Love, hate, and social media: Price we pay for cowardice

Love, hate, and social media: Price we pay for cowardice (Photo: iStock)

Social media can build you overnight. We never knew about the two “goliaths” from Western Kenya until they went viral on social media. The same social media can channel hate to your doorstep in a way that will leave you questioning who you are. It is very easy to hate, that’s why people who don’t even know you will jump on the bandwagon to troll you and believe everything they read and hear about you.

Hate is a strong word even as much as pop culture and social media have made people use it casually. In most cases, what people mean is that they don’t agree with or understand what they claim to hate. It could even be a dislike for a certain behaviour or aspect of their object of hate. It is very easy to hate than it is to love because love is work.

Jesus Christ premised his teachings on love. Christianity is all about loving God, loving self and then loving others as you love yourself. Jesus knew that there are times when even loving self is an uphill task. Christianity is simply the religion of love. Ryan Dunlap revealed to me that the difference between love and hate is in the cost and mode of payment.

Time and emotions

To love, you must pay the price upfront. These are understanding, patience and forgiveness. To love you must invest your time and emotions which most people find an uphill task. To love you must lend the benefit of the doubt, extend grace when you are disappointed, tolerate what you may not always accept, care and forgive.

Meanwhile, when it comes to hate, there is no immediate cost to it. It is easy because the cost is delayed and the consolation comes when it appears that someone else is paying the cost. Over time, the hater must go deeper into the darker parts of his heart to dig out new reasons to hate. The cost comes when hate sips into character and the hater ends up with the same traits he hated in others. Hate turns someone into an ugly being, the credit is paid by blot in character. Credit always comes with the lie that you can enjoy something at no cost, however, credit comes with huge cover charges and interest.

People like to recruit others to hate people. It is people who crave approval who are most likely to glean it by hating people they don’t know because they were told to do so. This deepens their prejudice which deepens their bond.

Friendships premised on common hatred fall when someone finds a better target to hate. We see it on social media where trolls build up and people join in like vultures on a carcass. From a simple misunderstanding, someone is dragged through all types of mud as the world cheers.

The rest of the people will be watching and reading comments in glee loving the spectacle. People will rarely come out to defend you when you are being trolled.

This could be someone well known to them but they cannot risk their standing by paying the cost of love upfront. This shows how it is easy to hate but very difficult to love even people well-known to you.

At the bottom of hate is anger.

Hate helps us project internal conflicts and define who is in a circle and who is not. Hate can portray itself as a scapegoat for unresolved internal tensions.

The object of hate becomes the scapegoat for expelling unresolved tensions. Hate usually has nothing to do with the hated but everything about the hater. It also enables them to avoid taking responsibility for the very things that trouble them.

When you are the target of hate, more often than not explaining yourself will not change anything. People tend to hear what they want to hear, even if they listen they will still interpret it with their own flawed internal lenses. Hate also enables us to simplify external conflicts. Some conflicts matter to us especially those geared towards our identity and beliefs. We hate to avoid resolving conflicts with other people.

In this case, hate becomes the low-lying rotten fruit we jump to pick instead of scaling the tree for healthy fruits. The easier way out and the path of least resistance make us avoid difficult conversations, self-reflection and social tradeoffs.

Negative energy

Hate comes with strong negative energy, we have seen people commandeer aeroplanes and crush them into buildings.

When people feel helpless and frustrated, hate becomes an easy way to self-comfort. Personal pain is directed towards a known target by painting the target in a way that gives temporary comfort.

The successful and self-motivated rarely have time and energy to hate. Hating in a way absolves someone from taking responsibility for their underachievement, poor self-image and lack of self-awareness. 

On the opposite side of hate is not love but courage. The courage to stand up and pay the cost.