Haters Are Speed Bumps — Keep Driving
8 Jan 2026 · 7 min
Steve Lichtman says haters are speed bumps that signal you're cutting through the noise. He filters critics into two groups: respond kindly to well-meaning ones, block the purely cruel. Most haters produce nothing themselves, so use their noise as fuel to keep creating.
Chapters
Hey, guys, and welcome to the show. Today we're going to talk about something that once you start finding any form of success online, it's what inevitably comes next. It's the haters, right? Rappericet talks about haters all the time, and he has a certain way that he deals with them. He tells them to kick rocks. That's the polite version. You know, it's something that once you level up and opinions start showing up uninvited on your timeline, you know what it really means at the end of the day, these people are there because it means that you're now visible above the noise and above all the other garbage that is being put out there to the point where if somebody saw something and was like, oh, I can't do that myself, eff them, and they write something nasty or they, you know, look, it's something where I usually feel just bad for the people because, you know, a hater is a hater, but you can't succeed without people hating you along the way. That's just unfortunately part of the way society works these days, especially in the digital realm, where bullying online and people just being crappy to each other is kind of a norm. And it stinks that it's a norm, but it's a real part of it. My filter is pretty simple that I use for it. If the person is. They're kind enough, but they're just super off base and you know what I would call reckless idiot. I'll usually just kill them with kindness and gratitude. Thank them for being there, thank them for their thoughts or their opinions. Maybe reply if I feel they weren't just trolling. But on the other side, if somebody's just being cruel just for the sake of being cruel, then the only way to really deal with them is without wasting your time, is just to block them and move on. Because these are people that will always be a drain of you. I've got a good friend who is an artist and he gets, you know, he's political a lot of times and it brings a lot of hate, but he wants to live in a vacuum chamber, so he blocks every single person that doesn't agree with him. Do I think that's healthy? Absolutely not. I think that's the other way. I think you could go to the extreme on both sides here, but if somebody's coming online just to spew hate towards you or it's racist or anti Semitic or whatever it may be about, if it's coming from a point of hatred, true, true, horrible hate, block their ass. And move on. Either way. It really doesn't matter to me. Either way. No matter what they say, whether it's just somebody saying, you suck, I don't agree with you, you're an idiot, whatever, or if they're straight up being horrendous, the bottom line is they're not going to rent a single ounce of space in my head, and they shouldn't have any in yours, because these are people that aren't able to do on their own. That's why they're posting. Right? The whole reason they're trolling and spewing crap is because they're not making anything themselves. You never see other podcast hosts going online and talking smack about other people because they understand the work it takes. They understand the hustle, they understand the grind, they understand the effort that's being put forth to put a product, even if it's not the best product or if it's not the product they agree with. But, you know, the ones that have the time to hate, I kind of wonder what could they have really accomplished with all that free time otherwise? Just remember, though, that like, in a world where AI is look, it's spewing out hate too. You know, there's. There's humans that are authentic and you could spot them out real quick, but there's bot. There's bot farm comments all the time. And they're often hater comments. They're often, you know, pro this, anti that, and that's just part of the ebb and flow of it. But, you know, at the end of the day, the haters are always gonna prove the same thing that you're cutting through, you're making that move. People are seeing you, people are experiencing you, and people are appreciating you. So if also remember that the haters are loud. The haters are always gonna be louder than the fans, unfortunately. I wish we lived in a world where it was unrelenting fandom like you see at a Comic Con or a wrestling convention or a concert. I truly wish when people were fans of something, they would take a second out of their day. And maybe this is something you should do today. And it's to take a second out of your day and go compliment somebody's post that you see doing great things and putting in the effort and trying, even if it's not perfect. Honestly, the ones that are perfect and already have a thousand likes and have a couple haters in there, they don't need, need your help. Find that creator that's got one to three likes on something. And no comments. And go drop that first one and throw a share on it. It doesn't hurt your algorithm for you to share other people's content. It just helps them. So I think, really, that's it today. Just don't let haters bring you down, because they're garbage people in the first place that are living in their own misery. They're living in their own ineptitude, and they're living in their own failures of not getting things done. So today's riff is gonna be a real easy one. They're just speed bumps on a highway you're already owning. That's a hater. Hater is nothing more than a speed bump on a highway you already own. Because it's your show, it's your post, it's your blog, it's your podcast, it's your video, it's your anything, it's your song, it's your art. And the people that come along and just want to spit crap your way, forget about them. So the next time, I want you to take this small action, the next time something negative pings into your timeline and you see it and you're like, oh, man. Like, what the hell? What's going on here? I want you to do this. I want you to pause. I want you to smile. I know that's not what everybody's going to say, but I want you to just pause. I want you to smile, and I want you to move on to creating more. Turn their noise into that fuel that feeds your fire. Right? Turn their BS and their misery into another idea. Let it spawn off from the original post, the original thought or plan. Let it become something new and use their hate against them by shining brighter and shining stronger. So just keep cranking the volume. Everybody. Keep it up. Yeah. The real crowd, the real people, they're cheering you on. Even if they're not as noisy, they're cheering you on. That's all I got for today. This was unfiltered and unshakeable with me, Steve Lichtman. Have a wonderful day.
