TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

1 Jun 2015 · 2 min

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2:28

TJ Walker (host of the live stream) recounts how former FIFA official Jack Warner used a satirical article from The Onion as evidence in a video defending himself against corruption charges. Walker explains that The Onion is a long-standing satirical publication that invents stories for humor, and criticizes Warner for failing to verify his sources and then attempting to edit the mistake out after being mocked. He advises public figures to distinguish genuine criticism from mockery and to verify sources before responding, because reacting to mockery can make one appear foolish.

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A FIFA executive took to the airways, at least on the Internet, created a video defending himself and using as a source the Onion. So Jack Warner is one of the officials, former officials of FIFA, the international organization governing soccer, and he's defending himself against these corruption charges. But he did something curious over the weekend. He posted a video where he used as evidence a story from the Onion. Now, to anyone who reads news in the world, the English speaking world, the Onion's been around a long time, folks, many, many, many years. And they are a satirical publication. They just make up stuff to be funny. And they had a whole story about FIFA saying that the organization was giving the World cup to the United States and giving it to them for a tournament to start today. And they were giving them 12 penalty. All sorts of things that if you follow soccer at all, you would know is completely absurd. Well, this gentleman used the evidence, put it up on a video, then was roundly mocked and ridiculed. He downloaded, he took off the video, edited that part out and put it back up as if no one would notice. That is absolutely clueless, ladies and gentlemen. Now, folks, on the one hand, I applaud people responding to criticism. I applaud people responding to criticism in video. I think that's really the best way of doing it. But you have to look at what the sources are. If you're a major celebrity or a part of an organization that's wildly famous around the world, as the case of FIFA, you're going to get a lot of criticism, number one, but you're also going to get a lot of mockery. Now, I believe you should listen to all criticism, watch it, view it, listen to it, and you should respond to criticism, but you shouldn't respond to mockery. You can't make a point by point analysis of someone's mockery of you and then respond to it. They're just trying to be funny and hit you where it hurts. So that's the real lesson here. Look at your sources. Really make sure this is legitimate news organization or legitimate criticism before you spend time responding to it. Because if you respond to mockery, you just make a fool out of yourself.