The true secret to no longer caring what strangers on the internet think.
How to stop wincing at your comment section.
Look, I know it’s different here on Substack.
The comment sections are more mature, considered, less emotional like the chaotic comment sections of Instagram.
One reason is because posts are longer here— things are shared with more context. You have to really choose to click on someones article and read it all the way to the bottom before commenting. On Instagram, you can stumble upon someone’s 92 second reel or 5 slide carousel and feel entitled to make moral judgements in the comments.
The truth about social media, particularly short form like Instagram, is that all posts lack context. All of them. Unless you know someone intimately, have known them their entire lives, and have followed their work from the beginning of time, you don’t have all the context.
This is why it feels so ughhh sometimes to post on Instagram, and read the comment sections.
How are people taking things so out of context?
How are people thinking this entire post revolves around them, even when I’ve never met them?
How are people making these assumptions that are, totally wrong?
It seems bizarre really, that so much of modern day communication happens on these platforms.
It is quite literally impossible to be completely understood by strangers on the internet— to never be misjudged, to never be projected on.
The fact that we try, is what drives us mad.
Making peace with these three facts is necessary as both a creator and consumer on social media:
Everything lacks context. This should make you less triggered as a consumer and it should allow more freedom as a creator.
Nothing is about you. If it resonates, cool. If it doesn’t, don’t expect the creator to change what they said to suit you. This entitlement dynamic drives me NUTS.
Someones else’s expression is not your prescription. Unless someone is your mentor, coach, doctor or someone you have actually hired to give you plain advice— they are not prescribing anything to you, no matter how sharp or direct their language. They are posting into the social media broadcast and had NO IDEA of exactly who would read it. This should free you both as a creator and consumer.
As a creator, this should allow you to remember that no, you don’t need to hold people’s hands every time you post. Grown ass adults need to get better at discerning, at scrolling on, at not taking everything so dam personally.
I have been posting online for FIFTEEN YEARS.
I deleted my facebook at 60,000 followers in 2018 and I have slowly grown my Instagram to 112k followers. This is a snails pace compared to how fast people move now and you know what? I’m ok with it. If I wanna grow fast, I’ll employ the grow fast tactics. But what matters most to be on socials is that I can say what I mean. Sometimes I believe we will only grow as fast as our nervous systems will allow and honestly? It took me years to stop wincing when someone misjudged me in the comments. Especially 5-7 years ago when the woke police upped their patrols.
Everyone (including me) says that your freedom with expression really begins when you stop caring so much what everyone thinks.
That goal seems so elusive really doesn’t it. ‘Stop caring what others think’.
It’s normal and natural for us to want to be liked.
It’s normal and natural for us to care what our immediate circle, our village cares about us. We have accountability to those in our real life.
But how many people can we ACTUALLY, truly care about when it comes to their perception of us?
Really sit with this.
Can you care about 100,000 people’s opinions of you?
How do you do that? Do you have to become neutral in everything you say? Tone everything down? Even then, you still wouldn’t be liked?
What happens, is after being online long enough, you learn first hand that it is literally impossible to care about what more than a handful of people think of you.
Impossible.
I mean you can, but you have to trade your freedom, your integrity, your peace… to name a few.
I have grown in my ability to ‘care less about how I’m perceived’, because I have been in the arena so long, I have been forced to.
I could no longer afford to.
I could not afford another afternoon of nausea while I tried to play with my kids, stewing over a misjudged comment from someone I had never met in my life.
I could not afford the hideous pain of trying to say what I meant while taking my signature edge off it.
I could not afford to trade the full freedom of my integrity for the shallow reward of having Marie in Austin give me her approval.
Most people just have not reached this point yet.
This is my message for you today.
The reason you still feel sick in your stomach when a stranger online misjudges you?
The reason you still care more about what others think than you’d like to?
You haven’t reached the point yet.
The one where you have to choose — between your aliveness, integrity, expression, freedom and peace, or trying to manage how you’re being perceived.
The point where you have to draw a line under it.
I used to think I “didn’t care” how I was perceived online. Meanwhile, my stomach would drop every time someone misjudged me or took something out of context.
I’d explain. Give context. Add disclaimers. It became impossible to say anything with any real, sharp truth. It was exhausting.
Every person who’s put themselves out there long enough — misunderstood, misjudged, projected on — reaches a point where they simply cannot care anymore. Hear me clearly: they cannot.
Most people who truly don’t care anymore don’t flinch, don’t check, don’t explain. But hear me on this— they earned it.
They put in the reps. They were spewed all over. They had weeks they didn’t eat because the physical threat of being misjudged consumed them. They paid the price.
More than this, they realised how impossible it is to be in integrity, in their freedom of expression— and try to be liked by people who don’t know them.
It has taken a long time of sharing my work and my voice, of being in the public eye in many different contexts, for me to truly learn something: it’s not about not wanting to care. It’s about not being able to.
As a mum with little kids at home, I have the capacity to use my voice and create. I don’t however, have the capacity to micromanage people’s perceptions, give lifelong context, hold someone’s hand through a post, or tend to every stranger’s insecurity, demand, or projection. I don’t have capacity to make sure everyone knows I’m a good person.
I reached a point where I’ve had to learn, through pure fire, what’s my side of the bed — and what’s not.
I’ve made peace with the fact that everything on social media lacks context. That everyone thinks everything is about them. That people are committed to their story about the world, about themselves, and sometimes about you.
You don’t get to “not caring” just because you want to. You get there by deciding you literally cannot have freedom at the same time as caring. You start to see how the human mind actually works — and that you’ve been on a hamster wheel, wishing everyone would see only your good parts, without their own ideas and worldview attached. You realise it’s delusional to think you can express yourself publicly, or do anything of real value, without being misunderstood in some way.
The greatest creators stop caring whether they’re liked the moment they can’t afford to keep caring. Their work, their message, their integrity depend on drawing that line. So does their health.
You still overthink how you’re perceived because the stakes aren’t high enough yet. Once they are, you’ll understand: their perception isn’t my job. My expression is. You’ll also understand, first hand, through so much experience, that it is literally impossible to control how you’re perceived by people who do not truly know you. This will free you.
You realise what actually matters to you — integrity, expression, freedom, peace, using your God-given gifts well. And that you can have none of those things and have people blowing smoke up your bum twenty-four hours a day. Not both.
All big change happens at the point of enough.
After fifteen years, I’m there.
Some of you just haven’t gotten there yet. The more you put yourself out there, the faster you will.
Be clear on what you value— integrity, freedom, expression, your gifts, your message, what you really care about in this world. When this matters more to you than being understood? Then you will find the peace you’re looking for.
Love, PK.
XX
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