One of the best segments on Jimmy Kimmel Live! is “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets”
Pretty self-explanatory title. What’s incredible, however, is the thick skin the participants display.
No matter how barbarically they’ve been insulted, they always seem to have the last laugh. Taking a shot at Questioning the smell of Jake Gyllenhaal’s genitals? Good luck with that. The best thing you can achieve is a public shaming which will make you crawl back into your sad little cave.
Sadly, insults are a very common online phenomena. According to a Pew research, nearly three quarters of internet users—73%—have witnessed online harassment. Offensive name-calling and purposeful embarrassment were the most common types of these attacks.
No matter how much love you might get as a celebrity, there will always, always be at least a handful of people out there who dislike you or even hate you. The moral of the story is that you can’t be loved by everyone.
So if you’re worried about someone disliking you, just remember that right now, there are hundreds, thousands of trolls hunched over their keyboards, bashing out mean comments about your favorite actors, singers, dancers, and other celebs.
There are bad ways to deal with haters like getting into internet catfights with them, breaking down in tears. And then there are awesome ways to react and feel like a pro, watch and learn from these celebrities.
Sometimes celebrities need a reality check. And sometimes, that reality check comes in the form of humbling comments from Twitter. The Avengers: Infinity War cast read fan tweets about themselves for BuzzFeed, and — while the tweets varied on the kindness scale — the actors’ reactions were pretty much the best.
The moral of this story is be careful what you tweet, good or bad — even if it doesn’t get all that many likes, retweets, or comments. Even if you don’t have many followers, and you assume that no one is paying attention — you never know. Your tweets could always end up splashed across a TV screen. if you’re very lucky, perhaps your tweets will cause your favorite celebrity to react with Sebastian Stan-levels of enjoyment.