, one thing is true — ‘fake’ isn’t even an insult anymore; it’s now acknowledged as our selling point. That so-called ‘realness’ isn’t that attractive anymore. It’s either boring or ‘too real’.
Brightening Up What’s Boring and Dangerous
I previously talked about kayfabrication, a term coined by the thinker and venture capitalist Eric Weinstein. He described it as:
“The process by which real activities that are dangerous and/or boring tend to get sanitized by the participants so they can present an as-if product to those outside of the structure, not themselves get hurt, and continue to make money off of it.”
This means you have to watch out for things that are boring and dangerous, but still important. A good example of that is war. Take a look at the Russo-Ukraine war that’s still ongoing as of this writing. It officially started when Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in late February 2014, but then had a lull for eight years afterwards, then restarted again when they invaded the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts on 24 February 2022.
War is undeniably dangerous, with that particular war having over 15,000 military and civilian deaths and up to 1,000,000 estimated casualties so far. Most of it had been quite boring, especially with the eight-year pause in between 2014 and 2022 and the current progress bogged down by this new form of trench warfare exacerbated by drones and long-range fighting. It’s like modern warfare and NBA basketball both extended in range around the same time. The NBA now has an abundance of 3-point shooting, while 2020s warfare saw the return of battle rifles and the proliferation of hundred-dollar drones that can destroy million-dollar tanks.
You can’t make most of that compelling to watch for most people unless you really focus on the death and destruction. You can also highlight the peculiarities that tend to happen, like Kim Jong-un sending North Korean troops to back up the Russian troops, only for them to get addicted to online pornography and not know how to react against drones. You can also have Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy get double-teamed and scolded like a child by US president Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance.
Of course, there’s the speculation beneath the kayfabe of Trump flipping the truth and putting the blame on Zelenskyy because he’s interested in getting mineral rights in the resource-rich Ukraine. Even when Trump is putting up an isolationist front and has the Rasputin-like outside influence of Elon Musk fucking up government bureaucracy and finance through the Department of Government Efficiency, some things never truly change when it comes to the American agenda.
Another example of a boring and dangerous field is combat sports, especially mixed martial arts. Back in the day, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, it was already known to those privy to the realities of hand-to-hand combat that real fighting is mostly a boring affair, which is why rules, rounds, and time limits were implemented to make sanctioned combat more spectator-friendly.
If organized without rules and time limits, no-holds-barred fights can last for hours. Also, without being able to directly affect the results, you cannot consistently market certain individuals of prodigious skill and charisma. That’s also why the Gracies made sure they got their message across.
You can’t just have a good fighter who keeps winning but is too stoic and laconic to string together sentences in front of a camera or audience. That’s why pro wrestling came to be — originally ‘worked’ contests that gradually became its own thing. While the serious and straightforward would sour towards it, the business grew beyond its combative borders and became the entertainment medium it was truly meant to be.
I said all that to point out that a lot of people gobble it up, even when detractors say it’s stupid and dishonest. You can’t please everyone, but you can certainly please some of them enough to make them give their money to you if you keep entertaining them.
Politics are also mostly boring and dangerous, especially with the system in place here in the Philippines. I can’t go any further than making a general allusion to it since I’m currently not legally allowed to talk about domestic politics at length, so you’ll have to pardon me for being vague. Maybe I’ll open the floodgates when I finally get naturalized someday.
However, I can talk about democracy and its main flaw, which is its dependence on a prosperous economy and educated populace in order for it to work optimally, as stated by the likes of South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee and Singapore founder Lee Kuan-yew.
The latter further elaborated that he didn’t believe “democracy necessarily leads to development” and that “the exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.”
So, when people say, “Oh, ask the people!” — it’s childish rubbish.
— Lee Kuan-yew
As of this writing, I’m working on another piece detailing an insane idea — a desperate measure to make democracy more effective in choosing appropriate leaders by really upping the stakes for voters.
In the end, haters don’t give a shit about all of that. They ignore all those details when they give their hot-to-lukewarm takes. Think of them as seasoning to make the otherwise bland process a bit more spicy. A little heat can make it taste better, all you have to do is build up your tolerance for spice and get used to it.
