Why I think being a “Hater” is okay

Drake & Kendrick Beef: Social Media, People Pleasing, and Authenticity

You’ve heard it all of your life. Hate is a strong word. You shouldn’t hate things or people. Hate is an emotion relegated to jealous losers with no life of their own who are hellbent on making the phrase “misery loves company” an ever present truth. Within the online scape, haters are pathetic low lives that harass and abuse others for a reason that doesn’t really matter or at least does not merit the level of vitriol projectile vomited on every social media platform. Hate and jealousy and anger are the bad emotions that you’re not supposed to feel or show. While I agree that these emotions, when left unprocessed, have the capacity to cause harm to oneself and others, I don’t think hate is necessarily a bad thing.

Obviously when I say this I don’t mean that racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and any other kind of bigotry is a good or neutral thing and I don’t endorse bullying on or offline. Hating any group of people and acting in violence towards them is a horrible thing and this hatred must be critical analyzed by the hater. I think that just as love should have boundaries, there should also be boundaries in hate. Emotions aren’t evil, they are signifiers of our relation to our environment. For instance anger is a sign that a boundary has been crossed and in my experience is a sort of fight response that protects the more vulnerable part of me that has been hurt. Jealousy is a sign of unhappiness with your own life, whether it be your surroundings compared to someone else or personal insecurities. Anger and jealousy can motivate you to make positive decisions if the time is taken to question why you have these feelings and focus on the actions you can take rather than fixating on how you can control others. I believe hate functions in a similar way. Hate allows us to examine our own values and perspectives and face whether we are living according to them and if the people in our lives are living opposite to them.

Likes and dislikes are a part of self-actualization, its part of what makes each person or cognitive creature to be unique. Love and hate are a part of that spectrum. If you love everything, you love nothing. If you hate everything, you hate nothing. And hate doesn’t have to be static (especially in fiction, see enemies to lovers trope). As we grow, interests change. We learn new information or have new experiences. That doesn’t make the hate any less real, but one’s hate shouldn’t stop them from continuing to experience the world. If something challenges your hate for something, its a time of discovery that should be welcomed in open arms rather than feared and contorted. In the same way we fall out of love with something, we should allow ourselves to fall out of hate. When we live in a world where people “aren’t allowed” to dislike, let alone hate something, we live in a world of shame and people pleasing. I think it’s dangerous to lump people providing constructive criticism and asking for accountability with those who leave horrible comments and send death threats under the monolithic title of “hater”.

I think the Kendrick and Drake rap beef, as silly as it sounds, perfectly exemplifies the harm of people pleasing, the merit of hating, and authenticity, especially on social media.

People Pleasing on the Internet

People pleasing in the physical world is detrimental and exhibiting the same behaviors online is harmful. The root of people pleasing is an insecure attachment and low self-esteem. The mindset is that through ignoring ones own needs and solely focusing on what another person needs and wants, one will find acceptance and community. Often people-pleasers believe that they are kind and selfless people, in fact they repeatedly mold themselves to fit this role. The sad reality is that this is a lie. Not only will these behaviors lead to rejection and isolation but the people pleaser is not a kind and selfless person but really manipulative and inauthentic. That is not to say that people pleasers are evil and deserve no empathy. As a reforming people pleaser myself, the behavior usually does not come from malicious intent but a fundamental misunderstanding of how to connect with others, most likely formed in childhood. Real connection is about being yourself, as close to that as can be, even if that means certain people will dislike you. It is through being authentic that you find real community. And isn’t it so much better and less tiring to be around people who like you for you? Where you don’t have to stuff yourself down or silence an opinion for someone to care about you? Why is it so important for everyone to like you? How can you expect everyone to like you if you don’t like yourself?

Social media is another outlet in which people pleasers and other people with insecure attachments and low self-esteem can get a seemingly endless supply of external validation. If they maintain the perfectly spotless online presence they will receive all the adoration they crave, chasing the high for more praise, more accolades, more likes, more followers, etc… It is normal to want recognition and to be liked. It’s normal for your identity to shift as you grow up. It is not normal to contort yourself into a person you think people will like.

That’s the problem with Drake. Not even Aubrey Graham the person, but Drake the artist. There is no denying that Drake is popular. There’s no denying that he makes hit records. But he’s horribly inauthentic. Drake is a hollow persona that shifts to match whatever is most beneficial to be liked and Kendrick perfectly illustrates this in his diss tracks. This is why “The Heart pt 6” falls so flat, even for his diehard fans. Drake asserts that he wrote this song himself, and thus all its lackluster quality, contradictions, and weak points fall back on him. This is what happens to people pleasers. When they become resentful or exhausted and let the mask slip, they will almost always face rejection. A real person will always disappoint when compared to perfection.

The Merit of Hating

Something that caught my attention in Kendrick’s tracks “Euphoria” and “6:16 in LA” is how even though Kendrick expresses how hates Drake, he doesn’t seem necessarily focused on his downfall until after “Family Matters” drops. He offers Drake a solution in which he can still hate him but Drake can still have a successful career and the two can coexist: stop trying to be someone he’s not.

The first half in “6:16 in LA” embodies the merit there can be in hating someone and bringing your grievances publicly. Sometimes disrupting your peace to call out someone else can help them change or call attention to a wider issue, even if it makes you look like a “bitter hater”. It can cause others to think critically about their own behavior. A lot of people think that all haters are loud about it but I’d venture to say that when people hate or dislike someone and they reflect on it, often times it leads to them simply avoiding/disassociating with that person. We can see that in this beef. Kendrick did not want to be in the big three as he did not want to be associated with Drake, and then he publicly explained why.

Kendrick Lamar

Now I’m not asserting that any celebrity or really any person is fully authentic, especially on social media. Having different presences in different spaces is normal and sometimes is imperative for safety. A person whose instagram is carefully curated photos of themselves showing off their looks and achievements may be just as authentic as someone who posts more unflattering photos with personal captions. But when you form an image than is antithetical to who you are, things can never end well.

What is your opinion on the term “hater”? Are you a self-prescribed hater? Who do you think won the beef?

Stay artfully curious,

Hachi