The Secret to Silencing Online Haters and Finding Freedom from Negativity!
My journey to light from the Internet's dark side.
Bob Olson’s writing comforts grief and nourishes the soul. He’s the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife, Insight from Hindsight, and The Magic Mala, and founder of BestPsychicDirectory.com.
I started Afterlife TV in 2011. At the time, the Internet was just getting to the point where the technology allowed me to present interviews in a side-by-side format, meaning you could see me on the left side of your screen and my guest on the right side. Today, this is commonplace, but in 2011, it was so rare that hundreds of people asked me how I was doing it after I started Afterlife TV.
I had been interviewing people as part of my investigation of life after death for fourteen years. Those interviews were conducted privately in person or over the phone. Now that the technology allowed it in 2011, I was excited to finally be able to record my interviews on video and share them with the public.
At the time, YouTube didn’t have the algorithms it has today, so they showed my videos to random viewers. In essence, YouTube had no idea who might be interested, so they put my videos in front of the general public. The problem with this approach is that many people weren’t happy to see videos about life after death, especially when the content challenged their religious or spiritual beliefs.
Consequently, I received some of the most nasty and vile comments in the first couple of years.
Some folks were furious that my videos made them question everything they believed about the afterlife. Others were upset that my conversations with guests weren’t religion- or faith-based and didn’t discuss Jesus and the Bible. And, of course, many criticized how I looked, how I sounded, my style of interviewing, and worse, wrote mean comments about my guests. For example, I received hundreds of cruel comments about one guest who habitually smacked his lips. One person wrote, “If he smacks his lips one more time, I’m going to kill myself.”
In those early years, my assistant, Jen, deleted all the mean comments about my guests, but I read every harsh comment about myself. My wife, Melissa, kept asking me, “Why don’t you just have Jen delete them all? Why put yourself through this?” I told her I needed to read them until they didn’t bother me anymore. I thought I needed to develop a thicker skin.
Instead of developing a thicker skin, I changed energetically, meaning the energetic makeup of my aura had a metamorphosis. It was like, “POOF!” One day, out of the blue, the nasty comments no longer bothered me. Instead, it felt like I was reading comments about someone I didn’t know. The emotional charge behind the cruel and critical words no longer affected me, and I realized that what they wrote spoke volumes about the person who wrote it and nothing about me.
This is when the nasty comments stopped coming. It was as if the YouTube algorithms had changed, and the platform only showed my videos to people who welcomed them (with a few stragglers who trickled in now and then to remind me of my transformation). I don’t know if the algorithm changed at that moment. All I know is that when the horrible comments stopped bothering me, ninety-nine percent of the haters stopped coming to my channel, or they simply stopped commenting—or both.
I didn’t mark the day the transformation happened, but I wish I had because it gave me such satisfying freedom. No longer was I trying to be liked. No longer did I care if my videos went viral. And no longer did it matter how many people subscribed to or viewed my videos. Ironically, this was when the popularity of Afterlife TVskyrocketed.
I also became aware that every person who had a show was dealing with the same issue. Suddenly, I began hearing talk show hosts and celebrities talk about the haters commenting on their social media sites. A few of them read the comments aloud for comic effect. This further helped me realize that the writers of these comments weren’t singling me out; they were trolling the Internet to write mean stuff to all sorts of nice people.
The significance of this phenomenon is worth a closer look. Let me break it down for impact. When I started my new show, I had no experience on video or YouTube, so I’m sure I had some anxiety about how both I and the show would be received. That anxiety became an energetic match that attracted and attached itself to the energy of people who wanted to hurt others. I feared being hurt, and they wanted to hurt others. Bam! We came together like a magnet to metal.
Later, after reading thousands of hurtful comments, my energy shifted. Their words no longer affected me. I no longer feared negative comments. Therefore, I was no longer an energetic match for them. Like magic, the haters virtually disappeared from my YouTube channel.
The question this story begs us to ask is, what are we fearing that is attracting the product of that fear? Said another way, what is the energy of our worries, suspicions, and anxieties inviting into our lives?
If we fear criticism, are we energetically requesting it? If we worry that someone will say we’re a bad parent, terrible at our job, a horrible spouse, or a lousy friend, is it likely that we’re inviting that condemnation from others?
How will the world respond if we fear exposing our artwork, writing, videos, or services to the public? Who will see it, and how will it be received?
I remember being in school when a teacher would ask, “Who wants to answer the question on the board?” as he scanned the room for a person to choose. I would avoid eye contact and think, “Not me! Not me! Don’t pick me!” And every time I expended this level of energy, the teacher would say, “Bob, how ‘bout you?” It happened so often that I eventually learned to stop putting so much energy into avoiding it.
This was a lesson for me about the power of my focus. If I focus my thoughts on what I don’t want to happen, what I fear happening, or what I worry about happening, all my metaphysical energy is pouring into that focus. If I, instead, direct my focus on what I want or wish to happen, all my metaphysical energy is directing the Universe toward that end.
Yet, let’s go deeper than merely the power of our focus. When the haters stopped hating my videos, I had to ask myself why. I knew their critical comments had stopped bothering me, but I needed to understand how I made that happen.
The answer was that I faced my fears and anxieties by staring them in the eye. Rather than having my assistant delete all the mean comments about me, I read them. Looking them dead in the eye helped me realize that negative comments say more about the commenter than the receiver. As they say, “Haters are gonna hate.” And this realization took the sting out of the words meant to hurt me.
Confronting our fears helps us gain perspective on them. What exactly am I worried about? When we face our fears head-on, we often realize that the worst has already occurred, which wasn’t as terrible as we thought. Alternatively, we might discover that we have inflated our fears into a monster that isn't real or is more afraid of us than we are of it. Alternatively, sometimes we get stung, only to realize that our fear of the sting was much worse than the sting itself.
Today, and for the last decade, I’m immensely grateful to my YouTube viewers for the love and kindness they express in their comments on every video. I’m genuinely overwhelmed by their gratitude and enthusiasm after every episode. It’s worth a peek to experience it. Choose any video to see what I’m talking about at https://www.youtube.com/@bobolson.
I hope my story and what I learned from it has got you thinking. Let me know if it’s helped you in any way. I’d also love to hear about your stories on this topic and how facing your fears might have transformed your life.
With love,
Bob
Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, the author of Answers about the Afterlife, Insight from Hindsight, and The Magic Mala, and the creator of the most trusted directory of psychics, mediums, animal communicators, and energy healers, BestPsychicDirectory.com.
Good for you, Bob! My mediumship teacher is Lee VanZyl, who BTW is on your Best Psychic Directory. The first thing we learned in class was to say "I don't give a sh*t" when doing a reading. The work that we both do is for healing, and the desire to heal others is a calling with a very high vibration. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Bob. Good article - provides good insight. I believe in an an honest review of the negative comment - after the hurt has dissipated - to own what in it is true (if any) & learn from it.
I think too often we tend to dismiss negative comments about ourselves without learning from them.
All the best, Maureen