Caring Less is Self-Liberation
Learning to not care about other people’s opinions is liberation. They usually don’t know what they were talking about and they would even kick you when you’re down. If they actually know what they’re talking about and are productive in that field of expertise, they usually wouldn’t be there talking shit — they’d either be too busy doing their own thing or they’d be your peers.
Feedback from peers is more valuable than from casual observers and random strangers.
The easiest and lowest form of looking smart is casual cynicism. Hating on things they don’t understand. They have to have a negative take, whether it’s other people’s knowledge and beliefs, works and actions, or even their physical appearance and attributes.
Do they hate pineapple on pizza? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Every second you waste on arguing with haters is time wasted on not doing what you love and sharing it with like-minded people. The best way to represent that thing you’re passionate about is to do that thing to the best of your ability and with the utmost focus. Patience and persistence yield the best proof — results. If they’re still not convinced by that, then they will never be convinced. That’s okay. You should set them aside.
Soon enough, years will pass and you will become a veteran of that thing you love. And if they never stop hating, they’ll likely never go anywhere.
Fascists of Our Lives
Expression is action. When other people say what you’re doing is wrong, and yet you’re with other people doing it with you, and you’re bringing happiness to other people’s lives, then it weighs more on your side. If you’re not committing any crimes or harming anyone, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong.
Perhaps you have family insisting that you should be doing something that makes more money. All you have to do is prove that you’re earning your keep and able to sustain yourself. If they go beyond that and see your endeavors as a disgrace, yet they don’t physically (or legally) stop you, then you should just be an adult about it and decide right then and there if you’ll remain steadfast to your chosen vocation or relent to their wishes.
That choice must depend on whether their resistance is based on the best intentions or merely ignorance. With the latter, the right choice is to proceed with your path, regardless of their opposition. You must live your life in your own way.
Maybe it’s a little extreme to put it like this, but I did come upon a realization while rambling near the end of that video. It’s one of those lucid moments where I was in a flow state, speaking what was on my mind without really thinking twice about what’s coming out of my mouth. It’s that thing about ‘fascists in our lives’ — those who seek to control us.
On a related tangent, have you ever noticed that those people who are ‘fascists’ of other people’s lives also tend to be supporters of actual fascists? They agree with things like child beating because it ‘instills discipline’ and ‘they turned out fine’. They’re pro-authoritarian because they themselves tend to be authoritarian. Some of them are even pro-abuse.
They idolize strongmen because they themselves are weak — they’re failures who then impose their aspirations on those who they see are superior to them.
They were likely beaten by their parents, beaten by life, and they now prostrate themselves before these false gods, hoping to be taken to their promised nirvana that turns out to be an imagined glorious past that never was.
They want to be taken back to that idealized time of their youth where they’re not abused and exploited, but they themselves have gained the freedom to abuse and exploit. But since they’re lesser beings, they pass on their hopes and dreams to those above them.
At the very least, they themselves are above those who they see as lower than them — the libs, the woke, the people who don’t want what they want. That’s why they always have to ‘trigger the libs’ — it’s the only power they really have left.
Conclusion
Your job is to live your life well. It’s your best revenge, your most solid proof, and your ultimate legacy. Haters may hate, but you must not waver. In the dead of night, when you lay on your bed with only your thoughts and memories to keep you company, will you let them live in your head rent-free?
If so, they’re likely the source of your insecurities. That then bleeds into how you view other people, whether they’re strangers or peers or loved ones. You may see them as either adversaries, bullies, or mere obstacles. Focusing solely on their antagonism can lead to you not being able to truly focus on your work and personal life.
You shouldn’t take things too seriously; you shouldn’t take yourself seriously. It’s a function of the ego to not just be boastful, but also deprecate you. The ego does not want you to leave your comfort zone, but to keep you closed in and imprisoned. Therefore, it is your duty to yourself to overcome your ego — not only the empty pride, but also the needless self-deprecation.
Some self-deprecating humor every now and then isn’t bad, but it must come with enough self-awareness to acknowledge one’s weaknesses while also not needlessly devaluing oneself.
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