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> There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the
by whack 5y ago
> There was no exchange of articles or courtroom-type setting where the authors of the lies had to directly defend or abandon those statements, and I guess the others in the department had some sort of cynical view that the details didn’t matter. Or, more precisely, they had a consensus that they didn’t want to think about the ugly thing that had happened, so they’d look away
The above resonated with me. One of the hard lessons I've had to learn in life, is that you will simply never be given a fair chance by some people. We would love to live in a world where we can face our accusations head-on, and after rebutting them, never have to face them again. 99% of life does not work this way though.
Key well-connected influencers may decide they don't like you for completely arbitrary reasons. And other people who know nothing about you, but trust the influencers, will take their side by default as well. No one is going to come out in the open and make concrete accusations against you. They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... and do most of this in private conversations where you don't even have a chance to respond to any of it. The end-results are very tangible and negative of course, but the means are completely under wraps and nearly impossible to fight against.
Ultimately, you can't fight against it any more than an ant can fight against its colony. If you find yourself in a system that has a vendetta against you, your best bet is to simply leave and find a different system that does value you. Or try your best to ignore them, respond only to the most vocal criticisms, continue focusing on your work, and let your success be your shield. Winning over the critics is a fool's errand - you're better off simply accepting that you will always have critics who dislike you. As the old saying goes, haters gonna hate
- kbenson 5y ago> They will just silently embellish minor transgressions, or take things out of context to paint you in a negative light... And it doesn't really require embellishment. Context is everything in this case. The difference between a small joke meant to be endearing and an attack can be entirely in the eye of the beholder. Even something as inane as "working hard or hardly working?" can be taken negatively if you're already primed to expect it that way. It's very, very hard to get back to even neutral with people that have negative assumptions about you. Even if you point out that some initial interaction that gave them a negative impression was entirely mistaken on their part or unfounded, it's not like people go back through all the interactions after that point which they interpreted negatively because of that, so these self-reinforced opinions are very hard to shake for people. It really brings into perspective that old adage, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression."