A Psychoanalysis of Those Who Make Useless Negative Critical Comments on Medium

To my critics: Instead of telling me you hate my work, why not publish something of your own?

They are hurting their own agenda.

Their effect on readership trends to the opposite of what they desire. They stand out as bitter and jealous people too afraid to put their own thoughts into publication.

Here’s a statistical correlation of interest: My most liked articles are also my most hated articles.

It’s rare that I publish anything that garners 20 comments, but it happens occasionally. It’s also rare that I write something that gets over 3,000 reads.

I have noticed one correlation that holds very strong over the years: the articles which are most liked by others are also the ones that are the most hated.

Please excuse me as I sit here staring at my keyboard for a minute.

I was just shut down. I apologize if you laughed when you thought I was being funny. I apologize if you empathize with anything I’ve written.

According to my critics, you shouldn’t have.

It’s positive feedback that spurns critics into action. They cannot sit by and let someone give positive feedback to something written without letting us know that they hated it.

It’s always happens in that order. People pointing out that they enjoyed what I wrote is followed by people telling me that I am: an idiot, worthless human being, mentally stunted, illogical, morally bankrupt, am a crappy speller, have atrocious grammar, or the worst insult imaginable: I quote unreliable sources.

The roaches don’t come out on their own to nitpick my work.

I think that since we can’t easily see how many reads an article has, they use the number of claps to gauge how well received an article was. If the number of claps passes a threshold that is unacceptable to one of these assholes, then they let the insults fly.

If an article has few claps, they let it go, assuming that “the people have spoken” with their silence. Maybe they don’t like to kick puppies or their fellow writers when an article isn’t well received. It seems they are only spurned into action when too many people like something that they don’t.

There are some writers who have made a name for themselves on Medium, like umair haque, people who get “pre-hated.” There is a core group of haters that will attack him in the comments of everything he publishes no matter what he says. As pathetic as it sounds, that is a sign of success on Medium.

I don’t know what the end game is for people like that.

What do they expect to gain from their hateful, spiteful and obviously jealous words? The only thing I can think is that they want to destroy your belief in yourself and your ability to be comfortable in your own skin.

It’s more than obvious that these criticisms are not constructive in the least.

They don’t offer any insight or any tips on improving your writing. Their comments are purse chunks of solid vomit with no value to anyone. (Someone should have accused me of that. Too late now. I’ve claimed it as my own.)

They certainly aren’t seeking to raise the vibration of human consciousness to a new level of peace and understanding which will usher in a new age of enlightened Utopia where we can all live in love and joy forever. Yet, these attacks can’t be seen as anything other than spiritual in their essence for it is the spirt of the writer that they seek to harm.

How very un-Godly of them.

And, in several instances, how very un-Christ-like, the antithesis of his message. Some may even venture to say these people are antichrists for the hurtful venom they spew without regard for the person they are attacking.

No one ever forced them to read anything written by me (at least, not yet).

The only motivating factor for these people to comment must be to make society worse than it already is.

I don’t want to associate with those types of people, so I blocked the majority of these pricks after reading their useless insults.

I also don’t want my own soul to be dragged down to their level, so its best not to have any association with people of such low character.

The last (popular?) article I wrote had 13 neutral to positive comments before it ran into a string of 5 negative comments in a row. I’ve written enough and long enough on Medium to know that it wasn’t the content of my post which caused their call to action.

I’ve written much worse than that particular article without anyone commenting. Therefore, it must be the perceived positive reception the article got that caused them to lose their civility, assuming they had any to begin with.

The only conclusion I can reach for why these people exist is to crush the souls of those who, by some unknown internal measurement of their own, society deems as better than themselves. They want to extinguish the light of creativity within those writers.

I’ve noticed over the years that nearly everyone (above 95%) of those who leave such comments on anyone’s articles don’t publish anything themselves.

They do not write. That can only mean one of two things. Either they know how hateful and hurtful they are and don’t want to subject themselves to people like themselves, or they are incredibly insecure with very low self-esteem believing that no one would ever read anything they write, that no one would be interested in anything they have to say. Perhaps both.

Besides trying to make the world a worse place for all of us, lacking an inability to write themselves while attacking those who can in order to feel better about their shitty personalities, the other commonality that these inferior scum all share is that they are all Americans.

This made me wax philosophically and ask Google the oft repeated questions: Why are Americans so rude? Are Americans more rude than other nationalities?

Someone correctly pointed out that, in the recent past, Americans were not more rude than the average person, but Americans on the Internet are “rude af” whatever that means.

As a former educator, I’d assume that “af” means A through F, covering all the grades. I’d further assume that means that, on the Internet, all Americans from the smartest (A) to the stupidest (F) are rude.

Not too bad as far as assumptions go, but still wrong, and nowhere nearly as unnecessarily viciously cruel and presumptuous as these *&%#* thoughtlessly attacking me without bothering to learn anything more about me than one humorous (or completely non-humorous, depending on who you ask) article I wrote.

In case you didn’t know, making baseless assumptions while arrogantly displaying your willful ignorance (also known as stupidity) are two behaviors which irk me greatly, no matter what your national background is.

Long, long ago in prehistory, around the birth of the Internet, I wrote a guide to etiquette on the Internet.

It has long since disappeared. However, being exposed to this type of ill-mannered treatment just hurts doubly as much since I tried over 25 years ago to prevent the degradation of society that is happening around us now.

Much like Ellon Musk, as a person with Asperger’s (high functioning Autism), I don’t understand what drives an otherwise rational person to such uncivil behavior. I have never understood rude behavior, on the internet or otherwise, as something that is tolerated. In my world, it is the equivalent of being assaulted violently and should be punishable by law as such. The world would be a better place.

However, unfortunately, I can see that society instead is choosing to continue to deteriorate and go in the opposite direction, accepting and admiring rudeness and looking down on meaningful intellectual discourse. The election of Donald Trump informs me of this much. Leave it to this dark and barbaric world to turn high intelligence into a negative turning it into a mental diagnosis.

Characteristics of Asperger’s, or high functioning Autism, are a propensity to be highly creative and inventive. They are known for their contributions to the sciences, the arts, literature, and technology. They are also known for their inability to deal with the type of people I am discussing here.

These types of people have been attacking me, mocking me, suffocating me for 5 decades now.

I am more than tired of them. I hate them as much as I could hate any group of people. I hate them about as much as I hate the “Religious Right.” I know I’d make your day if I told you that you made my day worse.

Of course, they know nothing about me. That may have been their loved one who died on the operating table today because I couldn’t bring myself to go into work. I thought you’d like to know that you are powerful and have an influence in the real world.

Allowing people like this to dominate our social media will lead to the downfall of civilization unless we take back our voices and reclaim our right to live with dignity, respectful of each other. Unfortunately, I suppose you’d have to neurologically divergent to see that connection.

People with the intelligence, creativity and drive to improve society are rare enough and we make life hard enough for them to contribute without these pricks dominating our social media spaces.

I know that I no longer feel like contributing my time and my intelligence to bettering society. I can’t be alone in that. Society has gotten so abrasive that my former love for humanity is quickly turning sour. I don’t feel motivated to help a people who treat me like shit and wouldn’t give a care if I dropped dead tomorrow. Why should I?

It’s highly likely that I’ve already contributed more to society than these people ever will.

And I’m starting to feel ashamed of my accomplishments, or the fact that I even have accomplishments in this backwards hate filled world that worships ignorance and shallow superficiality.

I wasn’t planning on coming out as neuro-atypical here. I also wasn’t planning on doing it the way that I did. I have an 18-page document sitting somewhere on my computer waiting to be updated and edited on that topic.

I have grown as a writer on Medium over the past 4 years. Because of these people, I now dread the idea that something I write might go viral. My contributions have decreased over the years as writing on any topic takes a great deal of time and energy to do. So far, it has been far from worth it. In fact, it’s been the opposite of rewarding.

People are very fickle, and I don’t’ like writing for an audience. I write mostly for myself. I only share on the Medium platform because it seems like a waste of my time and energy to have produced any written work without making it available to those who may need it or appreciate it.

Being neurologically divergent means that I have a sideways view on life that most people do not.

My experiences and insights are often not those of your everyday person.

That alone is enough to make a writer unpopular on Medium. I also know that the Medium platform and society in general needs those insights more than they are willing to admit in this age when we would rather diagnose those cursed with higher intelligence than listen to their insights.

So, in addition to writing for myself as a hobby for my own relaxation, I am writing for our posterity, because I know that someday people in the future will look back and wonder why the people of our time are the way we are. They will appreciate the contributions I have made more than my contemporary peers ever could.

Please excuse my abrupt ending.

Here’s some of my better articles should you be interested in learning more about me before plastering me with your assumptions regarding my character or my life. These seven articles are not my most widely read, but they seemed like a good combination of my favorites with some of the better received among Medium members:

{The best thing to happen as a result of writing this piece is that I found my copy of the first 282 articles I wrote, and removed, from Medium. Perhaps I will subject you to a few of the ideas there after I rewrite them using the insights I have gained in the last few years.}