every week I have a client bring up their great fear of going the scary kind of viral.
it’s always tied to a confession that they’re not posting what they really want to, because what-if-someone-misunderstands-and-drags-me-through-the-digital-mud?
and yeah, that’s valid.
having to defend something you care about to a sea of faceless trolls who’ve arrived on your profile with the sole intent of not giving a fuck what you actually meant to say is an exhausting task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies, let-alone one of my gorgeous brilliant community members.
but what I’ve noticed in all my years as an Online Girl™️ is that it doesn’t actually matter what you say.
if you’re showing up on the internet you’re probably going to get called out eventually, and holding back from creating the things that call to you won’t protect you from it anyway.
one of the examples that comes to mind is the dog food lunch girl. she didn’t wake up one day and say, “finally I’m brave enough to make a public statement about pranks between lovers!!!!” and still, the backlash she’s faced is nightmare material.
obviously we’ll never know what goes on behind closed doors, but either way, how horrific would it feel to post something just for laughs and wind up defending your romantic relationship to 35 million people?
nothing about that video was trying to be polarizing. it didn’t come attached to a perspective at all. AND YET! whenever we see these examples getting their fifteen minutes on our feeds, we use it as evidence that the safest bet is to dilute our own.
but tempering what you post doesn’t actually negate risk.
the only way to escape criticism is to stop showing up at all.
a few years ago I went viral on tiktok because of a weird sore that had developed on my lip. the video wasn’t about that — it was just a video of me doing my makeup — but the trolls latched on, and I found myself waking up to hundreds of comments diagnosing me with everything from a vitamin deficiency to herpes.
a friend of mine went viral on substack recently for this note which is nowhere near as activating as some of the other perspectives she shares (love her for ‘em). relatively harmless, and yet it got in the hands of someone who didn’t think so.
all of this conjures the crisis management training I studied in college — assume the brand you’re working for is successful, they’re going to wind up in the media. whenever anything (a story, a person, a business) is up for public consumption, it’s up for public criticism, too.
either you choose not to rise, or you learn how to deal with the weight of it.
here’s where I recommend starting ↓
001 / worst-case scenario it
if seeing someone else get internet-harassed has left you feeling super fucking scared of ending up in their same position, let’s play a little game where you imagine you did. what would you do? how would you feel? who would you call? how would you recover? even if it feels dark in the moment, it creates a much more unshakeable foundation of confidence because you’ll realize you have all the steps in place to hold yourself if (when!) it happens.
002 / expose yourself
this is one I’ve been playing with a lot lately, considering what skeletons in my closet should be mine to share before someone else does (I wrote about this a bit here and here). so, where are you still living in fear of being found out? what if you could get in front of the story? write out a list of all the things you want to control the narrative around, and I’d recommend creating a content plan that actually incorporate those stories into your platforms, like, soon.
003 / do the nervous system stuff
this might need to happen before you deploy step two, because the act of putting hidden parts of yourself out for the world to consume isn’t just like, a throwaway nbd kind of thing. some of this might be related to real trauma. some of this might put your nervous system into a state that isn’t safe. this is outside my scope, but I always recommend my clients be integrating that kind of support alongside their visibility strategy, and I do the same (highly recommend the work of Kayleigh Martin and Kaitlyn Kessler to name a few).
unless you’re content with staying under the radar in every sense of the word — rejecting recognition and building something behind the scenes — then you can’t censor your way out of the disorienting experience of being seen.
the only way to “protect” yourself from being criticized is to come to terms with the fact that if all goes to plan, you will be.
congratulations. 🙂
x
