Hate, cope and success

If you are on the internet, and since you are reading this, you are, you are familliar with the fact that people often hate on others' success. You have probably been the hater yourself, at least once, even if you don't want to admit it. I know I have. Despite knowing that it is wrong, I have been jealous of others' success, and so did you. The goal of this post isn't to shame anybody (maybe just a bit), or call anybody out. It is rather to explore why we, sometimes less, sometimes more, hate on others' success.

I was scrolling through my X (Twitter) feed, and came across this tweet. The tweet features a screenshot of a Reddit conversation arround a question "Why do many indiehackers have over $10,000 MRR, and it seams easy?", and a highly upvoted answer that's, you guessed it, hateful.

The hateful comment states an opinion that those indiehackers are faking their success and fabricating their MRR. It even goes so far to say that if you offered those indiehackers $1,000 to show their Stripe account on a screenshare, no one would accept the offer, implying that they are hiding their small or non-existent MRR. It ends by stating that there is rarely a corelation between founders who are making money and ones who are bragging about it publicly, so the person is again claiming that the majority of indiehackers on social media aren't making lots of money.

The vast number of upvotes shows that many people agree with the comment. The question is, why? Do they really think that most indiehackers are laying about their MRR? And most importantly, are those indiehackers really falsifying their income?

We can't know for sure who is faking their success and who is real. There sure are fake people, but there are also a lot of honest ones. What we can (and should) do is to control how we respond to that information. Hate is not going to help you, in fact, it will have a negative effect. There is no good in being angry and jealous of someone's success.

Do people generally believe that indiehackers are faking their MRR? I don't think so. At least, they do not believe it fully, it's rather a coping mechanism. If you are surrounded by people who are making things happen, and you are an unambitious couch potato, the easiest thing to do is to convince yourself that the other people are lying to you, and you, in fact, cannot do anything to improve your situation, certainly not get off the couch and put in the work.

Instead of pushing the narrative that those MRR figures are lies, start believing that they are indeed very real. It will be uncomfortable, and you will be jealous, but don't hate on the successful. Realize that you are jealous and that you also want the success, it's perfectly fine and natural. Now, instead of letting jealousy take over, try to be genuinely happy for the successful people, congratulate them, maybe even try to connect with them (but please, don't do it in a pushy way and don't bother anybody). Use this as a fuel, let it motivate and inspire you.

The fact that people are making good money online and that it seems easy for them, means you can also do it and it can become easy for you. Even if those indiehackers are, in fact, faking their MRR, it is better for you to believe that success is possible and that you keep working towards it. Who knows, maybe one day you do the impossible, just like SpaceX caught a 250 ton rocket booster mid air.